Bitcoin Forum

Here's the deal: you give me your Avalon chips, and I will house them in a "condo". You need to buy condo units first, and I will then build the condo systems. Each "floor" in the condo can house 80 chips (exactly same as Avalon design), in 8 units of 10 chips each. You don't need to know anything about electronics or computer hardware. It should not matter where the condos will be physically located. Income from your condos will be sent directly to your Bitcoin address, minus fees for electricity and maintenance. Sit back, relax, and just watch as your condo income grows. If you earn enough, buy more condo units to earn even more.

Price per Condo Unit Drastically Reduced! BTC1.34 Now BTC0.9!
If You Decide Not to Cancel Your Avalon Order, This is Another Option for You, at a Much Lower Price

You already took a calculated risk buying the chips, and now you are taking another, unnecessary risk by building a system yourself. Are you after the "fun" of building it, or are you after the Bitcoins you would earn when you ordered the chips? You want those chips to be mining for you as soon as practicable. Our hashing units and control units will be exact copies of those in the working Avalon systems. The Avalon design is the one that's out there, already mining for a large number of happy customers.

The only significant difference between the Avalon system and the box where your condo will be located is that we will be running an independent instance of cgminer for your condo units. In other words, there can be as many as 32 instances of cgminer running to manage each owner's condo. This means that, in this system, the Avalon Control Unit is connected to a more capable PC than the WR703N used in original Avalon systems.

My name is Carlos Tapang, and I have been a Bitcoin and gold bug for sometime. I wrote a blog about What is Money? (http://ctapang.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/what-is-money) in 2011 which included discussion of Bitcoins. Back then I did not believe that Bitcoins would attain the growth and price that it has so far attained. You can say I am now a firm believer. I was trained in Physics but am a software engineer by profession. I have worked in both small and big companies like Intel and Microsoft. You can search for my name on Google. (I've checked, and I'm 99% certain you'll find only good things about me.)

I will be doing business as a corporation. The name of that corporation is Centerus Inc. Centerus Inc is a Washington state corporation. You can verify its legal existence by typing "Centerus"   here (http://dor.wa.gov/content/doingbusiness/registermybusiness/brd/Default.aspx).

Pricing

Each condo unit can house a "family" of 10 chips, and there will be 8 units in a floor. Units are powered and cooled from a common source. A 10-chip unit has hashing power of about 2.82 GH/s. Each condo unit is priced at

2.54 BTC, 1.34 BTC  Now only 0.9 BTC for each condo unit At this price, you get a working hashing unit, powered and cooled in a box

Place your order here now. (http://centerus.com/products-page/condo/condo-unit/)

I am sorry, but at this price level I just cannot use JohnK's escrow service. Once your payment is received, it will be grouped with others to place a system order with a U.S. assembler, and your box will be built (where your condo unit will reside).

PM or send me email at carlostapang_AT_gmail.com if you have any questions just for me. The allocation scheme is very simple: first come, first served. Those who buy first will get assigned to the first condo systems completed and brought online.

Recurring Expenses

1. Electricity - approx 3 cents per kWh (Chelan county, WA)
2. Internet access - shared with other owners
3. Space fee - 0.012 BTC per unit (10 chips) per month
4. Management fee - 5% of your earning (no bigger than what you would pay a mining pool)

Among all the countries of the world, I don't think there's any country that can beat 3 cents per kWh. (Maybe there's a place in Australia that is cheaper, let me know.) If you find this price hard to believe, here is the link to the Douglas County PUD (next to Chelan County). (http://www.douglaspud.org)

Now for the fine print:

The condos will be physically located in Chelan County, Washington, USA.

This is designed for people who bought the chips but don't have the time or the skills to build their own systems. If you can build it yourself, that's perfect. Here are the advantages of the condo as opposed to taking physical possession of your mining rig:

1. If you are outside of that country where your cheaper system can be built, you will have to factor in the costs of shipment, and most specially import tariff. There is also risk involved during transit. In the case of the condo deal, what gets shipped to you are Bitcoins.

2. What are you really after when you bought these chips? Are you after the fun of having the machine in your house, something to show to your friends? Or are you after the potential earnings?

3. As for the maintenance fees and electricity fees, these will be minimal. The systems will be manned 24/7 remotely from the Philippines. If you put your mining equipment in your own home, you yourself will have to make sure that your systems are all up and running every day.

4. We will strive for maximum uptime.

What I am offering here is simply less hassle, less headache. You give me your chips, and part with some of your Bitcoins, and I will take care of the rest.

FAQ
Question: Can I buy Avalon chips from you, to put in the Condo?
Answer: No. I have cancelled my chip order. I have already built the prototype, and it is mining right now.

Question: Can I use my BFL chip credits for the condo units?
Answer: No, but if you have a BFL system, you can ship it to me for hosting. The advantages for doing this are 1) lower electricity costs, 2) we will manage and maintain your system for you, and 3) you retain full control of your system (albeit remotely).

I don't quite follow the model.

If you purchase a condo in a real estate transaction, you own it. You know what it is, where it is, and how the mechanical systems of it work.

From you post, I gather that you get sent the raw chips plus a fee. You then do stuff with them and BTC revenue comes back minus fees.

I think there is a strong interest in what to do with all these Avalon chips that have been ordered, and your solution may be a reasonable one if you are able to provide more clarity on what the hardware folks are paying for actually looks like, where it will be located, and how it will be handled in the event that your business is no longer a going concern. Since it's being paid for the owner of the unit actually owns it, right?

This could have potential but I think you need to be pretty transparent about how (and where) you would actually make this work.

Thanks for the question.

Here's more info. The board design will be pretty much the same as Avalon's. I have a PCB designer in Manila who is already looking at what kind of PCB card we will need, given the clock rate. He says he should have the Gerber files ready a week after the reference design from Avalon becomes available. The prototype will be done by a PCB shop in Cebu, and the first systems will also be built in Cebu. If more systems than the PCB shop in Cebu can handle are needed, I will have them built in China.

The chip condos are going to be located in Cebu, Philippines. Why Cebu? Because I plan to be back there before July. Fully climate-controlled computer rooms are still cheap to lease in Cebu. Electricity cost is about the same as in the U.S. though. However, labor is still pretty cheap. Cebu is one of the most secure islands in the region.

Obviously if the number of condo systems would warrant it, the whole condo complex can have its own mining pool. A swimming pool in a condo? :)

Of course, the condo unit owner has full ownership of the condo. However, he/she can't take it away from the rest of the condo. It can be resold, yes, definitely.


What else do you like to know about the hardware?

If Centerus (and Centerus Cebu) goes out of business, the condos will be liquidated, and each condo owner will get his share of the liquidated value. The condos are not property of Centerus. Centerus will maintain the condos on behalf of the owners, just like a real condo.

Wow, after Dabs you are now the second RP-based guy.
But Dabs has not received a single order yet.

Does Cebu City suffer from rolling blackouts?
If not, how many power outages per month, on the average, and how long do they typically last, on the average?
Just curious.
Will your Avalon condo have a backup generator?

Not sure if I missed it, have you determined the maintenance fee, and disclosed the power cost in your area?

You say a "condo unit" costs ~11.47 BTC estimated, so the equivalent cost to build an Avalon sized condo would be 274BTC? Am I correct or reading that wrong?

There are several "IT Centers" in Cebu City. Each building has its own backup power generator. Internet access is very good.

There can be maximum 32 units in a condo system (condo building), powered from the same ATX power supply. So a whole system costs 32 * 11.44 BTC minus the chips. Please note that I said "similar" price formula as Avalon's but not exactly the same. Buying a slice of a system will always cost more than buying a whole system, but I am not giving discounts for ordering several units.

You realize that this sounds like "send me your asics, i will do something with them and dont tell you where iam and the chips will be". Thats somehow the opposite of building trust to your offer. You should come clear and proofable who you are, where you want to host it and so on. Otherwise it will be hard to find the needed trust.

So the question is...why should I send chips to you and not someone else? Especially if you have no real design info.

This will have exactly the same design as the Avalon system, even down to the parts used. Can you enlighten me as to what other design risks there would be?

SebastianJu, I don't know how to answer your question. The design will be pretty much a copy of the Avalon system board, down to the parts used, and the condos will be located in Cebu, Philippines. You are welcome to visit Cebu this July.

I am not too worried about the hardware because this is a proven design. There are always glitches of course, but that is what prototyping and testing is all about.

I am more worried about the condo management software that this will require. I am more on the software side, so this is my area of expertise. In this kind of system, I am thinking the unit owners will not have a choice as to which mining pool the systems will connect to. The reason is obvious: each unit is not really independent. We can simulate independence by software, but that would be a lot of work. So initially at least, everybody in the condo will be mining off of the same mining pool. The condo management system will have a communication and receivables module that sits between the condo and the mining pool. Each payment from the mining pool will have to be subdivided among the condo owners.

