Bitcoin Forum

Who are the manufactures currently selling chips  and in what quantities ?

To the public / openly or just 'selling'?

Probably if you got the cash to make them deal with you.

ASICMiner, Avalon, Bitfury, Bitmain, Spondoolies, and if your daring KNC

I'm not sure on ASICMiner if they are if you keep up reading stuff about them in last month.

I am aware what happened about AMHash, but I wasn't sure if that effected the hardware sales. Since FC was the chip designer and they already have the previous version of the chip in hand and other people handled hardware sales.

Maybe ASICMiner should go next to KNC if your daring.

Please contact Janet.Zhao@bitmain.com or info@bitmaintech.com for chip quote.  (BM1834)

AM has no BE300s, potentially some old BE200 stock but it will be difficult to aquire.
Bitfury aren't selling their latest gen and don't have stock of previous.
Bitmain will entertain smaller developers (see BW's message above).
Spondoolies also does but is between generations.
KNC be KNC'ing.

Avoid the AM chips for sure...they would probably scam you. I know SP-Tech was also selling chips... they might have some left for sale.

Bitmain seems to be willing to deal even with relatively small quantities of chip sales.  I don't know that they sell chips just to random consumers but they have been quite reasonable during our talks to get chips for a miner design.  Avalon also, but it appears they ask for a higher price on less efficient chips.  I haven't looked into spondoolies too much but I believe they do have some Rockerbox ASICs still, though no Hammers (their older, smaller chip).

I don't know of anyone else with chips for sale- at least, chips worth buying.  It's possible there are a few BE200s left, I suppose, but ASICMiner appears to be mostly gone.

How many chips are you looking for, and for what purpose?  I know the Wasp guys have some chip samples they might be willing to unload depending on what efficiency and quantity of chips you require.

--
novak

Anyone just selling. Would like to get some chips to evaluate developing custom PCB and cooling.



Not cash heavy at the moment but can buy sample chips to evaluate some PCB designs

Thanks a lot for the suggested manufactures. Will reach out to Spondoolies and Bitmain. I will avoid KNC since they gave me a bad deal with the titans


Not large scale at the moment. Looking to get sample sizes to start evaluating designs .


Thanks a lot for the information everyone!

For avalon you can buy samples right off their website, for bitmain we bought samples from Janet (Janet.Zhao{|AT|}bitmain.com).

For Spondoolies I think you can talk to Guy (guy|{AT|}spondoolies-tech.com) and sign their NDA, but they would probably sell you samples.

Got a project in mind already or just looking at what you could build?

--
novak

SFARDS is planning our debut miner's imminent release, we have finished tapeout of our SF3301 chip: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=985400.0

By mid-April we'll start opening up to outsourced development by providing details on:

- Chips (datasheets, programming guide etc)
- Hardware (design documents)
- Software

This will include the purchase of sample chips to design your own miners.

If interested please contact us at sales@sfards.com.

You can always buy a miner like an S4/S5 and just desolder the chip if you have a hot air station.

Have a project in mind and now evaluating the options. You seem to be very familiar with the space ? Are you a hardware programmer ? Have you done custom designs and implementations with any of these manufactures chips before ?

Seems interesting. Will keep watch for now

Wont be scalable and cost effective for what we plan to do

Weren't 200 of those free sample chips? I thought you would have used them a while ago. Anyway that is a lot of chips, 160 SP20's worth.

Hammer, not Rockerbox. It's 6.8 SP10s worth if I'm thinking right, but yeah that is a lot of chips.

Common dogie :D
Do not abuse BickLEDsky.  ;D
All of them were free.  ;)
I am wandering how much will bickLEDsky ask per chip...
Any way selling Leds these days compared to free asic chips is more profitable for sure ;D
And he have removed the WASP LOGO from his profile.... ??? ???
The blinking LEDs logo is waiting for you teacher :P

Oh very true, 192 chips per SP10. Yikes, that must have been $10,000+ even towards the end of the gen. Sorry Bick.

You know the story money are gone only blinking leds remain :-*
Oh yeah and a lot of free chips for sale as we can see...

