Bitcoin Forum

Hi,
I new in this forum but I wanted to show you another possible custom ASIC miner board. I think the more custom boards are available the better it is.
So, I designed a small bitcoin mining board using a single Avalon ASIC. The board size is about 60mm x 50mm and is fully powered by USB. A small microcontroller is on board to control the ASIC and to make the USB communication. The firmware of the microcontroller can be flashed directly over USB. So, no additional programming cables or such stuff is necessary.

http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w480/Andreas_Auer/ASIC%20miner/single_asic_miner.png

I haven't done a prototype right now, because I don't have an Avalon A3256 chip on hand. So, if somebody has Avalon ASICs and want to sell some of them, I would like to buy some samples to make a prototype. If you like, I will also share the schematics of the board.

Cheers,
Andreas

looks nice so far, but i cannot judge the tecnical aspects of it.

great work

Great work.

@OP

i would suggest to talk to the Group buy organizers maybe someone has a chip left for you!

regards

Thanks, we need more people as you.

Btw, does anybody know if a single Avalon ASIC needs a heatsink?

Most likely, but wouldnt need a big one... especially since the PCB is much larger than usb eruptor or K1 so you already have a large surface area. Make sure to add thermal vias and large GND plate in the bottom side. After that if it runs hot just stick in a light heatsink. Its just 2 - 2.5W of heat.

Has anybody still received any actual chip from the few ASIC bitcoin companies out there? I heard a lot of noise about the pre-sales and ... But,  I haven't heard anybody actually getting the ASIC in-hand. Do you guys have any further news on that?

Interesting question! I heard alot, too. I have also got an offer from a Chinese company. They told me that they are able to ship 10 samples at July 15. But only if I order 240 pieces. And that is too much for me alone. Is anyone interested in that?

i am in if the price is good

Price is 19.50 USD per piece. Shipping cost and taxes are not included. So, I think the price will be around 20 EUR/piece (or about 25 USD/piece).

i am in for 10 or maybe 20 pieces

can you make board for bfl labs chip?

It's nice to see more boards, but you should consider putting more avalons on there for economy.

I can send you one or two sample chips for free from my groupbuy. Let me know your address and whats the maximum you need and ill ship it.

If there is a datasheet, I will be able to build a board for bfl labs chips. Is there a datasheet and are these chips available?

Sure, but for the beginning I want to keep it simple. And I think it is very nice when the board is powered only by USB.

Two sample chips would be great to make a working prototype. Do you have them already in-hand?

A number of people have sample chips and should be able to spare one or two just to encourage another developer.

The heatsink question depends on the chip clock. For testing purposes at low clocks you can get away with no heatsink, but the finished product would definitely need one to run at a reasonable speed. What's the target performance of the device? How far you can clock it would have a very big impact on profitability and size of market. (obviously, as long as you also deal with the power and cooling issues that come with it)

And on the issue of multiple chips per device, I'm pretty sure the power consumption would exceed the USB spec even with 2 chips and you would need an alternative power source.

Good  :)

You are absolutely right. USB spec defines 500mA as maximum supply current (means 2.5W). I think most of the USB hubs are able to supply a bit more current. But two Avalon chips would require 4 to 5W and this would mean 800mA to 1A of supply current at 5V. And this is for sure too much for USB (at least if you want to run it stable).
This was another reason for just using one Avalon chip (for the beginning). To keep it simple and stupid (KISS), I don't wanted an external power supply, just USB. And this limits the number of Avalon chips to a single one.

I personally think it's a bit big for just one chip but still nice, good thing that ppl are still working on ideas :)

USB 3.0 outputs some more watt, enough to run 2 chips?

It would be possible to make the board a bit smaller. As you can see on the 3D image, the mounting holes are adding some space mainly at the top and right border. If I remove the holes, the board would be smaller. But I like the holes because I can use them to stack multiple boards. And the spacing between the holes on the longer side (60mm side) matches the the spacing of 60mm fans. So, it would be possible to use the holes to mount a 60mm fan (e.g. with an angle bracket -  I don't know if this is the right English word).

USB 3.0 specifies 800mA of output current (= 4W). I think it should be possible to power 2 chips.