Your plan sounds like:

1. Make Claims

2. Collect Money

3. Profit

Is that your business plan?

The fact that you're not even willing to disclose the location makes this seem very shady.

I can't stay in business for too long if my clients do not themselves profit from this venture. My first priority would be to make this worthwhile for you. When you buy and become profitable, that's the only way I can build a viable business.

The location will be in Cebu City, Philippines.

Quick question:

Carlos Tapang has big web presence which I can Google and find - as you have said. Which also means you did the same. What proves flyonwall is same person as Carlos Tapang ?

Hmm. How about my writing style?

There's one definite way we can prove I am who I say I am (flyonwall == Carlos C Tapang). I posted the following weeks ago:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156960.0

I posted the OP for this on my blog also:

http://ctapang.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/would-bitcoin-suffer-a-similar-fate-as-that-of-unix/

I have just extended the deadline for 32 units to May 10th, which is also about the time that the reference design from Avalon becomes available.

Fair enough. Thanks.

Your flyonwall nick tells me you are a speculative stock trader as well - are you ?  :)

I speculate on gold and Bitcoins, nothing else.  I don't own any shares of any company. I have liquidated all my Intel and Microsoft shares, and then bought gold and Bitcoins.

Condo owners will be kept informed of the progress.

Rough Plan Milestones:

April 28th -- Avalon chips ordered (Group Buy #1, eafir)

May 10th -- reference design from Avalon becomes available

(NOTE: First PCB should use sockets for surface-mount Avalon chips, order 1 pair for each part for prototype.)

May 17th -- board circuit design done, parts ordered, PCB layout technician starts work through ODesk.com

May 24th -- Gerber files sent to prototype shop for inspection, condo management software design completed

June 7th -- parts ordered arrive, condo management software coding starts

--> about SIX weeks of software agile development <--

June 30th -- expected delivery of Avalon chips

July 12th -- ALL condo owners must send their chips in by this date, all parts received at prototype shop

July 19th -- first prototype received from prototype shop, tested with condo management software alpha

July 22nd -- reworked design sent to prototype shop

July 30th -- second prototype received, tested with condo management software beta

Why would you want to use sockets for the Avalon chips? Based on what I know of them that would be a bad thing.

Is your computation correct ?!

11.34 - 0.86 = 10.48 btc per condo of 10 chips (2.82 GH/s) ? That's equivalent to 234.12 btc for a 63 GH avalon, that too at least 3 months down. Did you put the decimal point in wrong place ?

About the sockets: Instead of doing rework on original PCB, I want to get new PCB without destroying the Avalon chips. Sockets will be used only on first prototype.

About the price: if price is an issue, let us talk about it. What price would you consider fair?

Try backtracking. Compute what price would be break-even in August per GH/s, and the walk back, keeping profit for you and buyer.

At what difficulty?

Search the forum with "orgainofcorti" for hints.

The search yielded exactly one, your entry here.

Typo. Should be "organofcorti". Or try his blog: http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/ and read through the posts.

Cool! Lots of graphs in that site. Plowing through it ...

Plowing through this: http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/#!/2013/04/913-asic-choices-asic-earnings-17-april.html

Assumptions, of course, are worst case, as these should be.

Doing a simplistic extrapolation, the table on this web page indicates that the earning per GHs per day would be about 0.01 BTC. Cumulative within 30 days of August would be about 0.3 BTC, assuming that all factors remain constant for 30 days. Let's do a voodoo projection of price in USD to be $260 by that time, times 2.82 hash rate, and the gross earnings would be $220 in August, per condo unit.

So for an investment of 0.78 BTC for 10 chips, the earnings amount to only 0.3 BTC in August, and that's on a linear assumption.

Buying the condo to house these ten chips would even lower the ROI. Obviously my price of 11.44 per condo unit seems too high for the owner to make a profit, in these assumed conditions.

Total investment per condo unit = 12.22 BTC
ROI for August = 2.4% which can only go lower in the following months
So each condo unit may never even pay for itself.

Yes, indeed. The price should be just the same as Batch #3 of Avalon then. Three modules cost 72.36 BTC, so divided by 24 units yields 3.02 BTC. Let's add 10% to this, then subtract the chip cost, so each condo unit should be priced at 3.32 - 0.78 = 2.54 BTC

New proposed price for each condo unit is therefore 2.54 BTC. Allows me to earn some, and still gives a good chance for the owners to be profitable.

Hi. You are in Cebu? My wife speaks "bisaya", and of course I understand "tagalog". I can at least confirm if this flyonwall is Carlos Tapang. (or rather that he speaks the languages fluently.)

Are you saying, we have a local electrical engineer who can do the prototypes and working miners? You might want to mention that in my thead?
[Group Buy] Avalon ASIC Chips, Philippines (Dabs) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187457.0)

Yeah I was about to say...

Hi Dabs, yes I live in Cebu, but I am originally from the island of Mindanao.

Going to bed now. Be back tomorrow morning, about 8 hours from now.

By the way, I live in Cebu, but am currently on assignment in the East Coast.

I have just pledged for 1,000 chips with RagingAzn628's [Group Buy #2]. If this buy gets enough pledges for 10,000 chips, this project will also proceed. (I will be building 3 condo systems for myself, if [Group Buy #2] proceeds.)

I cancelled my order with [Group Buy #2], and ordered 960 chips from Zefir instead. This project is definitely ON! There's no turning back now.

The first condo system will be occupied by Centerus, and will not be listed in the spreadsheet. The purpose of this first system is mainly for debugging. You don't want to own any unit on this system because it will be redone to fix hardware/software bugs.

The second condo system is named "Coco Nut Shade", to be owned by you:

Condo System 1: No Name, for debugging
Condo System 2: Coco Nut Shade
Condo System 3: Banana Grove
Condo System 4: Beach Side
Condo System 5: Mango Bongo
Condo System 6: Avocado Voodoo
...

All condo systems to be occupied by the Centerus chips will be built last.

Do these condos come with free WIFI and cable TV?  :D

Sorry.. I couldn't help myself. It's hard for me (and most likely potential investors) to take this seriously with your unconventional naming.

Not to worry. In time, people will see how serious I am about this. The chips won't arrive until July.

Either your math, or your formula is wrong. The price for a 2.82 Gh/s unit should be, assuming 2 months to come online from today:

(2.82*155520000/8974296.01488785)*(1+2) = 146.60 BTC, not 2.54 BTC

Your math is wrong, your terminology is confusing, you are not re-assuring people you have EE skills to assemble the chips in functional units, etc... I don't think you will attract any customer this way.

My discussions with Shibaji has enlightened me to the fact that my previous price was too high, so I lowered the price drastically. I just based it on Avalon's Batch 3 pricing. I will now remove the formula.

Wait, so is 2.54BTC per 10-chip "floor" (plus chips) the newer pricing? Not to rain on your parade, but there are others offering to build and send users a 10-chip unit for 80 Euros (about $105USD). Compared to your 10-chip unit (which I don't even get to keep) for $355.60 at a $140USD/BTC exchange rate. PLUS they have to pay management fees, etc.

I'm not trying to be rude here, but what's the draw? Why would somebody pay 3+ times as much money for boards they can't possess that they're stuck paying "management fees" on, to some guy they don't know, who forever holds their stuff in a foreign country? What happens if something goes wrong, and a bunch of boards get fried. How do you decide whose boards those were, and who's not gonna get paid anymore? What if the building you're hosting them in gets flooded? Do you have insurance? Are you going to be able to pay people back for their damaged equipment? What about lost revenue?

Most people are better off paying way less money to have somebody else assemble it, owning the equipment, running it themselves for no mangement fee, using electricity costs as a tax write-off. Again, I'm not being mean. I just really don't understand what it is that you're offering to people that is better than what's already out there?

No, you are not being rude. I am glad you brought this up, because I want to make this deal as good as possible both for the buyer and Centerus. If nobody raises the questions you are now raising, I will never know why nobody's attracted to the whole deal. I should thank you.

This is designed for people who bought the chips but don't have the time or the skills to build their own systems. If you can build it yourself, that's perfect. Yes, $355.60 is more than triple the European design you mentioned. (I think I know which design you are talking about.) Here are the advantages:

1. If you are outside of that country where this cheaper system is built, you will have to factor in the costs of shipment, and most specially import tariff. There is also risk involved during transit. In the case of the condo deal, what gets shipped to you are Bitcoins.

2. What are you really after when you bought these chips? Are you after the fun of having the machine in your house, something to show to your friends? Or are you after the potential earnings?

3. As for the maintenance fees and electricity fees, these will be minimal. The condos will be guarded 24/7, and there will be at least one person on site during the day. Labor is cheap in Cebu, so these won't cost much. The building these condo systems will be housed in has its own emergency electricity generators. If you put your mining equipment in your own home, you yourself will have to make sure that your systems are all up and running every day.

