Thanks AmDD and Plazzman for the info - much appreciated.
After 6 more hours of running it's got down to 1.3% HW and 837MH/s
It's 9:50am here and will be interesting to see how it handles the day getting warm here
- though it is in my basement garage, the temp down there does change, but more slowly, so the day peek is always much lower than outside
Cool way to passively insulate from the ambient heat of the day. I am starting to think BFL_Josh (Inaba) is avoiding the questions of ambient operating temperature for the BFL Single. Which tells me his hardware may run very hot and may need an Air Conditioner to keep it's temps down. @ Inaba
Still waiting for that link to the discussion..... |
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[Speculation]
I have been thinking it over for some time.
What I think might have happened is that the old 40Gh/s rigs were probably not converted to 60Gh/s rigs. They were probably flashed....down to 30Gh/s. Hence the sudden introduction of the Little SC.
Meanwhile the new 60Gh/s Single SC probably comes from either a higher performing second batch of chips or from a second batch that is still in the process of being fabricated.
If you re-read the statement from BFL_Josh (Inaba) this hypothesis makes some sense.
They paid extra to expedite their ASIC run through the chip plant. Then he states that they had to adjust and carefully consider some of the components that make up the boards in the updated 60Gh/s systems.
If it were simply a straightforward flash of firmware...why mention the hardware components being sourced. Shouldn't that have been an issue in the prior stage of the development process?
----------------------------
It sounds to me like there are actually two batches of boards and they are (realistically speaking) almost identical except for a few minor hardware changes in components and the firmware revisions.
The reason that BFL probably doesn't want to double the amount of Little Singles (at this time) being ordered is because they don't have enough formerly 40GH/s systems that have been downgraded (if my hypothesis is correct). Clearly they would need to get rid of their overstock of previously spec'ed hardware at 40Gh/s. (Now re-spec'ed at 30Gh/s)
Which means turning lemons into lemonade by offering it to their Jalapeno customers as a free "upgrade". If that is the case, then it is a good way to offload a bunch of Single SCs that would never have made the 60Gh/s spec without changing parts to support the higher electrical load.
--------------------------
Here is the kicker though. What if BFL has tons of jalapenos laying around? I assume the bulk of their orders are for Jalapenos since they are significantly cheaper to the community.
If my speculation holds water, and they are giving the first downgraded Singles at $650. Either they are accepting a major loss, or the Singles are much cheaper to make than anyone realizes. Certainly cheaper than half the $1299 price.
If all this is anywhere near true, (and it is just speculation) then in the future they will have to give the jalapenos away at a cheaper price than $150. Unless they want to sit on stock that isn't going anywhere fast.
It also would mean that the Little Single owners are likely to get their orders first OR that BFL has them sitting in cartons sitting in some warehouse and is actually waiting for the 60Gh/s batch to finish being assembled. Which if so, means delays and missing the October and possibly November delivery dates.
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Second, it's not the $1 that matters, but value for money, which comes in the form of redundancy: if a Single fails and has to be sent back to BFL for repair, than it's better to have 2x30Ghash units than 1x60Ghash.
I'd say its the other way: Considering each complete unit has about the same probability of failure over a given timeframe, with 2*30GHash units you have double the probability of failure than with 1x60Ghash. I therefore demand the 1x60Ghash unit to be downclocked to 55Gh/s to reflect the time and money saved through lower failure rates  Actually, running a cooler system would reduce the failure rate. If that is the case then a 30Gh/s would have a lower fail rate on heat load alone...wouldn't it? The only macro-level parts "moving" in a BFL system is probably the fans that cool the system. The electronics themselves are produced using the same method and process. If BFLs failure rate were 1 in 10 units. Then doubling the number of units to 2 would increase your odds of a failure to 2 in 20. But you would have a 18 in 20 chance that the hardware would be fine through its "useful life". If a person makes an argument that doubling something increases the failure rate then they are admitting that the hardware itself has a very high rate of failure. The argument used in [redundant] RAID configurations is built on the idea of increasing redundancy removes any one point of failure. It is also why most servers have more than 1 power supply for fail over. ------------------------------------------- If you have 1 Single SC and you suffer a single failure you are down. Period. If you have 2 Little Single then you suffer from one point of failure and still take in Bitcoins at a reduced rate. (But mining continues regardless). I wasn't originally going to say anything but some of the ideas expressed previously in this and other threads are not well founded. |
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Seems like I touched a nerve with the power issue, hmm... I look forward to Tom's clarification.
