Bitcoin Forum

Summary
BM1380 is a Bitcoin mining chip developed by Bitmain, a Chinese based IC company. We use the chip to build S1 Dual Blades, nearly a thousand of which has been sold to the Bitcoin community.

BM1380 can run at different mode, depending on the favorite of the users. It can run at 0.75V core voltage and 0.68J/GH high efficiency which can compete with some 28nm mining chips. At 0.75V the hashing board runs without a heat sink. BM1380 is also running at 1.1V or 1.25V voltage sounding reliably, doubling the hash rate and the efficiency spec still better than most of other 55nm node chips on the market.

Now the chip is open for purchase.

About the Chip

Process Node: 55nm
Number of Cores: 8
Package Type: QFN56
Packaged Chip Size: 8 mm x 8 mm
Rated Hash Rate: 2.8GH/s @ 1.1V

Voltage(V)	Core Frequency(MHz)	Hash Rate(GH/s)	Current(A)	Power Consumption(W)	Power Efficiency(J/GH)
0.75	200	1.60	1.423	1.07	0.681
0.85	250	2.00	1.993	1.69	0.847
1.00	312.5	2.50	2.821	2.82	1.128
1.10	350	2.80	3.359	3.70	1.32
1.25	400	3.20	4.205	5.26	1.643

Every chip will be tested as qualified before shipping out.

Price
There are 10,000 chips in a single lot. Now the price is 99.9 BTC per lot. As every chip can hash 2.8GH/s @ 1.1v, it is 3.6BTC/TH/s
Every lot has 32 extra chips for testing, shipping within 3 days after purchasing.
If buy up to 5 lots, you can get a 5% discount from the 11th lot.

Pay extra 9BTC can accelerate the lead time to 4 weeks.


Open Source
We are going to open the entire designing documents and bin file for designing and produce the S1 Dual Blades hardware. For some complicated parts, we may provide some parts of the miner at our cost.
We will sell control board at cost for chip buyers.
We will upload the the reference design in a few days, to https://github.com/AntMiner

Lead Time
Lead time is around six to seven weeks. We promise lead time to each customer before making payment.
1.   The wafers have been ordered already and under fabrication before we open sale.
2.   We also reserve safety chip stock to hedge potential delaying risk and guarantee our delivering promise.
3.   We promise every chip buyer a delivering date, which will be accurately planned. Large orders will not be able to deliver in a single day, but we will commit a period before buyers making payment.

Pay extra 10% can accelerate the lead time to 4 weeks.

Support
With our open sourced document, we think a qualified hardware engineer will be able to build a miner or even design an improved version without any support. However, we know that many chip buyers are financial back grounded and it is very likely that their hardware engineers are contracted, and not fully devoted into this. To move things faster, they may need help.
We do want to provide support to our chip buyers, while we have very limited human resources. And we are all not native English speakers, so supporting global customers will cost us even more time. So we are now encouraging technicians and hardware engineers in this community to stand out, and read into our document, and provide help when our chip buyers has any trouble in building a miner. This is how this mechanism working out:

1.   If you are a hardware engineer who is interested, please read into our open sourced documents, decide whether you can handle all the problems. We hope you have the experience and resources to handle the production management locally.
2.   Stand out in this board, announce your language skill, location and back ground, so our chip buyer may find you. We will list you in our official store when it is put up.
3.   All chip buyers has a 2% supporting budget. It means that a chip buyer can tell us who has helped him out, and you will get this budget.

How to order:

Please fill this form, and we will send you the payment address and a promised shipping date. via info@bitmaintech.com

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dhozMBbO6ZsM_kT4Nf5tQD-qi3oh7JXOhTlh5RSyKcc/viewform

Please write down and check the PIN, so you know it is BITMAIN who send you the email.

I am looking at starting a group buy for chips here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364231.0). If anyone is interested.

thanks Bestlymac,

The BOM and open sourced documents will be uploaded in two days.

That is great. Will you also be releasing your antminer design?

would you in turn then build a usb with customer chips?  this was done with the bit fury chips by you.

I am sure we could. Potentially even a dual chip usb. It depends what the buyers want.

I am interested in getting in on this one.  I don't need raw chips though. I need an organized buy of a product that I can plug in and hash with :-)

All the file needed for a antminer S1 design will be uploaded.

How many chips are in a S1?

**** Ok, looks like 64, please correct me if I am wrong.

64 chips. 32 chips per board and two boards combined into a dual-blade miner

Thats great news. Thank you.

I would be able to fund and run a batch of very nice looking miners, complete with plastic housing, manual, shiny box, CE and UL cert and so on. Am in Shanghai, possible to communicate in Chinese.
However I need somebody to do the PCB's reliably without fucking me over.

Anybody interested contact me for details.

Thank you.

+1 That is what we all need

And knowing chip cost - reasonably priced plug and play.  Yeah, you know who I'm talking to custom folks. ;)

OFFTOPIC :
do u plan to sell more antminers anytime soon ?

Will you be releasing the code for the micro controller as well?