4. We will strive for maximum uptime. If there is downtime, everybody in the condo system that's down don't earn the Bitcoins they should be earning. If only one of the four "floors" in a system is down, the whole condo system will have to be shut down to fix that single floor. (All four floors in a condo system share the same power supply.)

5. At this point there is no provision for insurance, so if a natural calamity hits the building where the systems are located, tough luck. However, I can tell you that there are critical operations of some U.S. companies housed in some of those IT Center buildings. The typhoons that hit Cebu are not as severe as those that hit Manila. The IT Centers in Cebu don't get flooded.

What I am offering here is simply less hassle, less headache. You give me your chips, and part with some of your Bitcoins, and I will take care of the rest. If I damage one of your chips in any way, then I will replace it. (That's one of the reasons why Centerus just bought some chips ourselves.) We will test your chips to determine that all your chips work when these arrive at the site. If a chip arrives with its functionality impaired, we will let you know and you can either pay us for replacement chip(s) or reduce your portion of the condo income.

EDIT:Seems I was typing this at same time OP was replying to previous posts.


I was wondering the same thing.Burnin was one of the first(that I was aware of) but not the only designer to put forth the 10 chip board solution and he is fairly confident in his 80 EUR/105USD pricing(I believe he said +/- 10% MAX) and others who have said that should be the sweet spot also.At this moment Gox average is 142$ and if we look at the last 2 weeks of market data we will see that there has been some serious buy walls at 120$USD so chances are low that we will see price go below that this week.But even at 120 per btc your prices are really really unreasonable IMO for the service and product you offer.I am not attacking you I am just trying to make you aware of the current environment for similar offerings.To break it down

Prices based on MTGOX Weighted Average on April 30 6:17 GMT

Your offer-$363.27 USD (2.54btc*143.02$)+Electricity costs and Maintenance Fee(yet to be determined)

-You install 10 of my chips on a board made specifically to operate in a custom setup referred t as a condo

-You install this board into a custom setup you call a condo

-You  handle operation of this condo

-You keep my hardware in the Phillipines (i am gonna assume if I ever want my hardware ill have to pay you shipping,not that i am sure itll be much use outside of your "condo")

-You allocate me my share of mining proceeds

Burnins (and a few other developers) offer-$105 USD +/_- 10% (this is ballpark but research and BOM shows it to be fairly accurate)

-they install 10 of my chips into standalone unit with daisy chaining/modular capabilities

-they ship unit to me

-I handle operating costs

-I handle mining

-I have hardware in hand to do with as I please

-Most likely bulk discounts


For most people this seems like the choice is obvious.I woul dconsider changing your pricing structure to be more competitive in what is gearing up to be a very competitive market.just my 2 cBTC

Who's taking care of shipping costs? What about tariff? If you are in the same country as the person building the system for you, then it's OK.

Given all this, what do you think would be a reasonable price for the condo deal?

Yes it is cheaper if you are in same country as assembler.However I have products shipped form EU to US fairly often and the total costs should not exceed 25 dollars by my estimate.so we are still at less then 1 BTC at current market value.I think 10 chip modules should not exceed $150 USD and that is at the most.Many people want product in hand,however there may be a few who may not be able to miner to have a miner at home or just dont want to deal with it and those are the people your offer is catered towards.But that niche I do not think will pay what you are asking.Also keep in mind that some developers have already brought up the idea of them hosting their own products for a maint/elec fee.and if they do theyre product before fees is less then hlaf of yours and then they would be offerin gan almost identical service.Put up a poll with some well researched prices and see what people think.Competition makes any market healthier in my opinion so best of luck to you.

It definitely costs much more than $25 to ship from Europe to the U.S.

Here's how much UPS charges for shipping something worth $105, weighing 5Lbs, from Germany to USA: $211.42 (UPS Express Saver)

From Sweden to USA: $222.45 (UPS Expedited -- lowest cost)

You are really much better off shipping Bitcoins than physical objects.

I posted a box with a total weight of 11 pounds from the Netherlands to the USA, insured(€3000), track & trace and have to be signed for when received for €60 yesterday. €60 is us$78. It will arrive in 4-8 working days.

That's well and good, from the Netherlands. This is using normal post, right? As opposed to using either UPS or Fedex? How about tariff or customs tax?

Can anybody else tell us how much it would cost to ship from Germany using normal post?

Quoting myself above:


How about this: to make it even more compelling, in case of downtime, I will guarantee less than ten minutes of downtime, even if your condo system  breaks down. While it is being repaired, we will switch all owners in that condo system over to one of the Centerus systems. We take the loss, not you. The condo management software will do the switch, automatically; that's how I can guarantee less than ten minutes downtime.

It's indeed normal post, and not UPS or Fedex.
No idea what you mean by tariff and custom tax, if any, will be paid by the recipient.

Thanks, BenTuras. Appreciate the input.

I want input on this: which mining pool should the whole condo complex join?

If the condo complex is large enough, it should be its own mining pool. Or are there still advantages to just joining a mining pool even in this case?

I agree with this poster, that the cost cannot reasonably exceed $150/unit, and be appealing to most people. $200, I think, would be your upper limit. These boards aren't going to be that heavy. So maybe shipping 1 board for $200 (that seems REALLY high) isn't a huge difference in cost between your offerings. But if somebody has 2-10 boards, the shipping price isn't going to really increase much at all. So now when you divide that cost by 10 boards, the shipping costs becomes $20 in shipping per 10-chip-board, or $125 total cost shipping included.

As you said, I'm buying chips to make money. If I buy 100 chips, and send them to you (still have to pay shipping to you, right?) that's $3600 just for the "condo units" in addition to my $1100 or so for chips. How long is my $4700 investment going to take to pay back, after paying management fees, etc?

Conservatively, we'll say that your solution for 100 chips is $1500-$2000 more of an investment. We'll stick to the low end and say it's only $1500 more. If (again, conservatively) assume that difficulty has only risen to 40Million by the time these go online, that would mean I would have to have 31 days of power outage at a difficulty of 40Million, before I even lost as much as I would have by purchasing units from you (before fees).

Assuming difficulty rises to 60Million, it becomes 41 days. The more difficulty rises, the less this 'downtime insurance' is worth. The most I have EVER been without power has been 5 days one year, when I lived in an extremely rural area that was hit by severe ice storms that destroyed a large number of power lines. Something that happens maybe once every 10-15 years out there. Most of the time, power outages in the U.S. (except for California and NY) last maybe 15-20 minutes, and happen once per year or less.

Just some food for thought, as you develop your plan. Again, I think your idea is a good one on its face, but I just don't think the numbers work for most people at this price.

Also, just a thought, if you're hosting potentially many many TH of processing power, I think a P2P pool, or better yet, solo mining is more realistic, or perhaps creating a new pool, so that owners can also collect transaction fees, rather than losing them to the pool they're mining for. I don't know how much fees really amount to in the long run, but the ability to collect on transaction fees might add appeal to your solution.

Update: I just read Burnin's thread, and now he's shifted to an anticipation of do double density (20 chips per board), for 100 Euro ($132USD) per board. Meaning a system of 100 chips (minus chip cost) can be done for $660 +shipping. Even if you assume $200 in shipping, you're talking about a per-chip cost of $8.60 to have them put into a fully functional system, and shipped to your door. Compared to $36.30 (plus whatever it costs to have the chips shipped). A difference of 425% in initial investment, before the fees start.

I think you will want to decide to either make your money off of hardware sales, or off of management fees, but probably not both.

If the cost of hardware in one of your condos was comparable to the cost of owning my own hardware, I believe you would have folks willing to pay a reasonable management fee to have their hardware run off-site.

In fact, I've considered offering a hosting service here in the U.S. similar to what you are offering, where people can send in their hardware and have it managed and monitored. Running a large enough farm would allow breaks on energy pricing; if there were a large enough farm, it could be run as its own "pool" allowing for transaction fees to be kept by those who mined it. And people don't have to worry about uptime.

I think you'll find a reasonable interest in those services, provided you can get the hardware pricing more in line with other current offerings, but I don't think you'll find a lot of people who are prepared to pay a 425% premium for hardware, just for the privilege of using those hosting services.

Just to remove any doubt about the UPS shipping cost, here is a snapshot of the UPS page, which anybody can verify for themselves on the UPS site itself. This is shipping something weighing 2 lbs. from Dresden, DE to Columbia, SC, USA. (You can also see there's a difference in price between this and shipping something heavier, as my other example above.)

http://sdrv.ms/12SNvHq

The point still is that shipping from Germany to the US is not cheap. Be that as it may, I am looking into other options that can lower the system build cost.

There is one big change in the plans: the condos will not be located in Cebu. As it turns out, the electricity cost per kWh for businesses in Cebu (in fact all over the Philippines, at 30 cents), is more than DOUBLE that here in the U.S., at 14 cents. (Part of the reason for this is the downward trend of the US Dollar against the Philippine Peso.)