As for BFL specs, we can discuss that in another thread.
Point the way, I have read that the FPGA single was plagued not by 1 factor, but by 3. Performance, Ambient temperature requirements and finally Electrical use.BFL is "on the record" as having resolved to this date two of the above issues. (Electrical use and Performance per watt) So the third issue (Ambient operating temperature) is the remaining factor that remains very elusive as a specification. ----------------------------- The ambient temperature is just as important as the other two. As this determines whether air conditioning is required for the devices in warm environments. (at 1kw ->2kw per hour per air conditioner) Once the other two (Avalon and bASIC) are further along, they will also have to deal with this very critical issue. I believe it was stated once that Inaba (BFL_Josh) has stated that he has worked in datacenter environments. Which means he is intimately familiar on why they keep the CRAC units turned on 24x7 for the servers and other hosted devices. Therefore, I hope that he lets us all know that BFL products will be very comfortable in 90+F environments. Otherwise this may skew the 60watt performance rating of non-air conditioned units. I will wait for Inaba (BFL_Josh) to open a thread on this topic soon to reassure their customers that this will not be an issue and is in fact a selling point of their hardware.@ Inaba (BFL_Josh) Will you ever get around to discussing this point in another thread with specificity? Got a [direct] link? |
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Seems like I touched a nerve with the power issue, hmm... I look forward to Tom's clarification.
As for BFL specs, we can discuss that in another thread.
Point the way, I have read that the FPGA single was plagued not by 1 factor, but by 3. Performance, Ambient temperature requirements and finally Electrical use.BFL is "on the record" as having resolved to this date two of the above issues. (Electrical use and Performance per watt) So the third issue (Ambient operating temperature) is the remaining factor that remains very elusive as a specification. ----------------------------- The ambient temperature is just as important as the other two. As this determines whether air conditioning is required for the devices in warm environments. (at 1kw ->2kw per hour per air conditioner) Once the other two (Avalon and bASIC) are further along, they will also have to deal with this very critical issue. I believe it was stated once that Inaba (BFL_Josh) has stated that he has worked in datacenter environments. Which means he is intimately familiar on why they keep the CRAC units turned on 24x7 for the servers and other hosted devices. Therefore, I hope that he lets us all know that BFL products will be very comfortable in 90+F environments. Otherwise this may skew the 60watt performance rating of non-air conditioned units. I will wait for Inaba (BFL_Josh) to open a thread on this topic soon to reassure their customers that this will not be an issue and is in fact a selling point of their hardware. |
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The heat question has been asked in several ways, but as of yet, there is no answer even on their own forum. Do you have a specific link to the answer I might have missed? |
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As I have stated before our production boards are not completed yet, and therefore I do not have solid power consumption numbers yet.
But guess what? EITHER DO MY COMPETITORS!
Sure I can post a "simulated" or "estimated" power usage number - but its not going to be accurate. You really think BFL is going to give 1Gh/s per watt? keep dreaming.
These energy efficiency numbers from my competitors are simply estimates and are not going to be accurate. I give you my personal guarantee that our products will have energy efficiency that is competitive to any other ASIC product on the market.
Normally I wouldn't be posting in your thread, but since you called BFL out directly I figured it was an invite. I'm a little confused here, Tom, so maybe you can enlighten me. You say you are far enough along in your process to have prototype boards (or was it production boards?) arriving in your hands this week or next week... yet you can't give any power numbers? If your crack team of engineers that are designing this are so great, they should have some power estimates, within a reasonable margin (say +/- 10%? 20%?) that you could give out, right? Why aren't you publishing these numbers with the caveat that they are estimates? Do you actually have numbers or are you not as far along in the process as you'd like people to believe? You say you guarantee your device will be competitive with any other ASIC on the market. What is competitive? Can you define that for everyone? Is it 2x the power consumption? Is that still "competitive" or what does the value of "competitive" mean to you? Here's what I think your customers deserve: 1. A power estimate, even with the understanding that may be off a bit. 2. A guarantee that if your power estimates are in fact not competitive with other products, you will offer unlimited refunds (Just like BFL did when the FPGA power consumption turned out to be wrong). A power estimate should not be a problem if you have the excellent engineers you say you have. They should already have pretty accurate power estimates and you should be aware of them. Why not be open about it? Maybe guaranteeing refunds to people if your power turns out to be non competitive would go a long way towards easing peoples concerns that you're hiding something in order to collect orders from the naive. After all, once difficulty matures, the difference could determine whether reasonable payback is even possible or not. For my part, I'm sure you have a competitive power envelope but the fact that you aren't stepping up to share estimates with the rest of the community while everyone else has may give people reason to doubt. Once again, sorry to step into your thread, but since you called us out directly, I felt it appropriate to respond. @ BFL_Inaba What is the safe ambient operating temperature of your BFL single @ 60Gh/s at full operation? Is it 60F? Is it 70F? Is it 80F? Is it 90F? Is it 100F? Can I use it in South America at 100F (near the equator)? |
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Hi, this thread is created in response to the thread requesting 65 GH from the SC single.