The word reasonable cost has gone from  bickLEDsky statment.
How noble he is....
I guess that Papi will do something valuable compared to blinking leds prototypes with all community MEMBERSHIP money WANISHED and free chips send from manifacturers

I try to be nice and yet you still keep making up stuff? Must be wonderful living in your head and not having to justify any of the rubbish you say. At no point has Technobit ever been higher than Spondoolies (https://i.imgur.com/8o6KSVZ.png).

Gentlemen, this discussion has been repeated verbatim how many times in how many threads in the past year? Please stay on task just a bit.

Back to topic, we have RockerBox ASICs to sell.

Back to topick Guy. Will you be so kind to give us a clear yes no answer to the folowing question:
Were the above mentioned chips (1300 hammer) sent free of charge to WASP back then?
Thanks

We can't discuss customers related information publicly, unless the customer agrees.

Unlike buying from Adam Allcock we received an invoice for what was purchased from Spondoolies. Sidehack and Novac have seen copies of those invoices for the chips purchased by some members of the group that was working on the failed miner. We offered not only chips for sale but components that we had purchased as well access to files from our Engineer. Unlike Technobit.eu we know who spent what and are still trying to recoup some of our losses on the project by selling these parts.

If anyone here is interested in giving a fair offer for the chips we purchased you can PM me.

Hey Bickledsky,
Be a man show us invoices for the PAID 1300 chips. Will you? Or just do agree that Guy can tell us if that were free chips or not. I do not care about the price. And i do not want to know it. And most important i am referring for the chips only. All your deals with spondo are your personal business!
Then Guy can confirm if this is real or not. I am just saying that you are trying to sell free chips given to WASP. And that is all.
So calling me names does not make you a favour here teacher ;) Speaking of names how are young boys in your class doing lately? Are they having fun under you supervision :D
Once again shut my shitty lying mouth and show US INVOICE FOR THE PAID CHIPS. I do no care how much have WASP spent for LEDs ;D I care if you have  paid ANYTHING for the chips alone!
If you refuse to do that i will repeat this once again

YOU ARE SELLING FREE CHIPS GIVEN TO YOU IN THE NAME OF THE COMMUNITY!

PERIOD!

Just for a recap - the original question:

---

Primary:

Avalon project A3222
CN: http://www.canaan-creative.com/a4c.html
EN: https://ehash.com/product/a3222-20pcs/
datasheets: A3222Q56-LATEST-EN.pdf (http://downloads.canaan-creative.com/hardware/A3222/)

Bitmain Technologies BM1384
datasheets: BM1384_Datasheet_v2.1.pdf (https://www.bitmaintech.com/support.htm?pid=00720141220132903742H2RLy6C40630)

Innosilicon Technologies A3 / A4
No technical data available at time of last edit

SFARDS
datasheets: SF3301_Datasheet_v0.5.pdf (https://github.com/sfards/ASIC-SF3301)

Spondoolies-Tech
RockerBox
datasheets: upon request, product brief: rockerbox_brief.pdf (http://storage.googleapis.com/spond_public/materials/rockerbox_brief.pdf)

---

Secondary:

ASIC|rising Wolfblood ( claims samples available )
https://asicrising.de/wolfblood/

Black Arrow Minion ( research company first )
http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-asics/
datasheets: minion_datasheet_2014.05.27.pdf (http://blackarrowsoftware.com/download/minion_datasheet_2014.05.27.pdf)

HashFast Golden Nonce ( liquidated assets )
http://hashfast.com/
datasheets: Golden-Nonce.rev1_.2.pdf (http://hashfast.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Golden-Nonce.rev1_.2.pdf)

Innosilicon / Coincraft A1
http://bitmine.ch/?product=coincraft-ai-asic
datasheets: CoinCraft A1.pdf (https://github.com/bitmine-ch/bitmine/raw/master/Specs/CoinCraft%20A1.pdf)

---

Resale:

Spondoolies-Tech Hammer
datasheets: ds_hammer_14041.pdf (https://www.dropbox.com/s/68dfsslw68xlce0/ds_hammer_14041.pdf)
edit: Bicknellski may have gotten banned from this forum - try reaching him through social media.

Interesting little quip from Innosilicon, will add to list:

Lays and wise. They have small single bags up to party size bags.

mid April? as in next year? ? ? ? oh yeah that sounds like a winner...  ???

Except that's a quote from late March, and they've already posted data and have sample chips for sale and people are already playing with them.