There will be no 24/7 guards, nobody physically manning the systems during daytime, but I will be hiring a small outfit in the Philippines through ODesk to man the systems REMOTELY 24/7. The downtime guarantee still holds.

The condo management system software will be built in Cebu. I still have to determine where the hardware will be built, but most probably it will be in the U.S.

So now you can send your chips to me locally here in the US: much lower cost, more reliable shipping, no import taxes to worry about.

Another thing to consider is "General Service" (industrial) power rates. Here in Utah, General service is WAAAY cheaper, if you are consuming more than 5Kw. If you're consuming 5kW, General Service only costs $261/mo, as opposed to $504 for 14¢/KwH residential. Nearly half the cost.

Personally, I'll only be drawing about 300 watts with my 120 chip system, so I can't benefit from the economy of scale, but if you were running a farm of more than 2000 chips (5kw minimum), you can offer people a lower power cost (higher return) by off-site hosting.

I made a quick spreadsheet that calculates general service costs based on number of chips in your operation. It's totally scaleable. Just punch in the number of chips in your system, current difficulty, and a given exchange rate, and it will calculate your power bill, your gross earnings, and net earnings (after power).

Anyway, if you'd like access to be able to play around with the numbers, send me a PM with your google address, and I'll give you editing privileges.

The only numbers that need to be changed are the ones in the white box. Everything else is calculated off of those 3 fields, based on Utah power rates. :)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aoe35iPRQzfodExmdE5DdHo2OWo4YVUtUHZpNEg5X0E#gid=0

Thanks for the suggestion about industrial power rates. Isn't this kind of usage taxed higher?

About the spreadsheet: that is cool! Thanks wrenchmonkey. I am sending you a PM.

Still another option is to locate in the deserts of Arizona for solar power, but that would require more upfront capital allocation.

I can probably do even better with electricity costs that I have  :) developed countries with low electricity costs and IT infrastructure is none other than Singapore and Malaysia.. in south east Asia .. no fighting or civil wars compares to other countries in south east Asia.. do a Google search you will know.. Thailand and Philippines fighting insurgency in the south, Burma .. ethnic issues .. countries with high Chinese population are usually stable..

Even the best pricing for solar in the best sun areas in the world still have a minimum 3-5 year ROI. In 3-5 years, these miners will most likely be obsolete.

Update:

I have now ordered the most important parts -

1. Avalon ASIC chips
2. Xilinx Spartan-6 (there may be a shortage of this, so I ordered several)
3. Xilinx Spartan-6 prototyping board
4. TP-LINK WR703N (lots of these in Amazon)

I have also gone ahead and hired a PCB layout technician at ODesk. Once the specs and reference design from Avalon become available (anyday now), we will be ready. Tomorrow I am visiting a PCB prototyping and manufacturing shop not too far from where I live.

Mabuhay, kamusta? The condo idea is pretty interesting. I'm very tempted to fly there from Australia in a month's time and help you set this up. Can we talk? ingats.

I'm really hoping that the Spartan board is not actually a necessary component. Hopefully Avalon just wanted to save time, and had a bunch of FPGAs to get rid of, and that is the only reason they went that route. It would really suck to have to install a Spartan FPGA on every unit...

At this point, only the Avalon folks know the answer to that. It is possible they chose a Spartan-6 to do the job of the Control Unit because they have tons of that part on hand. However, it is unlikely because the Lancelot needs a different kind of Spartan-6, one that has more cells than it has I/O pins. I therefore doubt that they chose the XC6SLX16 just because they have stock on hand.

More likely I think is that the hash units are given commands independent of one another, and rather than put a USB chip on each hash unit, they chose to have each chip have its own serial ports. 8 USB ports on each module (one for each hash unit) can be more expensive than serial ports on each of the chips plus a single Spartan-6 to control all the 4 modules in a system. So the Spartan-6 has at least 8 x 4 = 32 serial ports on it. The Control Unit configuration bitstream on the Spartan-6 then hands out work to each hash unit independently of one another. It would be very inefficient to hand out work to all hash units, and then wait for all of them to get done, all synchronously. I believe it is the Spartan-6's job to hand out work to each hash unit, keeping each one busy all the time. So I think the Spartan-6 is crucial in keeping the hash rate up.

PM me please.

While We are All Waiting For the Avalon Chip Specs ...

In the Avalon system, there are 10 chips in every hashing unit, 8 hashing units in a module, and up to 4 modules in a system.

I have more than 80% confidence that the chips are indeed connected to each other in a daisy chain manner. There are two serial ports on each chip. Why two? One serial port to connect to the chip before it, and the other serial port to connect to the one after it.

If the chips are connected in an Ethernet-like manner on the same wire, each chip will have to have its own address. I am sure the cost of fabbing ASIC chips with unique addresses would have been prohibitively expensive. So, no chip address. How then can the Control Unit access each chip, or, if the Control Unit sends work to all chips (in the same hash unit) in one shot, how can the work be subdivided among those 10 chips? In other words, how can each chip "know" which part of the work is assigned to it?

Daisy chaining allows each chip to be addressed uniquely, even though all chips are identical.

Now the daisy chain is only within one hashing unit. Outside of the hashing units, there is no daisy chain. Each hashing unit is connected to at least one serial port on the Control Unit. In a system with 4 modules (and 8 hashing units in a module), at least 32 serial ports are needed. Daisy chaining the whole system would be very inefficient. Now the 32 serial ports on the Control Unit are operating asynchronously. That's why the Spartan-6 XC6SLX16 is crucial in the system design.

I believe that any Avalon chip system design that does not use the Spartan-6 or any other similarly capable multi-serial port subsystem would not be able to keep all hashing units busy 100% of the time.

Hi,

here are the avalon specs:
https://github.com/BitSyncom/avalon-ref

regards

Wow, great! Thanks Foofighter.

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=rJB6ap9v

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The escrow address for flyonwall's Condo project is:

14LLaL23H7mkXBdkwvGghj51VmpdgNKwSd

Please state and agree to the conditions (if item is received damaged, item lost with tracking, customs fee etc) beforehand.

If possible, GPG sign your agreement to prevent any discrepancies later on and please ship with tracking to prevent problems during delivery. GPG signing is not a requirement, and any verbal exchange in the form of private messages or posts on bitcointalk.org, or email is effective as a statement of condition.

The fine print:
This Contract is solely generated for the purpose of facilitating the transaction between the seller and the buyer, which refers to the pseudonyms used on bitcointalk.org.
The escrow holder, John, assumes and gives no liability or guarantees on the satisfaction of all parties involved, although he agrees to mediate and facilitate the deal to the fullest extent he is capable of.  On the event that any problems arises, he will release the escrow to whichever party that presents him with the most convincing proof and/or after an open discussion with others or theymos. 
The verbal acceptance by both parties (or the failure to reject) and the sending of Bitcoins to the escrow address above constitutes the acceptance of the terms and conditions stated, and the activation of this Contract.

Please understand that I am assuming the risk of holding the escrowed Bitcoins, and I am using my own time to facilitate this transaction.   
I am imposing a fixed fee of 1.5% for this transaction, pre-paid or otherwise to 1NB1KFnFqnP3WSDZQrWV3pfmph5fWRyadz .

Thank you.

John (the escrow holder)
9 May 2013
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HI, would you mind pming me your phone number, going to arrange for a rep to talk to you and arrange a meeting. Thank you.

So now with the release of the schematics from Avalon, it's official: I have been right all along about the daisy chaining, and also the use of the Spartan-6. Any design that does not use a subsystem with multiple serial ports working asynchronously will not be efficient. We will be using the original Avalon design, but are not clear yet on the hashing unit power supply because of parts availability.

Well I am interested and while escrow through John K. is reassuring, I am sending my order directly in order to help get this off the ground.

FullFathom5, 16, 21.44, 18GQGk21L4RdMpZLdTvXZ7XrocE9ZwKqNw

Thank you very much.

I am not worried that more people are not coming forward at this time. There is still time to consider their options. I think that those in the community who bought chips, including those who are thinking of building their own systems, will see that this option makes compelling sense.

1. There is no definite physical location as yet. We are scouting for a location that has the lowest cost supply of reliable electricity and 24/7 security service. Right now it's looking like ASIC Hosting Service (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=186559.msg1932759#msg1932759) has the best option. This should lower electricity costs drastically. We are signing up with this ASIC Hosting Service.

2. Once a service agreement with the ASIC Hosting Service is ironed out, we will publish here the recurring costs. Some people I'm sure are waiting for this recurring cost to be nailed down.

3. The unit price of 1.34 is only good for the first five condo systems. Plus, if you buy later, your condo system will have to wait because the systems will be built and deployed in a first-come, first-served manner. You want to buy now to be ahead in Bitcoin mining: every hour that your rig is delayed and not mining is money wasted.

