With regards to Hammer stickminers:
I got the datasheet for the Hammer ASIC. It does not contain power info at 0.55V but indicates that the bottom end power efficiency is 0.55W/GH although that is also the rated power at 0.6V and 430MHz (this is at the typical corner). This would be 3.5W which is too high, but even taking 0.55W/GH as your best power consumption estimate you could probably run off USB down at about 4GH or so including VRM losses.
Would anyone look at a Hammer stickminer (~2.5W, ~4GH) with interest or is that just too low of a hashrate? You could clock it at double that easily (with sufficient USB power) assuming we build the power supply capable of handling that. It would be a fair amount more work for us to do an additional board including serial protocol for the Hammer but it would keep us away from bitmain's (potential) price hikes.
Let me know if this is something you would consider worth picking up, the attraction for us is that we would likely be able to get some old Hammers a little cheaper than bitmain might sell us chips. The downside is that the result would probably not compare particularly well to a BM1384 stickminer, which would not be much extra work for us to produce.
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novak
don't make them. the bm1384 would be much better.
having had sticks of all types having sold sticks of all types on ebay. your specs mentioned on the bm1384 were a lot better.
If the bm1384 dial under .4 watts/gh that is a big seller.
the hammer at 2.5/4 = .625 w per gh it is substandard efficiency .
If I run 4 sticks at .4 watts or less (BM1384) Balance them with a solo pool and a pair of pps pools Positive roi is possible due to the low watts per gh.
If I do it with 4 sticks at .625 watts (Hammer) Positive roi is not going to happen.
USB's won't ROI. That is just dream city the USB sales price is not going be low enough. That threshold was already reached about 1 year ago when price of BTC and the network difficulty was far more reasonable than now to miners.
The point of the USB is novelty, educational with possibly some sort of secondary use built in.
Ideally you could solar power a few and it be a green miner the question would be price of the chip and cost of design. Both could be possible if you had two footprints for each chip.
Also a great proof of concept and allows people to see what sort of team you got here. Wish them luck.
I agree the usb stick do not make positive roi most of the time but a .35 watt usb has a chance to do positive roi a .625 watt usb is not going to do it.
Since he wants the bigger miner to use bm1384 chips I only suggest the usb stick to do the same.
It is also easier for him to do this since he has decided to work with the bm1384 chips in the larger miner.
If given a choice of creating a working set of pcbs for 1 chip or for 2 different chips. He is better off using just the one chip.
Especially since the one chip has better down clocked potential.
I see the asic world with 11 to 18 month cycles for new gen not the quick 6 month cycles we have been doing.
So a usb stick with a bigger w/gh range is better.
Just like a miner with a bigger w/gh range is better. the current s-5 is around .51watts per gh flat more or less.
if it had dial down dial up watts per gh at .35 to .55 it would be all the more valuable and it would last longer.
In fact I believe that it was intentionally left out by bitmaintech so the miner would go obsolete quicker. (also to lower cost to build the s-5)
Asic builders want miners to go obsolete so they can sell better machines every six months = old thinking. My opinion for what it is worth.
Miners that have wider power range on down clock and up clock are all the more desirable for a guy mining = 11 to 18 month cycles = a more stable coin and network also my opinion for what it is worth.
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