Everyone knows that more is better, and since >9000 exahash is more than 65 GH (perhaps infinitely more) then it is clearly the best option.
I think BFL should begin making these alterations to accommodate these speed increases with all haste.
can someone make a website featuring a product that hashes at these speeds...... I'm shure that bfl will correct their "calculations" very fast to that speeds   It will only require 3 fusion reactors at idle! |
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 9299 Renminbi = 9299 Yuan = 1483.75 USD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RenminbiThe renminbi (RMB, sign: ¥; code: CNY; also CN¥, 元 and CN元) is the official currency of China (People's Republic of China). Renminbi is legal tender in mainland China, but not in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Macau. It is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of China.[4] Its name (simplified Chinese: 人民币; traditional Chinese: 人民幣; pinyin: rénmínbì) means "people's currency". This ad makes me nervous. I know they are selling to their Chinese customers...but if there is a joke...I don't see it yet...in the translator. Where is the punch line? (Keeps looking....1TH/s is an absurdly high number) |
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I like you Unacceptable. (You make a lot of funny points) Just consider that you shouldn't become a fan of any one company. Less so, if you are thinking about joining in to the idea of no longer willing to glean an edge over everyone else receiving their orders. Personally the bickering on Bitcointalk is pretty funny. I like it when you all argue but sometimes people don't argue over the rational points of interests. Why hasn't there been any recent talk of one user trying to gain an edge over others? Where is the spirit of competition? Is everyone happy receiving the same? Why not at least question the status quo of the units you guys are getting? Lets shake things up  . Thanks!! I try to see the lighter side of stuff,since life in general is a bitch............... I'm not so much a fan of BFL,I just think they're offering is better than most.I have purchased from them in the past with minor issues,but nothing was a deal stopper. & will continue to do so in the future.I will also try to spread my money with other companies who's offer is close to thiers (warranty,trade ins,etc..). I wish more people could talk like you and I are doing right now. (More in the center than at either extreme) The only reason why I purchased from Avalon is because they had the options I was looking for. I wanted a stand alone system rather than a USB connected system. (More like DeepBits stand alones system than BFL's tethered systems...but at a fraction of the price.) I see you have purchased from BFL before, so you know what their hardware is like and you know of the quality. So I understand your view on how some of the weird theories people talk about on Bitcointalk are _way out there_ and usually baseless. I have become rather desensitized to some of the bogus ideas floating around about BFL. What worries me is the lack of a serious warranty on Avalons part. 1 Year is not alot. I also wonder what the fine print will be for BFL on what parts they cover for a lifetime vs what only has 6 months. (I think they stated the fan is only for 6 months) ----------------------- Honestly, with all these delays...I wouldn't be at all surprised if bASIC is the first to ship their products. They aren't modifying things anywhere near as constantly as the other two. |
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I'm opposed to wasting their or my time over such a trivial amount when their product isn't even in the wild yet. I'd much rather they spend their time making sure there is a timely and proper delivery than responding to a non-issue of a perceived few dollar discrepancy in pricing.