Round 2 Group Buy.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364342.0

Hmm

awfull pricing comparing my project

the wafer cost is 3k,with aprox 3k chips so their cost price is aprox 10k

and noone is interested in participating in my 65 nm at cost price

crazy folks

Because it is not open source dude. your business model is not much different than Asic one.
You get the technology with  our money invested we eventually get good praise from today point's of view and we are going probably to loose our investments from tomorrow point of view

who said it s not opensource?

i ve uploaded all the needed files for the pcb and else

Yeah like avalon competition for Open source PCB I can get the pcb and have the schematics. What i want to have is the PIC software. Have you seen a single participant who uploaded his software in competition - NO i gues same as me. The open source is Klondike project only and nothing else from my point of view.  - Speaking of The ASIC excuse my competence BUT what i mean like open source is you to publish all asic Related Files which are needed for us so that no matter how stupid we are when we go to Fabric and say for instance i wanna have this chip they to be able to produce it. Did you understand what i am up to. But you stated that this aint gona happen if I remember correctly right?

So you  think he is going to give you access to gds and the mask?

hmm
please confirm with them as i would be interested also if this is the case

No he want of course but the difference is
1. He invested own money or at least not collected from community
2. He does not claim that he is open source he is here for the businesses. No doubt about that
3. The magic word open source means nothing anymore

Can I ask you if you claim to be open why you are not giving your mask and GDS and mask to the community
I know do not answer it is NDA shit or you paid cheaper to cut the costs or million reasons which has nothing to do with opensource and most probably is a bulshit

That datasheet is extremely limited. Do you have a timeline on an updated on with information on the communications protocol and register descriptions, as well as the firmware for the control board?

Agreed; the datasheet will need a little more detail for us DIYers.

+1

watching to see if this becomes a reality.

Bitmain, i send you a PM about the chips, can you please take 2 minute and answer?

Thanks and PM answered.

Updated with a newly added policy, Paying extra 10% can accelerate the lead time to 4 weeks.

We have already made the documents we think is completed for building a miner with our chip. We will send to some community member to review for two or three days, and we can know whether there is something that will make other EE confused or hard to understand. Then we release all the documents to the public.

make sure to send to burnin. he does good boards.
Any thoughts of making rackminers? like U3 size but 500GH++.

+1 and i'd be the first in line  :D

We are considering building rack miners with bit main chips. They would be roughly 900Gh/s

waiting for more information. interesting

The chips would be available in the middle of February right?

beastly when do you plan to open the sales? hopefully no preorder...  ;D

It will be part of the assembly service available to the chip group buy members.

Can I get a copy of this documentation to review?

where i can find pcb design of S1?
sorry, found it.

watching

That would be of interest!
price est?

thanks for the info

Design contest?

Sample chips?

32 sample chips are provided along with orders.

Voltage(V)	Core Frequency(MHz)	Hash Rate(GH/s)	Current(A)	Power Consumption(W)	Power Efficiency(J/GH)
0.75	200	1.60	1.423	1.07	0.681
0.85	250	2.00	1.993	1.69	0.847
1.00	312.5	2.50	2.821	2.82	1.128
1.10	350	2.80	3.359	3.70	1.32
1.25	400	3.20	4.205	5.26	1.643

No wondering if they have sample chips for a contest in board design?

I know they provide samples. Sorry wasn't clear Beastly.

We are likely to have our prototype ready in December for a 24 chip BM1380 Wasp x 8 in our Hive. 'Tunable' from 147 Gh/s up to 612 Gh/s

+1

Any idea about prices yet?

+1

Yes we do have but this is currently internal use only and is only a rough idea based on estimates of the Wasp and Hive but only the schematics and BOM for the Wasp are done.

So we are unable to give a prototype cost breakdown as the Hive is still being worked on. Production would be January at the earliest and our plan is not to do pre-sales so it will be pop-up sales. Soon as there is stock they will go on sale and if we run out sales stop.

So pricing will be posted before New Year at the earliest I would think and set by the reseller, diy makers, the WPC if we do a larger production run or other fabricators who are licensed with us to produce the BM1380 Wasp. Prices probably will vary.


--------------

@Bitmain: Is there a board design competition and would we get samples if there is a competition?

900 GH/s miner is a lot of chips.

Would be around 320 chips.

or you can scale it down to avalon blade design and still get a decent miner with 4 modules that would hash at 360...

You probably want to make it modular so you can sell different speeds.
My concern with investing much in this chip is that it's not nearly as productive as the others coming out and less productive than others already out.  The price is write and it may be useful for USB's.
How does the electrical efficiency compare with BitFury?  Is it more productive per amp, or whatever.

Bitmain i have sent you a email and am awaiting a response so we can get our group buy moving forward.

Thanks

Finalizing the PO paper work.

Don't hesitate to layout and prepare the sample PCB, if you have already preview our documents.

All the documents will be uploaded to our github soon.

Sounds great. I just need the remaining info so the fabricator can give us a complete quote.

thanks for uploading the design documents.  i use altium as well, so having the symbols and footprints for the BM1380 already generated and documented helps a ton.

@Bitmain: Is there a board design competition and would we get samples if there is a competition?

I did not see a document containing the chip protocol. Is it available?

Is there more detailed information about the chip's inner
workings available? So custom designs can be made?

intron

When you get all the info you need I hope you will create a nice easy USB design ;)

Currently No. They haven't released the chip protocol.

Any status updates from people using these chips?

Are any smaller quantities of the chips available ie 30-100? id like to get some if they are.