You could run 2x USB cables like some external 2.5" sata hdds, so you can run 2 chips.

It'd give you a unique device with double the power of the other usb devices, without the need for a power supply.

Yes, you are right. I will think about that! Maybe I change the board to have a better power supply on it and two avalon chips.

can these smaller boards be run via pcie, with multiple chips on them?

Got some news:
SebastianJu sends two samples of Avalon chips to me. Thanks again SebastianJu.

So, I ordered some PCBs yesterday. I hope they will arrive soon!
I also modified the PCB layout a bit to save some board space and make the outlines of the board smaller. Right now, the board is 60mm x 45mm in size.

I'm very interested. Also, I swear that the raspberry pi is 5w and that runs off usb without any issue. I might be wrong.

I applaud you for your work and a reference design is always a great thing. I would if I were you however strongly consider a 1-4 chip design for the BFL 65nm chip if you are looking to make actual mining equipment.

This would of course require an external power source (PCIE?) but could produce a small and cheap 4-20gh/s miner that could prove far more viable for mining. Contact Canaryinthemine if you are serious as he already has BFL chips on order and will likely be some of the first to receive sample chips.

FYI: I would assume you need more advanced reflow to mount the more compact BFL chips though.

Yes you are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#Specifications

I think thats the max power it can draw, probably accounting for USB devices drawing ~100ma per port.

Oh ok. I wasn't 100% sure thanks for the info.

Thank you very much.
Seems that BFL chips are far more interesting for many people than the Avalon chips. I already took a look at the datasheet of the BFL ASICs. And you are absolutely right. The power supply must be far stronger for the BFL chip. And also the soldering of the chip isn't so easy because of the BGA package.
But I already have a small reflow oven (already did some BGA assembly for my FPGA miners). So, I think it should be possible to assemble the BFL chip with my reflow equipment.

I should really think about making a BFL miner  :)

If you solidify some plans for a 1, 2, 4 or more chip BFL chip miner I am willing to help finance prototype and can also facilitate chips for you. I have done business with Canaryinthemine for quite some time and I am sure we both would be interested in joining with you in creating miners using the 65nm chip. Feel free to PM me if/when you get started.

+1

Once BFL start shipping the chips, everybody and their mothers will want BFL miners not Avalons because of BFL's higher density and lower power consumption.  IMHO.

I would not bother with Avalons. 

The only question remains: Will BFL actually deliver?

What company is that?

Right now, I'm waiting for my PCBs for the Avalon miner. In the meantime, I thought I can try to make a board for BFL ASICs, too. So, I sat down and played around with my CAD software. And just a few minutes ago, I got the board routed. Have a look at the picture. Unfortunately, it's only a 2D image exported from the layout program. But I think you get an idea of what the board could look like.
On the left side, there is the power connector at the top (6-pin PCIe power connector) and the Mini USB connector at the bottom. The upper part of the PCB is mainly used for the power supply which should be able to deliver at least 10A at 1V. And the main space below the power supply is used by the BFL ASIC (mainly because of the heatsink). The heatsink I suggested to use is similar to the one on the ZTEX FPGA boards with 59mm hole distance. I think this kind of heatsinks are often used for chipset cooling.

The power supply and the decoupling capacitors around the BFL ASIC are the most critical parts. I think my design will work, but I'm not 100 percent sure. The BFL datasheet only states that 4.7uF capacitors should be used for decoupling. But they doesn't provide details about how many capacitors should be used and where they should be placed.
I already designed some boards with a strong power supply (e.g. for LED displays). But I haven't made a power supply with 10A output current. So, this is the first time for me ;).

http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w480/Andreas_Auer/ASIC%20miner/bfl_miner.png

Back to the Avalon Single ASIC miner project. I read the datasheet and the communication protocol. And I have a question about the REPORT pins. Maybe, someone can help me with this.

Decoding the bits isn't the problem. But I have some concerns about the speed. The datasheet says that the duration for one bit is at least 250ns. Does anybody know if the speed of the report interface is always the same and always at the maximum speed of about 4 MHz? Or depends the speed on the clock settings? Maybe it is the clock frequency divided by R?! Would be nice if anybody has some infos about that!