Doesn't seem like Bkkcoins is too worried about using any Spartan 6 in his design. Can you give more evidence to support your claim that it will be inefficient without it?

https://109.201.133.65/index.php?topic=190731.msg2103669#msg2103669 (https://109.201.133.65/index.php?topic=190731.msg2103669#msg2103669)

In other words, the burden of subdividing and assigning work among the PICs is done by the cgminer driver itself. On the Avalon system, this task is performed by dedicated hardware, the Spartan-6 FPGA. It amounts to the same thing, but the big difference is whether to do the Control Unit function in hardware or software (cgminer driver).

We will know when the communication specs become available on which implementation is better. I believe there is a reason why Avalon chose to implement the Control Unit function in hardware, aside from cost. In case the cost issue is not clear to you, consider this: if a PIC costs a dollar, and a Spartan-6 of the kind used in the Control Unit costs 24 dollars, with 32 hashing units in a system the price is 32 dollars versus 24.

In the recently available Avalon specs, it appears that the serial output pins REPORT_N and REPORT_P are used to "report" completion of each chip's task to the Control Unit. All REPORT_N pins are connected together, and all REPORT_P pins are also connected together to a pull-up resistor and are then directed to an output buffer on the way to the Control Unit. We can surmise that the protocol works as follows:

1. During the initialization phase, the chips establish their identities using the daisy-chained serial lines. Each chip has a "down-line" chip, the next chip in the chain. It also has an up-line. The Controller starts the initialization process by sending the first chip its identity, say 0. The first chip takes 0 as its identity, increments it, and sends 1 to its down-line. The second chip takes 1 as its identity, increments it, and sends 2 to its down-line, and so on. Now each chip has an identity. Other parameters are broadcast down the serial chain from the Controller, like how much of a work item each chip should assign to itself.

2. Now to start off the chips on a work item, all the Controller has to do is send one message, with a starting nonce embedded in the bytes of a block header. The message contains other parameters, like the total number of nonces to be worked on.

3. All chips get the same work item start message, but starts off at different nonces, according to its identity and the total length of nonces in the work item. The chips then start producing hashes, checking each hash to see whether it is less than the target.

4. The first chip that produces a target hash pulls the REPORT_N or REPORT_P line down, and sends the Controller the target hash. At this point, all other chips in the same hash unit can stop their work, because a target has been found. This point is important because it means that the work cycle time for each hash unit is NOT constant. It can vary wildly.

(The question you maybe asking is: why an independent serial input line for each hashing unit? Each hash unit's line establishes its identity to the Control Unit, for one. But I think a more important reason is to allow each hash unit to be working on completely different, even unrelated, work items. I have not looked yet into pool mining protocols closely to know the answer, but if in a pool mining environment the work items can be unrelated, then having each hashing unit be independent of one another is necessary.)

5. The Control Unit pulls the next work item from a queue, and starts over at Step 2 above, JUST FOR THIS HASHING UNIT.

In other words, the necessity for the Spartan-6 FPGA or something like it hinges on whether all hashing units are coordinated or non-coordinated. They should be coordinated if the work items coming from the mining pool are large enough to be subdivided efficiently among ALL hashing units, and should be non-coordinated if the work items are so small that the system does not gain efficiency by further subdividing the work items among the hashing units. Put it simply: coordinated means its simple and the FPGA is unnecessary, non-coordinated means its complex and the FPGA is crucial.

So you don't know.

Thanks.

Don't know for sure at this point, but chances are I am correct.  :D

Just to summarize, here are the differences between the Klondike design and the Avalon design:

1. In the Klondike design, the task of subdividing and assigning work items are implemented in the cgminer driver (software). In the Avalon design, this task is performed by dedicated hardware.

2. In the Klondike design, cgminer communication with the hashing units go through USB via the PIC. In the Avalon design, dedicated serial wires are used to accomplish that communication.

The decision in any on-board communication design boils down to having dedicated wires, or using unique addresses and having a bus-like structure (as in I2C). For me the USB is not a good choice because it uses both dedicated wires and unique addresses. It's appropriate for out-of-box connections, but maybe overkill for in-box connections. However, designing systems is more of an art than pure logic. What may look elegant for you may look ugly to me. In the end, what matters really is when the rubber meets the road, which design turns out to be faster. Or the differences maybe negligible and all this discussion is for naught.

If you bought a number of chips, what you need to consider are the risks you are willing to take with your chips. The Avalon design is a proven design.

Also, we test your chips as soon as these arrive at the fabricator. We will let you know if any of your chips are non-functional. These chips have been tested by TSMC before these were delivered to the buyer, so the chances of any chip being non-functional is slim. However, we want to make sure, because after we accept a chip as OK, it is then in our hands and we guarantee its functionality to you. If any of your chips breaks from the time we accept it, we will replace it. We have ordered our own chips partly for this purpose.

Does it make more legit if he uses escrow from John? that part is only fabrication of the pcb boards etc for the chip, but how about the long term aspects? You will eventually surrender the chips to him .. when mining start. Actually they want to host in the Philippines, but decides otherwise because of credibility and reliability issues and now shift to the US.

The decision to locate in the U.S. instead of Cebu has been mainly because of much lower electricity costs in the U.S. It has nothing to do with "credibility".

One thing we have not determined is the cost of maintenance, and how much that would affect recurring costs. Best case is that the cost will not be more than how much mining pools charge, and Centerus will have to eat the losses until "critical mass" occurs. Critical mass is defined as that point at which the number of client-owned units allow Centerus to be profitable, charging only percentage rates similar to mining pools. The only way this business model can work is by making the clients profitable themselves.

Also, by the time you have your chips shipped to Centerus, we will have proven that we have a manufacturing system that works. We have not chosen the PCB fabricator, but when we do and everything is ready, we will schedule PCB fabricator inspections.

A couple of announcements:

1. The chip condominium will be located in the state of Washington. Washington has one of the lowest electricity rates in the U.S. Summer season is not too hot and short, ideal for Bitcoin mining.

2. We have begun looking into EloiPool mining software. The Condo Management System will allow each owner to connect his unit(s) to any mining pool that is compatible with the protocols implemented in EloiPool, including an in-house one.

This is looking much more reasonable with the recent price drop, but I have to say that without a statement of management fees being set, I'd still have a difficult time investing. "Minimal" is not a number. [/$0.02]

Thanks, wrenchmonkey. Nothing definite yet on the management fee. Electricity will be lower than 7 cents per kWh, but as of now, nothing definite on management fee.

The Avalon SHA256 chip communications specs are out: https://github.com/BitSyncom/avalon-ref/blob/master/SPEC/A3256Q48-130507-V03-EN.pdf

I don't see any discrepancy between my description of the communication protocol, and the official description from Avalon. Except for the fact that the Avalon is much more detailed (at the bit-level), I think my description of it is a very good summary.

So now, on to Spartan-6 programming! We are using a Spartan-6 card that we ordered from alibaba.com to do our prototyping.

Recurring Expenses (including management fee)

1. Electricity - approx 3 cents per kWh (Douglas county, WA)
2. Internet access - shared with other owners
3. Space fee - 0.012 BTC per unit (10 chips) per month
4. Management fee - 5% of your earning (no bigger than what you would pay a mining pool)

Among all the countries of the world, I don't think there's any country that can beat 3 cents per kWh. (Maybe there's a place in Australia that is cheaper, let me know.) If you find this price hard to believe, here is the link to the Douglas county PUD (http://www.douglaspud.org).

If we simply put the power consumption of each condo unit at 6.6W * 2.82 GH/s, then in one hour it consumes 18.612 Watt hours, which is 446.69 Watt hours in a day, which is 13.4 kWh in a month. Therefore, at 3 cents per kWh, your electricity cost per month comes to less than one U.S. dollar a month (40 cents)! If you own a whole box (32 units), your electricity cost per month is only about $12.86 per month. The Condo Management System will convert this into BTC and charge it prorated from every distribution, along with the Internet access and space fees. The management fee of 5% will then be calculated and charged also. The management fee is not a fixed amount, which is good for you because then it would be in Centerus' interest to optimize your earnings on a daily basis. If you don't earn, we don't earn also.

EDIT:
The average electricity cost in the U.S. is about 15 cents per kWh, so compared to Anytown, USA, your cost in Douglas county is only one-fifth of the average. In other words, in most other places, you are looking at electricity expenses of at least $64.30 per box per month. So even for those who are already running their own Avalon boxes, it may make sense to entrust your box to us. Initially our operation will not be anywhere like a data center operation, but we will improve.

Now remember, if we become big enough, we can be our own mining pool, and you don't have to pay another fee for a separate mining pool. I realize there are mining pools that don't charge any fees, and its up to you to join those. The Condo Management System will allow you to join any compatible mining pool. You are in control of your units.

Philippines = Among most expensive electricity in the entire world.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/10/10/11/ph-power-rates-5th-highest-world

Yes, that's why we decided against locating in the Philippines. Also, your link is 2 years old. The rate in Cebu City is now about 30 cents per kWh.

