Josh Zerlan, VP of Product Development at Butterfly Labs, has provided customers with updates relating to the company’s upcoming Monarch bitcoin miner.
Dated April 19th, the information came in the form of a forum post in which Mr. Zerlan notes the Kansas-based company continues to test and manufacture the miners:
The revision 2 (or revision B) chips have arrived at our testing facility in California. They are being tested today and tomorrow and will arrive in Chicago on Monday, where they will be mounted on the new boards and sent to our office for final review. We expect a few days of initial testing and bring up/firmware tweaking, since we have not been able to actually do live firmware tests yet on a board, after that, assuming no issues, we will being the initial shipping. While it is possible we will begin shipping limited quantities by the end of the week of the 21st, it’s more likely we will begin shipping the following week, assuming no blocking issues arise.
The miner comes in the form of a PCI card, and according to information on the Butterfly Labs website, hashes at 600 GH/s whilst consuming 350 watts of power. It is priced at $2,196.
“I will post another update as soon as I hear back from the testing facility with regards to the chips and how they are functioning,” Zerlan said, closing his post.
Butterfly Labs has had difficulties in the past delivering miners to customers — highlighting just how fast-paced and ever-changing this industry is. More updates to follow.