Oops, silly me missed the date on that... ::)

I did not see any info on on-going projects with that
care to share a link

Is it still possible to source chips nowadays? Updates from Googling:
Avalon: https://ehash.com/product/a3222-20pcs/ doesn't work. Seems like they only sell actual miners.
Bitmain Tech: Seems like they only sell actual miners.
InnoSilicon: Looks like they might. Has anyone obtained new or old gen chips from them?
SFARD: Read the entire 82 pg drama filled thread. Seemed promising but a dead end?
Spondoolies: These guys have shut up shop. http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/blogs/news

I'm a hardware/software enthusiast but it seems like a mission and a half to trudge down this path.

Just buy a vid card or 2  :D

The answer to "I want to mine bitcoins" is never "mine something that's not bitcoin".

Problem is Bitcoin has been made not profitable by ASIC builders while

Gpu mining is making money mining  eth coin.

The s-7 costs 650 if you need a psu

It costs 505 if you do not need a psu.

The s-7

Will earn 83 back at 10 cents then the 1/2 ing
Will earn 101back at 9 cents then the  1/2 ing
Will earn 119back at 8 cents  then the 1/2 ing
Will earn 137back at 7 cents  then the 1/2 ing
Will earn 155back at 6 cents then the  1/2 ing

This is really hard to,buy into.


I have heard smaller miner are dead the farms will,kill them off

For three years I think this time it is going to be true.

Right. However, Ethereum is not bitcoin. If someone says "I want to build a miner and make money any way I can", sure alts are one way to go. But if someone wants to mine bitcoins, alts is not the answer. And "mine an altcoin with GPUs" is definitely not the answer to "I would like Bitcoin mining ASICs".

To address the actual question, I don't know of anyone actively selling chips. Bitfury has claimed they'll do it, and word was circulating that they delivered some sample chips to third-party builders a while ago but if they did there weren't many and they were guys with lots of money. Avalon's not selling, Bitmain never really sold, and I haven't heard anything out of InnoSilicon but it might not hurt to ask what they're up to.

I saw this from Innosilicon re A4: http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/13.html dated Mar 30 16 so relatively recent. I'll say hello to them and see what they say.

I've seen the MoonLander from jstefanop which looks awesome and the last he wrote was that he is looking into the A4 so I assume it's not impossible. Maybe the ordering quantity needs to be huge to get in the door?

Innosilison is an interesting question. I'll have o look back in my A1 chip kerfuffle files but I think they used GF (Global Foundries) to run the wafers. If so and they use GF again then they would have the 14nm node to play with. Since the GF 14nm fab is in Malta NY means no earthquake delay so... Wonder what they have been up to.

Sure the A1 was way off promised spec for speed  vs power but -- accepting its real world specs it was rock solid when used by integrators that knew how to build boards. The boards that AMT/Bitmine.ch tried were a disaster of zero knowledge of PDN design rules and ignorant thermal design whereas Dragon clones clones were rock-solid.

The 1.2TH  Dragon clone I eventually got from AMT in early Sept. 2014 (7mo late but I was lucky - I got one!) ran rock solid 24x7x365 right up to last Feb. when I finally shut it down to apply the 1.3kw power it used for a s7 located elsewhere at work.

That makes me wonder about Inno's silence about an A4...

EDIT: Just saw that question was answered while I was writing  ;D and damn -- it's a scrypt chip. However, got to love the fact that they even give the chip layouts!
http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/13.html (http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/13.html)
Raises the question of, 'What about another BTC miner ASIC?'.

I thought I heard that Innosilicon was actually doing TWO chips (i.e. an A3 and A4). One was Scrypt, and the other SHA256. It sounded ambitious to me, but I am 99% sure they are doing a BTC centric chip as well. As for it's actual status, that's a different question.......

An updated news release on the progress of the A4 chip. They are taking preorders for shipment in 2 months time.

"The A4 Dominator ASIC, priced at discounted $12 per chip for early birds, will continue the fantastic A2 Terminator legacy in serving our mining community. With the unbeatable price and performance, A4 Dominator ASIC/Miner will revolutionize how we mine coins for the years to come."

Ref: http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/14.html

After reading the SFARD saga I'm not sure what to think now.

 A4 and miners due out on it June/July timeframe.