Well, then you and I are on two different topics. My interests weren't focused on a ($1) dollars difference. |
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I like you Unacceptable. (You make a lot of funny points) Just consider that you shouldn't become a fan of any one company. Less so, if you are thinking about joining in to the idea of no longer willing to glean an edge over everyone else receiving their orders. Personally the bickering on Bitcointalk is pretty funny. I like it when you all argue but sometimes people don't argue over the rational points of interests. Why hasn't there been any recent talk of one user trying to gain an edge over others? Where is the spirit of competition? Is everyone happy receiving the same? Why not at least question the status quo of the units you guys are getting? Lets shake things up . |
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Are you serious? Is he serious? Perhaps willing customers would pay a premuim in private and get a Modded mining rig for 5 or more Gh/s system? BFL could call it a "custom ordered unit". Why not at least float them the idea and see if they are willing? There is a water block option for that reason, I would suppose. I am no fanboy so I don't have any issues with floating ideas to any company willing to consider these options. -------------------------- People should never be hesitant to ask a company how far they are willing to go if you can pad their pocket with some extra cash (or...BTC). It would give some an advantage over others and it costs customer something extra. Both parties can get what they want. Hopefully you won't object to the idea of people contacting customer service to propose private modifications to their orders? Or Are you objecting to the idea of people contacting BFL to see what they can do for specific customers? |
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And if I put up a poll asking if people would rather have the Single SC have 100 Ghash, I'm pretty sure 100 would get more votes than 60. I'm not sure what that proves.
I also had no idea that there was any difference between Walmart and BFL. I planned on purchasing all of my ASIC devices through Walmart at 12:01AM on Tuesday.
To have 100Ghash would not only be impossible as it would require every ASIC chip to do 1.2Ghz, and the maximum it can do is 1Ghz according to BFL, but also illogical as it would make other BFL products uncompetitive. There is actually logic behind what I proposed, and it is to retain the original price structure of: The more you pay for a product, the more value per dollar you get", this is how it was until the LITTLE Single broke it. BFL Josh just denied your peition on the grounds that they "aren't prepared" to do that. He unfortunately didn't find the redundancy aspect to be a good enough reason. Quote: BFL_Josh (Inaba)Sorry ice_chill, but I the redundancy issue is not really a factor with 99% of the people purchasing the devices. The other benefits to a 60 GH/s single unit vs 2x 30 GH/s unit far outweigh the hypothetical redundancy issue. (Less power consumption, less space, less heat, less material, etc...)
It simply makes no economic or efficiency sense to order two little singles vs 1 Single SC. While I'm not devaluing your desire to have two, for any reason you feel is relevant, it's just not something we can accommodate at this time. We will keep it under advisement for the future though.
Statistically, it's a wash... you have half the chance to lose your full hashrate as you would with one unit and 2x the chance to lose half the hashrate and it's more than likely you'll end up losing money in the long run with 2 units vs 1 unit, since you'll incur more overhead operating two units over the lifespan of the units. The redundancy factor might appear to be valid when you don't examine it closely, but if you work out the math, it simply doesn't make sense. You're effectively just buying insurance and paying a premium for no particular reason other than piece of mind. I'm not saying that's not valuable to some people, but it's not something we are prepared to offer right now.
You can also look at it this way: You're still getting 20 GH/s for free, since you paid $1299 for 40 GH/s... so you're getting 2/3 of a Little Single for free. Link: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showthread.php/136-Petition-to-stabilise-price-structure-of-BFL-ASIC-hardware?p=1843&viewfull=1#post1843BFL customers will only get 60Gh/s at this time it seems. |
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BFL, AVALON, bASIC ... they do not care about your happiness, they make money and will do anything to gather as much as possible. The business world is brutal No Holds Barred +10 No kidding! |
