Bitcoin Forum

This is a general announcement regarding performance expectations.   Until they are produced and tested, all data is preliminary and  subject to change.  This thread will be updated as we move forward.

Technology: 28nm
Package: TBD; most likely wirebonded FBGA in ceramic or plastic w/ copper slug
Interface: SPI to on-chip SoC
Hashrate: 180-256 GHs per die
Power Usage: 0.14-0.30 W/GHs
Price Range: 0.25-0.47 $/GHs

Datasheets and reference designs will be available for residential and datacenter designs.  Certain Havelock virtual units will have the option to be exchanged be directly for hardware.  Other partnership options are available.

Reserved

Why are you wasting die area to SoC, and what SoC IP are you using?

Me 2 already burned once. Never again.

It's not just waste of die area. It is a beginner design mistake: upon hash miscompare they won't know if the fail was in the hashing pieline or in the CPU. So essentially they won't be able to do overclocking/overvolting controlled by the hash failure rate.

This is the same design mistake that the helveticoin did in their tested,but never deployed chip.

Thank you for your questions.

The SoC is proven silicon.  Including RAM, it accounts for less than 2% of the die, and improves functionality and performance.

Using the same voltage and clock rate for all areas of the chip is common in simpler ASIC designs, and could cause issues similar to those mentioned by 2112.  Fortunately, our design isn't that simple, and our Lead ASIC Designer is very experienced.

+1

Looks promising, but, uhh, call me when it's shipping.

Another answer from a marketroid.

Regardless of the design two most important things will be the substantially the same on the whole chip surface: temperature and electrical noise. The SoC would have to be super-overdesigned to survive both the temperature and the noise where the hasher cores still operate with tolerable fault rates. Such SoC controllers do exist (e.g. radiation hardened designs with lockstepping and other fault tolerance features) but they require additional manufacturing steps/masks. This would be a complete waste for the remaining 98% of the circuit and will increase both the NRE costs of the masks and the time to fabricate the wafers. Most likely also the software miners would have to be changed to actually take advantage of the SoC, when it isn't compatible with Linux (e.g. ARM Cortex-M instead of Cortex-A).

I do not negate the possibility of the Lead ASIC Designer being very experienced. He's probably experienced in the low-power design for the battery-operated devices and didn't have time to fully understand the coin mining market requirements, which are more akin to the high-power, mixed-signal integrated circuits. And being very familiar with hammers he simply viewed mining as another nail to hammer in: just use SoC to bang two clocks.

And the man who has two clocks never knows the correct time.

Anyway, lets see if the "Lead ASIC Designer" will post here or if this is another Novello.

Our Lead ASIC Designer is Roger Thorpe.  You can find a brief description of his credentials on the About section of our website, along with the URL of his LinkedIn profile where you can find further background information.  We believe his experience and accomplishments speak for themselves, but we'll pass along your comments.

Do you mind asking your people to post in their linked-in profiles their connections with your company?

A quick google search shows "Provasic" as a fictional drug from the movie The Fugitive. I think we are being trolled here.

I made the same mistake while trying to find their website. Then I looked into OP's profile and the website is www.provasic.co

I learned my lesson from horror stories like yours :S..  Never pre-order, always buy instock.

...and "bit" is now 100 satoshi AND a unit of information AND "a piece"

There are not enough words to uniquely describe the realm anymore.
My point is that this by itself means nothing, but thanks for pointing out the connection. I knew that the word seemed vaguely familiar.

Are the chips already fabricated?  Any working prototype yet?  Any 3d renders or ETA on when we can actually expect these miners to hit the market?