Quote from: rudi on September 02, 2014, 01:58:28 PM

Quote from: jjdub7 on September 02, 2014, 12:38:06 PM

And when you view a public pool service that undercuts the competition at a 0.5% etc fee to break even on AM's end as another product in their portfolio of offerings, that's when you're starting to think in the right direction. Wink

I like your way of thinking, Zelda!

Lol here, let me Link you to a snapshot of Zelda:

Quote from: RoadStress on September 02, 2014, 01:18:11 PM

Quote from: jjdub7 on September 02, 2014, 12:25:30 PM

Because the R&D costs to develop and manufacture 20nm architectures and beyond...

Stopped reading here. Why do you compare the costs of a 40nm miner ONLY with the costs of a 20nm and beyond miner? What about better 40nm chips? Or maybe 28nm chips? Your comparision is flawed.

Your criticism is flawed. You're obviously not from an engineering background. If costs scaled perfectly for R&D, AM et al would all be on KnC's level of technology right now. I compare the 40nm costs to those of smaller architectures using a roadmap analysis. This is imperative because (1) as the difficulty continues to increase, the only way to match the required exponential increases in network hashing power to energy costs as the BTC price stagnates is to use more powerful (density-wise) chips, and (2) the efficiency engineering comes after you've completed a prototype at a smaller architecture - the "fine-tuning" of your draft chip design, followed by the hardware design process and the efficiencies that can be gained therein.

Your critique neglects to acknowledge that mining is an arms race and will be for the foreseeable future. If you're fighting a war, sure you can bring a million musketmen to the battlefield, but they'll be a pittance compared to your enemy's cruise missiles.