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Better performance, more energy efficient, it must be a completely different project. It's all two months before shipment. What will be next? What if BFL increase performance their Single "SC" to 120Ghash? Avalon beats them with 240Ghash? and BFL beats Avalon with 480Ghash? In a few months they probably will offer several Thash/s chips but in this way they not finish any project still starting new ones I hope not Unless BFL released disinformation, their SC rig with 8 chips can only go up to (upper limits) 120GH/s. @ 1GHz @ ~120watts This is probably unsafe for the BFL hardware over the long term. They have so far hinted their (safe) overhead is somewhere around 75% of maximum...about 750MHz or somewhere near there with (I suppose) stock cooling. If they keep raising the temps the hardware is more likely to fail which increases returns and warranty claims etc. -------------- Right now the two companies are seemingly playing a game of chicken. The first to veer off is going to lose alot of customers orders and pre-orders. Right now some BFL customers are clamoring for BFL to reflash the Single SC to 65GH/s. Supposedly this is because of a dollars difference. I think it is just that they saw the new Avalon Specs and don't want to be stuck holding an inferior product. All this costs BFL money, time and adds to delays in shipping out the hardware to their customers. Imagine if you are standing in BFL headquarters and BFL CEO asks you to reflash a thousand boxes from 40Gh/s to 60Gh/s. Then 15 days later when you are almost done, he asks you to do it again from 60Gh/s to 65Gh/s. Hopefully people will see the point I am making. They (BFL) could fix this rat race issue by either telling their customers "NO, we won't reflash it again!" OR give the customers themselves the option to flash it themselves (distributing the workload to the customers). But this itself may cause secondary issues and firmware hacking as well as giving away a potential post-sale profit margin. Consider this: --If users can flash their box themselves, well then they can hack the firmware and run the boxes at any speed they want. --If the boxes fail, how does BFL know what the clockspeed was when it comes in for warranty repair? (That costs money) --If they give away a copy of the firmware, what prevents the competition from looking into the code and gleaning details about the way the first gen BFL Asic was made? -------------------------------- There is a serious danger of BFL running themselves into the ground and many people losing their money if things don't play out just right. Avalon can cause BFL harm (buisness wise) simply by incrementally releasing slightly better specs at regular intervals. The BFL customers will keep demanding more. It costs Avalon virtually nothing to keep this up, but it costs BFL quite a bit as they push their hardware closer and closer to the edge. (Thermally,componentary as well as warranty wise) Consider this: What if BFL just ordered 100,000 capacitors that will work up to 60 watts but not up to 85 watts? Do they just throw away several thousands of dollars worth of hardware because they need to appease customers demands?? (The reason behind the introduction of Little SC at 30Gh/s??) Every PCB design has an envelope with specific limits and design headroom. Each time they "up" something, they risk having to buy better components and analyzing whether the current design is capable of handling the extra performance or electrical requirements. It's a game of chicken. BFL doesn't ultimately know what the intended final design specs are for the Avalon mining device. It could be 60....could be 70....maybe 80 or 90? All I do know is they (BFL) just jumped from 40Gh/s to 60Gh/s. They had clearly aimed for 40Gh/s. Now people want them to go higher up to 65Gh/s. As a company you gamble in all sorts of ways every time they increase the specs this late in the game. |
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Companies like Intel are selling products that are available in stores, people do not have to ask questions to find out whether their products work. just buy. I seem to remember Pentium75 and Pentium90 couldn't add two floating point number together without crashing. They do not build computers out of FPGA's Many 8bit computers were FPGAs That was the Pentium 60 and 66. (additional trivia, too many chips failed at 66, so they released at 60Mhz instead, lead times on the 66Mhz chips were bad for a few months) (IIRC) It was an actual mistake in an x87 multiplier and was the trigger that caused Intel to add microcode update capabilities to the Pentium 75+ That is a great example because BFL et. al. face a similar risk. What if you get 60Gh/s of rejects when the ASIC comes back from the foundry?Just make them into Little Singles? BTC |
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let the magic begin... abracadabra... puff ... 5 more Ghz for the SC Single
come on dude!
P.S.
did you ask them is such conversion is possible ?
@ All Uh oh, A potentially dangerous time for BFL begins. A true test of economic foresight and planning. Avalon just raised their proposed devices from 60Gh/s to 64Gh/s. Now some BFL buyers want the company to raise their Single SC to (magically?) 65Gh/s. Very evil if not totally genius of Avalon to do that at this particular time, LOL. Every time BFL has to re-flash the devices it costs more time (and possibly money) and delays the shipments. Not to mention the operating temperature has to keep going down to keep the Single SC "cool enough". --------------------------- Well, keep this in mind, if too many BFL customers pull their money out by "refunds", it will leave the company deeply in debt. So don't rock the boat if you don't want to take a swim. It is safe to say that BFL has purchased quite a lot of hardware (hence the "free" order exchanges) with the anticipation that many more customers would be coming to them. But if there is a shortfall due to refunds then, all BFL customers will suffer from this. Forgive them if they say "No" to the upgrades! A new update from Avalon.  |
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