Most likely we will run out of time trying to craft an enhanced Control Unit. The USB connection to the Spartan-6 can be enhanced by replacing both the uPD720114 and the FT232 UART with a single CY7C68013A which serializes/deserializes to 16-bits. However, if there is no serious problem with the way it is now, and Avalon releases the Spartan-6 bitstream before we can complete ours, we will just use the original Avalon design.

This means we also don't have to do any Spartan-6 programming. We will just use the Avalon FPGA bitstream, as is.

It all depends on when Avalon will release the Spartan-6 bitstream ...

Looks like the Spartan-6 bitstream is out: https://github.com/BitSyncom/avalon-ref/tree/master/FPGA

Thank you, Avalon.

The condo-price is the opposite of quantity discount? :)

Anyway... how should i understand this price. Is it 1.34BTC for 1-5 condos per customer or the earlies customers get this price only? So the normal cost is 2.54BTC? I guess the cheap condos are gone already then.

I will review what I wrote and make it clearer:

There are five Condo Systems on sale now at 1.34BTC per Condo Unit.
Each Condo System has 32 Units, so there's a total of 160 on sale.
Out of those 160 units, 64 have already been sold.
Therefore, there are still 96 left to buy at the discounted price.

Ok, i changed it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192860.msg1998569#msg1998569

Thank you SebastianJu.

Also, the Condos will not be located in Cebu City anymore. Electricity is too expensive there. The Condos will be located in Douglas County, Washington, USA. Electricity rates in this place are among the lowest cost in the world.

I noted it...

I don't follow your math on power consumption. Each chip consumes an estimated 2.5w, and this is not relative to hashing power, so I'm not sure what you're dividing, exactly.

a 10-chip unit of 2.5watts per chips is 25 watts per unit, meaning .6kwh per day, or 18 KwH per MONTH (not per day), or about $0.54/month. Multiplied by 32 would be $17.28/month.

Your management fees seem quite reasonable, assuming you're certain they will stay.

What happens if the venture fails, for whatever reason? Do we get our chips back? Do we get the boards as well (since we paid for them), etc, etc.

Would you be interested in housing/managing other hardware in your datacenter, for similar fees?

Thanks for correcting my arithmetic. Yes, Avalon has released new specs for the chip, and it does come out to 2.5W consumption (2.4W to be more precise).

As for your questions, thanks for asking. Here are the answers:

I have high confidence that the management fees will stay. This is slowly gaining interest, and if we reach a critical mass, the management fees can only benefit from economies of scale.

If the venture fails, then you will get your units back. However, you will have to pay for shipping and handling costs. If you own less than 8 units (a module with its own heat sink), it is understood that what you will get back are just the hashing units (condo units). If you own less than 4 modules, it is understood that what you will get back are just the modules. This is a worst-case scenario and I'm not aiming for it.

Yes, for similar fees, I am willing to host other hardware. However, I won't call it a "data center" operation at this point. A data center implies a host of other things that this setup will lack. All I can promise at this point is that the machines will be in a facility that is manned 24/7 (the person is watching other things, not just our mining rigs). There will be a local computer company servicing the machines. A service technician will be cleaning and maintaining the machines once every four months, and this local company will be on call so that if a condo unit breaks, a technician will come and shut down the one system involved, and replace the broken hashing unit. A number of web-cams will be installed, allowing the whole setup to be viewable from anywhere in the world.

I'm really interested. When you say it's "missing a host of things", are we talking power backups, (battery and generator)? Power outages in my area of the U.S. are rather uncommon, but still common enough to suggest a UPS battery backup at minimum. I don't know about Washington power, but I do know that on the West Coast, California has very common rolling blackouts/brownouts in summer.

I'm REALLY leaning toward the Klondike project at this point, as far as getting the chips hashing, but I'm prepared to put it all in a rackmount unit, and send it out, if the numbers make sense in terms of cost savings (which, so far, they appear to), provided there's quality power backup and surge protection available. Keep us posted.  :)

There will be UPS, but the facility does not have its own backup generator. If the blackout is more than thirty minutes, then we're all out of luck.

EDIt:
This is straight from the Douglas PUD website:

INTERRUPTION OF SERVICE:

Your District will use reasonable diligence to provide an adequate and uninterrupted supply of electrical energy at normal voltage and communication services at maximum speeds.  However, if the supply shall be interrupted without notice for any cause, such failure shall not constitute a breach of the District’s agreement for service.

Your District shall have the right to temporarily suspend electric and communication services for the purpose of making repairs or improvements to the system, but in such cases, when practicable, public notice shall be given and every effort will be made to make such interruptions as short as possible.

The District shall not be liable for any consequential damages resulting from the interruption, restorations, or reduction of electric and communication services from any cause, including but not limited to failure of generation and distribution system, inadequacy of energy supply, implementation of emergency plans or temporary disconnections for repairs and maintenance or failure to pay for service rendered.  During an emergency declared by appropriate civil authority, it is possible that the District may be required to curtail or disconnect electric and communication services.

Evan, 2, 2.68, 1PtHcavXoakgNkQfEQdvnvEksEY2NvwaLM

Welcome to the Beach Side condo, Evan!

Yes even 30 cents is very expensive and the unrest in the south Philippines...

The PCB assembly house we have contracted with in California has all the following certifications. Their failure rate is among the industry's lowest. Your chips will be in very good hands.

Nadcap Accredited
Nadcap is the leading worldwide cooperative program of major companies designed to manage a cost-effective consensus approach to special processes & products (such as electronic manufacturing and others) and provide continual improvement within the aerospace industry.

AS 9100 Certified
The aerospace industry's quality system standard, this PCB assembly house became AS9100 registered in 2005. AS9100 fully incorporates the entirety of the current version of ISO 9000, while adding additional requirements relating to quality and safety. All major aerospace manufacturers and suppliers worldwide require compliance and/or registration to AS9100 as a condition of doing business with them.

ISO-9000 Certified
Industry Standard that defines fundamentals relating to quality systems. this PCB assembly house achieved ISO-9000 certification for manufacturing in June of 1997. Since quality is our utmost concern, members of our Audit Team attended 16 hours of training with QAI and were certified as Internal Quality Auditors. In addition, we are audited by NSF (an independent auditor) every six months to ensure ongoing compliance.

ISO 13485 Certified
This PCB assembly house became ISO 13485 registered in 2008. ISO 13485 is an ISO standard, published in 2003, that represents the requirements for a comprehensive management system for the design and manufacture of medical devices.

J-STD-001 Certified
Joint Industry Standard that provides a blue print or how-to-guide for electronic manufacturing. this PCB assembly house became J-STD-001 certified in December of 2002. Our Hand Soldering Team is led by an IPC-ANSI-J-STD-001 Certified Trainer in the Requirements for Soldered Electrical and Electronic Assemblies.

J-STD-001ES Certified
J-STD-001ES (an addendum to J-STD-001E) provides requirements to ensure the reliability of soldered electronic assemblies that must survive the vibration and thermal cycle environments getting to and operating in space.

NASA Certified Solderers
Since 2008, this PCB assembly house has provided NASA 8739.3 certified solderers and NASA 8739.2 SMT certified operators for your Flight electronics; we also have NASA 8739.1 certification for conformal coating and NASA 8739.4 certification for cable harnesses. This PCB assembly house has participated in projects with JPL, NASA and DARPA as well as the Canadian Space Agency.

ITAR registered
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a set of United States government regulations that control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List (USML).[1] These regulations implement the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), and are described in Title 22 (Foreign Relations), Chapter I (Department of State), Subchapter M of the Code of Federal Regulations. The Department of State interprets and enforces ITAR. Its goal is to safeguard U.S. national security and further U.S. foreign policy objectives.

Status:
PCB for Hashing Unit about to be completed and will be sent to assembler next week.
PCB for Control Unit is now in the hands of PCB fab for prototype.
JTAG programmer and Xilinx software will be ready for programming the Flash PROM on the Control Unit.
Simple test jig for Avalon chips still being built.
By June we will just be waiting for the sample chips.

Here's where we are with respect to the rough list of milestones I posted on April 29th:

Rough Plan Milestones:

April 28th -- Avalon chips ordered (Group Buy #1, eafir)  DONE

May 10th -- reference design from Avalon becomes available  YES, on May 13th

(NOTE: First PCB should use sockets for surface-mount Avalon chips, order 1 pair for each part for prototype.)

May 17th -- board circuit design done, parts ordered, PCB layout technician starts work through ODesk.com  DONE

May 24th -- Gerber files sent to prototype shop for inspection, condo management software design completed  DONE

June 7th -- parts ordered arrive, condo management software coding starts

--> about SIX weeks of software agile development <--

June 30th -- expected delivery of Avalon chips

July 12th -- ALL condo owners must send their chips in by this date, all parts received at prototype shop

July 19th -- first prototype received from prototype shop, tested with condo management software alpha

July 22nd -- reworked design sent to prototype shop

July 30th -- second prototype received, tested with condo management software beta

I have inquired with the Douglas County PUD, and the response has been very positive: this kind of business is welcome in Douglas County.