Thanks,
Andreas

Check out the latest posts in BKK's thread -- he's finding that it's tied to the clock setting.  (If I read it correctly)

dafuq ???

How can you combine in the same line "I swear that" and "I might be wrong", lol?

You can fit as many BFL chips as you want on any board, since they are invisible and magic and they don't exist.

Great work.

Delivery not certain. Better to work on a BitFury design as that is more in line with Avalon chips right? Same footprint.

Yep, you're right. Bitfury has the same footprint as Avalon chips. And bitfury chips have higher throughput with lower power consumption than the BFL chips. With Bitfury it could be possible to make an USB powered miner with more then a 1GHs/s (the specs are specifying a hashrate of 5GHs/s with only 2.5W power consumption).

That be good... I don't think there are any BitFury USB designs right?

So final will make bfl labs ?board

Did you still need Avalon chips?

I got two Avalon chips from SebastianJu. At the moment I'm happy with them.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677.msg2568673#msg2568673
http://imgur.com/QZYoGDQ - this the board that got 2.7 GH/s

I think somewhere he posted the design, unsure. You need to mine that thread for info. if its not usb, then i think its easy to adapt to usb.

Got my PCBs for my Avalon USB miner! Let's see if it is working!

http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w480/Andreas_Auer/ASIC%20miner/DSC02594.jpg

And the assembled board:
http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w480/Andreas_Auer/ASIC%20miner/DSC02595.jpg

That was fast... hashing already? I guess with such a large surface area.. you can passive cool it even with overclock.

No it is not hashing right now. I have to make the firmware for the microcontroller. Maybe I get it hashing this weekend (depends on the weather  :) ).

+1 for the Bitfury chip and please, can we just stay away from BFL?  Why do we keep plugging them after all that has happened??

Wow! I like it more than the USB Block Erupter... and what about mining results?

Just got the board to hash! Now the proof that the board is mining:

http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w480/Andreas_Auer/bfgminer.png

nice man! so what were the initial costs for that prototype? can you give us any estimations?

regards

Nice work. Looks good! Are you going to try and overclock?

Outstanding. Would be real interested inBFL application.
Have chips on order.

Come on friend make bfl chips board .it is not necessary USB power.can you make it without USB power I think better is 4 chips per board  :)

Lower hash rate than the USB Block Erupter, but more beautiful.

Let's wait for some overclock and I hope aauer1 will sell some of those Gizmos, as I would love to buy one.

+1 Interesting. Nice to see people trying innovative ideas.

very rough estimation for the prototype is 70 Euro + Avalon ASIC. But the PCB alone was about 40 EUR (I ordered only 5 pieces).


The hashrate of about 211 MH/s wasn't really correct because it was just running for 15 minutes. The ASIC is clocked with 256MHz and performs 256MH/s without a heatsink. I also tried 300MHz but then I think I need a heatsink. For now, I'm just running it at 256MHz.

Sent you a PM, not sure if you got it.

But are you planning to do a single ASIC board (USB powered) with Bitfury chips?

Let me guess you found them on Alibaba.com??

They cannot deliver.

I am encouraged by the creativity of this forum Great work.
But, the withdrawal of GPU mining in the near future, why is no one designing a board that will plug into the empty PCIe slots? I would think a 2 to 8 chip board with cooling would be a perfect fit, as power is right there with the unused PSU connector from the retired GPU. This might be a future consideration, as I see the small boards as expensive in relation to larger boards, price per square CM per hash rate.
What are your thoughts?

* USB is a much simpler (and cheaper) interface to work with than PCI-E for development of this type
* A single host computer can have a lot more USB devices connected to it than PCI
* The host doesn't even have to be a PC- it could be a raspberry pi or TP Link router
* The boards in development now use the PCI-E power connectors anyway that GPU's use

Yep -- say you currently have 10 computers with 6 GPUs each.  You could replace each GPU with 6 ASIC PCIe cards and still run 10 computers.  Or you could pull all the power supplies and run 60 USB ASIC cards off of one raspberry pi.  The pi uses onlye 5 W -- each computer before was using ~ 50W each, saving you 500W.  And you've cut your maintenance by a factor of 10 (firewall, system updates, etc).  Everything is centralized.