BFL Products Shipping Now
May 1, 2013


Dear ,

Shipping of our BitForce SC ASIC miners has begun!

You may have seen news reports of our ASIC miners in the wild and some of you may have already taken delivery. It's all true. We're finally shipping. You will receive your order as we work through the shipping queue .

If you didn't know, you can check your order status on our website. Log in by clicking here. Use the same email and password you set up your account with.

If you don't have your password, use the Lost Password function to create a new one.


So what took so long?

This third generation of our SHA256 engine was a complex multi-year investment in bringing the latest semiconductor technology to bitcoin mining.

Developing a fully custom 65nm ASIC processor is not a casual undertaking. In fact, the new products have improved mining speed by a factor of 72. This much advancement doesn't come easy and it's fair to say that getting here has been eventful.

The key issue has been the engineering related to accommodating larger power draws than expected. A good example is the Jalapeno product. It was originally designed to be powered by USB but now consumes the power of a small light bulb (30w).

Consequently the power regulator, enclosure, airflow and PCB needed upgrading to suit. Although we are *very* aware of the undesirable dynamics of any delay, we were nonetheless obligated to make these updates in order to deliver a reliable product at the expected performance. The same adjustments have been made with all products in the lineup. You can see the adjusted product cases in our currently posted product lineup. (The Mini Rig case will be double shipped to satisfy their orders which is why we've run out Mini Rig enclosure stock).

Final confirmation is required

Please be advised that due to the adjustments described above, we need your confirmation prior to release of your order into the final build queue and on to final delivery. It may also be a good time to review your purchase altogether relative to the bitcoin market as this is the last opportunity to do so. If your order is not confirmed, it will be canceled and your money will be refunded.

Thank you for your support and we wish you great satisfaction with your product!

Lots things to update.

1. We are currently investigating on the three or so shipments that have shown up badly damaged to the customers. They do no appear to be simple delivery damage: they are not dents but some corners of some of the units have been snapped off. It takes a great amount of force to snap 3mm aluminum that's been bolted down with 0.9mm screws in a box with foam padding. We are not ruling out the possibility of sabotage.

In future, when receiving an Avalon package, if there is any rattling sound coming from inside, open the package in front of DHL/EMS and inspect the inside, if there is damage immediately return the package to the sender. The receiver must submit the complaint so us, the shipper can receive this information from DHL/EMS and we can investigate.

Do not worry, even if DHL/EMS does not compensate for the damages, once you send the damaged unit back, we will send you a replacement free of charge.



2. Our new SMT equipment has arrived, it is expected to be tweaked and fully functional by the second week of May. Expect an updated gallery of our facility soon. In the mean time we are going to send out ~20 units through our new shipping channels and test the waters. We expect to go full throttle once the new SMT line comes online.



3. We also recently released a new firmware that is our most stabled version yet, it also increases the performance by about 2Gh/s and lowers idle power consumption, see the wiki for full details. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Avalon#20130419

p.s. few people in the Avalon team is sick, so we are moving rather slow at the moment.