The female 20-pin header on the hashing unit is unusual. My PCB designer says normally that should be a male connector. We were aiming for 100% compatibility with Avalon, so we looked for a female connector with the same dimensions. Turned out that female connector from 3M costs $4 a piece, even in quantity. Ouch. The price has nothing to do with quality, but more to do with its rarity.

In the end, after much discussion, we decided to throw away the idea of 100% compatibility: selling Avalon replacement parts may not be a big enough market after all. We made the decision to use a simple card edge connector instead. So Avalon compatibility of the cards we will be manufacturing will be at the electrical and software levels only.

Card edge connectors are so far the best solution in terms of price and reliability, as proven extensively in the desktop PC. Why choose some other solution?

You've never been there, obviously. I spent most of my 47 years alive there, having grown up there. It's semi-arid, temps usually hitting 100+ for long stretches during the summer. The rates on electricity are accurate however.

Why Douglas County instead of Chelan County? Who do you have there taking care of things for you? Names, please.

Answer for darksoft:

I plan to move there myself before the end of June. I have looked at a couple of possibilities in Wenatchee, but nothing final as yet. Here is most recent communication I have had with Douglas County PUD:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for your response Mr. Bill Dobbins. Now I know that we are indeed welcome.

At this point we are a very small startup, and the number of machines we are contemplating on putting on your grid is such that the power consumption will be well below 2500kVA. These machines consume more kWh than normal because these are constantly powered at full capacity 24/7. However, the average power consumption per machine is only 800 Watts. At this time, we are not planning on installing more than a hundred.

If business is good, then the number of machines installed will increase, and we will have to build a full data center.

There is one other similar startup I know who will be locating in Douglas County. Like I said in my initial email, I believe there will be more, and if things look good, the number of similar businesses will only increase.

--Carlos


From: Bill Dobbins [mailto:billd@dcpud.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 2:34 PM
To: ctapang@centerus.com
Cc: Jerry Kyle; Meaghan Vibbert
Subject: Your message submitted through the Douglas County PUD website

Good morning Mr. Tapang,
I am responding to the following message from you:

My company Centerus Inc (Washington state UBI #602-885-621) is planning to locate a business in Douglas county. The main reason for selecting Douglas county for this business is that you have among the lowest electricity rates in all of the U.S.A.

What is this business? It is an Internet business, specifically Internet currency business. We will be installing specialized computer systems in a rented space. The currency we will be "mining" is called Bitcoins, which is today all over the Internet (please google it if you are interested in the subject).

There will be more businesses like us that will locate in your county in the coming months. This "gold rush" will start in July.

My question is, will you welcome us? How much electricity rate are we looking at? Is it really less than 3 cents per kWh?

Thank you.

Carlos C Tapang
President
Centerus Inc.

To address your questions in the final paragraph:
1. Douglas PUD is here to serve the electricity needs of residents and businesses in Douglas County.  Our electric prices are as stated on our website.  They are subject to adjustment from time to time as needed to prudently fund our operation.
2. Large customers need to negotiate a contract for service with us rather than just planning to receive service according to the rate schedules.
3. If you are planning to locate in an existing building and also planning to install a large volume of electronic equipment, it is possible that the electric system serving that location may need to be upgraded.

The best course of action may be for you to start by completing a customer service request through our engineering department.  One way to start is to call our office 509-884-7191 and ask for Distribution Engineering.  Alternatively, you may ask for me and I will make sure you are talking to the correct people here.

Thank you for your interest in Douglas County.
Bill Dobbins
General Manager

Here's how a condo unit looks like:

http://imgur.com/AEaeOwr.png

We kept the original Avalon layout, leaving space and pads for the original 20-pin female header. This is in case current Avalon system users want these cards too. The card edge connector can be sawed off, and the original 20-pin header soldered onto the space provided for it.

Edit:
Sorry, current Avalon system owners, you will have to pay a premium for us to solder the original 20-pin header and carefully saw off the card edge connector. We will test before shipping to you, of course. We are setting the price for one hashing unit (what we call the "condo unit" here) at BTC 5.99. This is with Avalon ASIC chips loaded (how can we test it without the chips loaded). This price can go up or come down, depending on our present value versus future earnings calculations.

What is present value / future earnings? You ask.

Put simply, the price of any mining product is based on how much it can earn in the future. This makes a lot of sense because, if we can use that mining product ourselves to mine Bitcoins, why sell it? So to help us in our decision, we attempt to come up with a "present value": a value that would entice us to sell, and still be attractive for you to buy when you calculate future potential earnings.

While waiting for the Avalon sample chips, I am putting together a test jig for incoming condo chips ...

I've got the Condo Management System designed in my mind, just need to write it down, and then hire developers from ODesk or eLance to build it. Why not open source it? We might decide to open source it later. Right now getting it done on time is important.

Added FAQ in the OP message:

Question: Can I buy Avalon chips from you, to put in the Condo?
Answer: At this point we only cater to those who have already participated in a number of group buys in this forum. I suggest you start your own group buy for this Condo project. I cannot start one myself because I would rather keep my focus on this project.

Edit:
Rather than say absolutely no, the answer should be, yes, at the right price. I have had several requests for this, so I will set a price for those chips shortly. I regret having set a price lower than market for a couple of people, but they decided to back this project early, so they deserve the deal they got.

Further Edit:
The price of each chip in that April 30th order is now 0.29 BTC.

NASA-certified PCB assembly house in California all set to start building the prototypes. They will receive all the little components by next week, which is also (hopefully) about the time we will receive some Avalon sample chips.

Watch the kind of machine that picks and places your chips onto your condo unit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKJ34ATlvK4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKJ34ATlvK4)

Avalon has published all necessary details of V1.5 of the Control Unit (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Avalon#FPGA_controller). This is a better version than those who bought the first batch of Avalon systems. This is normal in the computer industry: those who buy the first version enjoy new technology first, but then they also get early-version bugs. Those who are in the second batch are not so lucky either, because the USB hub on the Control Unit is prone to over-heating. The fix is to remove the fuse that powers the USB type A connector. This connector is not used anyway.

In our clone, we have removed the USB type A fuse altogether, and to save some dollars per Control Unit, we have removed all parts pertaining to the type A connector. (Why have it there when it can't be used?)

So, people who bought the first two batches, I have a replacement for your Control Unit. It's going to cost you, though. PM me if you are interested, and maybe help me set a fair price.

looks like response still not there

Welcome to the Beach Side condo, frontbit!

Frontbit bought his condo along with 10 chips from the Aprtil 30th order. I gave those chips to him at 0.19 BTC per chip. The price of those chips has just increased to 0.29 BTC per chip.

Welcome to the Beach Side condo, BitcoinLady!

Hi flyonwall,

I would like to ask for your opinion on BFL offer we got today at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=223571 .

They are willing to sell us (as GroupBuy) advanced 65 nm chips (4 GH/s per piece) on 100% escrow (John K.), on-time-or-deal-is-off policy.

Is developing and producing mining boards capable of running those chips more challenging than for Avalon's 110 nm ones? Would you be interested? (Avalon boards are surely to stay the top priority.)

Since, I'm refining the deal right now, I can use any suggestions about documentation, sample chips etc. I should require for you/other developers as part of the deal.

Thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVx26LlNXA <--- Yifu Guo of Avalon skeptical of Butterfly Labs

Hi Kernel32,
I have a Jalapeno order in place with BFL since February (Order #100016514). I will not invest any time and effort on their chip until they deliver my order. Also, once they deliver my Jalapeno, I will look inside and give you my opinion.

Edit:
They can't just jump to my order either, forgetting the rest of the people ahead of me. I will accept my Jalapeno if they decide to deliver it ahead of the others, but I will still not spend any time and effort on their chip if they simply jump through to my order. The reason is that, by this time, if they do really have chips in production, they should be delivering systems at a fast clip. They are not, so giving me a favor at the expense of others would tell me that the whole thing is suspect. I just can't believe that they are selling chips now so other outfits like me can deliver the systems, instead of having people wait for them. If this were true, would they be willing to fund me to build systems for their current customers? If they need help delivering the systems for their current customers, I can help; but they (BFL) would have to pay me first in order for me to do it.

It looks like we are the first to get a Control Unit working. This is an important step in building an Avalon system clone. Is there anybody else out there who are ahead of us?

Here's a console printout from Xilinx's iMPACT FPGA programmer, as it loaded Xiangfu's test program onto the Spartan-6. (I will post a video of the prototype Control Unit later.)