 Their silence on the A3 has been deafening - starting to wonder if it's another LK-1401 in efficiency but came to market too late to be viable with it.

 Unlike SFARDS the Innosilicon company has a rather long track record in chip design - they were around as a chip design house BEFORE Bitcoin existed, which makes them pretty much unique in the industry - and they have a MUCH better rep for delivering on gear when they announce it will be available than most, and THE TOP rep for reliable chips AND board-level design work (Gridseed/SFARDS seems to have had good chips, but crap for board-level designs).

 I saw somewhere that they're talking "100k chip quantity or don't bother" at this point - that might change as they get more gear out the door.
 Sadly, I don't see Sidehack designing a "small" miner, but the Moonlander guy probably would, and Innosilicon themselves will probably release some smaller miners similar to the Mini and the Farm Boy.



 As of RIGHT NOW though, it appears that nobody is selling recent chips to anyone other than major integrators or large farms that roll their own boards.

If you mean a small scrypt miner, no I won't. If you mean a small BTC miner, I've got a few designs already in progress.

Can I ask where you source your chips from? Or is that like asking how much someone earns? (If so apologies in advanced) :)

I earn about 30% over the poverty line for my state, which basically means "all my monthly bills are paid, plus about $50 a week for food". No shame there.

Right now I can only get chips by pulling from existing hardware. If BitFury will ever get off their butts and decide to start talking, I was told four months ago I'd have access to their chips. In theory there's talks with Avalon as well. What I'd really like to see is an independent development project set up just for the community, like PlanetCrypto has been talking about for a year or so. That's probably the only way third parties can guarantee getting chips in a reasonably affordable manner.

No shame at all. You're doing much better than me. I quit my job 5 months ago to get back to my hardware/software engineering root. Got sick of having meetings about meetings in the corporate world.

Seen some of the hardware stuff you've created (and others in this community) and it is awesome. My dream would be to create small miners like how you and the likes of jstefanop do and help the community, open source it but most of all, walk into high schools and universities down under here (NZ/AUS) and share the knowledge and increase awareness.

Sourcing chips seems to be a nightmare though. :(

I've been self-employed for 4 years, somehow scraping by the whole time. Been making a living from serving the bitcoin economy for about two and a half years.

Yep, sourcing chips is a nightmare. I guess I got lucky that Bitmain was even willing to talk to me last spring, and even luckier that they sold me some chips.

Yeah I thought they would sell the s-7 chips to you.  Would have been really nice compac sticks.

I know I have been going on about   switching to other coins I have  been sooooo frustrated  as I finally got a decent power deal with the solar array and I can't get better asic gear.

We are holding back on adding gear  to have room for more efficient units. As the array has a power limit.

That is awesome. Yeah, I guess we all manage to scrape by when we need to.

Can I ask re: design of a board, when you managed to get some chips, how much support did you get from the manufacturers? ie datasheets, dev boards, sample pcb layouts or did you basically just get the chips and had to figure out the rest?

The reason I got excited about SFARD is because they had a lot of this material available as open source.

All I got was the publicly-available datasheet.

Ah, so you had to MacGyver the rest. That's impressive.

Well, the datasheet had enough pinout and power info. The software fortunately is compatible with BM1382 so U3 code was adaptable.

The Avalon chip, now that's a bit of MacGyver. There's no public datasheet, at least not that I've found, so I worked up a pinout from probing an Avalon6 board and VH is working on figuring out the protocol from guesswork and Avalon's previous four generations of available datasheet.

Since last spring when Sidehack and me were lucky to get some BM-1384 sold, I tried again several times to source BM-1384 or BM-1385 and went through to a guy who is business development manager at Bitmain. I was really teasy and sent some 10 inquiries over the months (I even asked Yoshi himself) and achieved - nothing except making them pissed-off. So yep, sourcing of chips is a nightmare. Three new projects on hold due to that (half way). I already reached the point where I see Bitfury as a glimmer of hope.... :-\

Feels like this is a game for the big boys. Something you guys probably knew a long time ago! SFARD's initial philosophy was promising (open source and community driven/support) but I guess they also succumbed to reality/economics.

Well, like they say, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

I never wanted to work with SFARDS chip anyway, since scrypt was the primary and it came in a 40W BGA package. That's three strikes.