INFO:iMPACT - Current time: 6/8/2013 8:53:22 AM
// *** BATCH CMD : Program -p 1
PROGRESS_START - Starting Operation.
Maximum TCK operating frequency for this device chain: 25000000.
Validating chain...
Boundary-scan chain validated successfully.
'1': Programming device...
 LCK_cycle = NoWait.
LCK cycle: NoWait
done.
'1': Reading status register contents...

• CRC ERROR                                                              :         0
[1] IDCODE ERROR                                                           :         0
[2] DCM LOCK STATUS                                                        :         1
[3] GTS_CFG_B STATUS                                                       :         1
[4] GWE STATUS                                                             :         1
[5] GHIGH STATUS                                                           :         1
[6] DECRYPTION ERROR                                                       :         0
[7] DECRYPTOR ENABLE                                                       :         0
[8] HSWAPEN PIN                                                            :         1
[9] MODE PIN M[0]                                                          :         1
[10] MODE PIN M[1]                                                         :         1
[11] RESERVED                                                              :         0
[12] INIT_B PIN                                                            :         1
[13] DONE PIN                                                              :         1
[14] SUSPEND STATUS                                                        :         0
[15] FALLBACK STATUS                                                       :         0
INFO:iMPACT:2219 - Status register values:
INFO:iMPACT - 0011 1100 1110 1100
INFO:iMPACT:579 - '1': Completed downloading bit file to device.
INFO:iMPACT:188 - '1': Programming completed successfully.
 LCK_cycle = NoWait.
LCK cycle: NoWait
INFO:iMPACT - '1': Checking done pin....done.
'1': Programmed successfully.
PROGRESS_END - End Operation.
Elapsed time =      1 sec.

Cross-post in all threads of projects that are registered for Avalon sample chips from my order.

Delivery of sample chips seems to have started.

If you have chips ordered with me that you want to support this project with, do it now.

If you are the owner of this project, please provide me your shipping address.


Find the details here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.msg2419155#msg2419155).

Been too busy working on the Control Unit and Condo Management System, I haven't had time to update. For now I am just posting here a video about the state of the Control Unit. So far I am able to write the bitstream onto the Flash PROM, and the Spartan-6 is loading the bitstream during startup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlBKJWVvenQ

USB on Control Unit works! But there are other remaining problems. Getting there ...

Great work! Thanks for sharing the video.
Have you been able to look at the configuration signals with your logic analyzer?

+1

really great work here!

I would also jump on your boat because it looks really promising but unfortunatly I have no chips left from group buys (I send a few to burnin and the other to K16 manufacturer).

Keep up your work!

regards
Foofighter

No, I still don't know what the P2 header is for. Any ideas? I am posting a question on the Avalon support thread.

frontbit, 1, 3.24, 1BxPLhWDcaEu7JGa9vHykYs15VEEqjWhyh
(includes 10 chips from Carlos’ April 30 order from Zefir)

I just went through the schematic and could not find any thing connected.
Maybe its for debugging the internals of the FPGA it looks like a differential clock ,reset and something else.

No, P2 is not being used at all. Avalon has just updated their pictures: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156323.msg2488633#msg2488633
Now it's showing Version 1.5 of the card.

I have great news! The Control Unit works now. If I load the bitstream directly to the Spartan chip using JTAG, it works; however, when it's loaded from the Flash chip, it doesn't run. One of my collaborators has suggested that may be it's because, as indicated in the reference documents, some parts of the bitstream are licensed cores and cannot be made part of the bitstream. So the file that gets copied to the Flash chip is missing those licensed cores, but programming the Spartan chip directly allows the iMPACT programmer to load the licensed cores from its library. If this is the case, no problem. We will buy the license to those cores. This kind of thing is already included in my calculations for the price of each condo unit.

I will be silent (no news) for about a week. I am moving to Washington state, and am waiting for the next prototype run.

We've got a working system with a single, fully-populated hash unit (1 condo unit)!

Big, big thanks to SebastianJu for sending me a total of 11 chips.
Huge thanks to my collaborators in Ohio. They will be making an announcement soon.

I will take a video of my setup later, and show it on this thread.

Thanks for your great work! looking forward to see the video

Congratulations!

Thank you.

Here's the video from Krater Mining in Ohio, my collaborators. They are still setting up their website, and will be selling hardware WITHOUT prepay. Their target client is not necessarily those who bought chips. When you place an order and they accept it, they will deliver right away. We work together so if you order and let them know you want hosting, we can host your unit in the condo place I am preparing in Washington state.

http://vimeo.com/69838329

Edit: Note that in this demo the Krater Mining team has two hash units running!

Edit: More precise wording than "without prepay" is that Krater Mining will be accepting orders as soon as their website is up, and the systems will be built as soon as they get their 10,000 chip order from Bitsyncom (Avalon). For any questions, please PM Mike4747. They will also be opening a thread in this forum soon.

n1 video, thank you very much!

We actually have two working prototype systems, one in Ohio and another here in Washington. This video has poor quality, but in it I try to show both the CONFIG_P and REPORT_P signals from the chips. This system in Washington has only one hash unit connected to the control unit.

http://youtu.be/L0Hfh9OTmV4


Edit: The are four probes, but on the screen it's showing only the CONFIG_P and REPORT_P signals.

More edit: The information provided here should help those who are designing their own boards.

Thanks for sharing this video.

In your example capture you got a result after about .65 seconds but I don't think that the Avalon chips had finished testing the entire nonce range.
Just because you got a report doesn't mean that the ASIC is done it would be possible to get more reports so it finishes going through the nonce range.
It the miner goes through all the nonce range and doesn't get a report new work is loaded into the ASIC chips.
For 10 chips timing seems about right.
At least that's how I think is works but I could be wrong.

You are right. The ten chips divide the work item among themselves. If the range given in the work item happens to not include the target, then none of the chips would pull the report line down, and the Spartan times out. The timeout seems to be about 1.6 secs in this particular case. If any of the chips find a good result, then it pulls the report line down, and hands the good result to the Spartan chip. All the other chips then "lose" and their work basically discarded. This means that the report line can be pulled down anytime after the work item is distributed among the Avalon chips: there is no fixed time by which the Spartan chip can expect this signal to come, but it can set a maximum wait time.

Am I reading this correctly that you are waiting for one valid result and then discard all other future potential valid results for that unit of work ?!
You do know that there can be more than one valid result for a given unit of work ?

Have a look here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2680342#msg2680342

Ah, you're testing the limits of my knowledge about mining. I have misunderstood the Bitcoin mining specs. I've always thought that once a good result is found, hashing can stop. I am wrong, so the prototype Avalon clone is working as it should: there is a constant period between work unit messages coming from the Spartan chip. This period must be the max wait time period for all Avalon chips to get done. In a lot of cases, there may be only one good result, and so only one chip gets to pull the report line down. However, since the work unit handoff period is constant, there may be a long gap from the time the one good result is reported to the time that the next work unit is handed to the chips. If none of the chips came up with a good result, then the report line is not pulled down for that work unit. This story is more in line with what the logic analyzer shows in the video.

So any infos when the website of krater mining will be up?

Should be up soon, may be in a day or two. They will announce it in a new thread, and I will link to it also from here.

Here's the Krater Mining anouncement: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=253550.0

Please note that Krater Miner is among the first to order 10,000 chips, and Avalon has just recently announced that the first batch of chips will be delivered only about a week from now. The Avalon Batch #3 systems are going to be delivered at around the same time.

Hello flyonwall, nice project you got going. I have tried to email you regarding details and seems am getting permanent fail

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

     kraterminer@gmail.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain gmail.com by gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

The error that the other server returned was:
550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try
550-5.1.1 double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or
550-5.1.1 unnecessary spaces. Learn more at
550 5.1.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6596 eq6si1857101wic.64 - gsmtp

Hello crazyearner,
Let me notify Krater Miner about that problem. If you want to email me (flyonwall), please send to carlostapang@gmail.com instead.

Crazy earner, the email is kratermining@gmail.com not kraterminer. Thanks for your interest.

John

Then you need to correct the details on the thread then on page 1 of your post.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=253550.0


and went to site and now sent and in contact thx :)

hephaist0s, 3 units, 4.02 BTC, 1DM8pdm1KbTfAcChuoawkEEbwEqGVzmqQ4

Thank you, hephaist0s. Did you send the amount to JohnK or me?

From now on, for new orders, please indicate who you sent the amount to:

nickname, units, amount, Bitcoin address, JohnK     <-- if paid through JohnK, or
nickname, units, amount, Bitcoin address, direct      <-- if you paid Centerus directly

I paid to your address, 1CrZdyEoDTokwLHGR1izmzEZ5gxDSE9chK; tx: 10315bfc8508dfb8a681c3670710a9598e63f8ae476cc4bd977c83f0ac73e15e
Glad to be aboard!

Welcome to the Beach Side Condo, hephaist0s!

Waiting for Avalon chips ...

Price reduced.

Place your order here now. (http://centerus.com/products-page/condo/condo-unit/)