As far as I know BitFury has not even released said info for their 28nm chip. (If I'm wrong, someone please to point where it is...) Even as a preliminary-spec sure as hell aren't going to release info on the 16nm chip...

Powering would not be the right word. Talking/listening-to would be better If I'm right. My guess they are the interface chips between the core logic and the data transfer bus. SPI and most other common com protocols run at 3.3-5vdc on the signal lines.. The core logic - FPGA's in this case - want a lower voltage, preferably the same voltage as the core runs at. The AMT/Bitmine.ch A1 ASIC hash boards I did forensics on used them for that.

Just popped in out of curiosity but level translators are use to translate I/O to-from core logic levels typically these days less than 1v, back in those days maybe as high as 2.2v, to-from data bus coms levels, usually 3.3v or up to 5v.

Seems reality of the design process stepped in and objected to the idea shown in the pretty renders
As for the (fan?) wires coming out of what seems to be a hole for LAN socket, rather doubt they were like on the models sent in for Safety Agency approvals. Bare wire through unprotected holes in sheet metal like that is verboten. Only  takes a 1-cent rubber grommet to fix that. Using for a PR pic, um, oops?

Won't argue with that in the least.
If they don't want to deal with individual sales then setup vetted distributors to take the hassle of dealing with The Public. There are reputable folks here itchin' to do that with the BTC in-hand to do some decent size outright chip buys or-- AFTER proof of them working outside of a lab -- handle group-financed buys.

Not to mention, um privately let a few folks here who know what they are doing have a few engineering/sales samples along with chip data sheets and any other useful tips/info that would come in handy. Enough so they can initially at least make a full-up POC 2-4TH/s miner for the Community. As in most likely those involved eventually releasing all final design data or at least enough for DIY's to play with after fair recompense for time/effort/blood, sweat and tears involved in the process is garnered though sales..

Technically you could call it pre-sale but the only reason is due to their time off for CNY. I see no reason to think the gear won't ship on time. Must be nice to have a gov mandated 15 days off...  Convenient for them no doubt but the units for batch 10 are supposed to be shipping now. I expect to get an email from Bitmain about my 2 batch 10's any day now.

Agreed. Just try and buy the latest chips (or any at all) directly from Intel, AMD,etc and unless you are stocking a very large DC, after snickering they will point you to PCMall or such.

As long as Bitmain doesn't immediately crush any thought of building a miner for less than they can sell their next one for, even on a smaller volume scale, then there is still a chance for Something Else, eg the BtiFury chip sold to integrators/distributors. Now we just have to see the BitFury 16nm chip in other hands and running at full speed on full boards.

Aye, that they did. Thing is, to paraphrase what was said in the BitFury link above, the Pulbic can be a ravanous mob when things don't go exactly as planned. AM, AMT/Bitmine.ch, BFL and others showed that very well and publicly. By not selling ready to run rigs to the public BitFury avoided all that pain and kept it to themselves and their private investors.

For now at least the only one standing from all that and willing to sell ready-to-run rigs to the Public is Bitmain. Why? Without getting nit-picky about it, a. They don't do pre-orders  (with the public at least) on chips/rigs that don't exist outside of a lab yet like the others did. b. They don't start drumming up interest in upcoming miners before really ready to ship. And along that, also bleeding dry the last stock of chips they have of a family step.

Put the two together and they (Bitmain) are freed from forcing a product out the door before it has a decent chance of working as-advertised. Yes they have DOA's from time to time but considering the huge # of miners they build per run, I'll give them that.

Send SideHack a PM on that. He's swamped with work on the pods and a project using Avalon chips. Both involve pulling parts from boards and remounting on new boards.

The 'Standard Tank' bit being banged around prolly came from my mention of IF they were all the same size (standard) in the DC then it is easy to swap out for upgrades.

It's a big SS tank sitting under a mondo big condenser coil. Only power in and data in-out. Get a general size that works and then use any size boards that will fit.

np. Think my first 2 were from late batch 2 or early 3. I was luckily cautious enough to sit out the first round of them.
Since the s7's came out they are all I use. Most of my HP 1200w PSU's got sent to sidehack to run the s5's I have hosted with him and the my IBM PSU's are in use here.

Just got simpler to use something premade for the job. So far zero problems with now over a dozen of them.
I really have to update pix of the main farm. This is pre-s7 days http://phluph.imgur.com/all/

The area looks downright barren now but has more hash power yet slightly less kw used than what it took pre s7's.

^^ The possibility of the package size and same limited coms setup makes for an interesting thought: Perhaps aside from some changes to the support chips to handle higher throoughput, the new chips could basically use the existing hashboards or at least most of their already validated portions perhaps? Hmmm..

That would certainly speed deployment in BitFury's almost mobile mini-pharms http://bitfury.com/products#container-datacenter and the new DC... Once more than just engineering samples are produced, tweaked hashboards tested and the foundry is given the the green light to start a full scale run(s) it's then just a matter of changing tankfulls of boards one at a time. If the data tanks are removable as a unit, all the better. prep/change over tanks to the new 16nm chips & boards  off line and swap out the old ones with the new. Rinse & repeat as desired & production (and money) allows for.

Should give their selected integrators a leg up as well I'd think.

A last thought on why deploy 28nm in the new DC: Time to produce enough boards/chips to fill it. The building & all infra itself was completed how long ago? (seriously, when?) With 28nm chips in production at the time or left over from the final runs, why not? Is a good CYA to start filling/using the DC until the 16nm chips start getting made en-mass which is, um, now if I've read things right.

Query to BitFury: If I may ask, how many boards & chips are in each tank? Based on the stated 100GH/s a 12Ph mini-farm takes 120k chips. What size wafer is used? What is the actual silicon die size (along with full package size?

The first 2 I got from Bitmain have 12 PCIe connectors. Also no provision for DC on/off unless there is a header inside. Now they all come with 10 PCIe and a DC on/off pigtail  plug w/jumper on it.

Then it becomes a write-off. Hell, stuffing the DC with 28nm chips could be part of their R&D budget...

Just my take on it but: Because one has to start *somewhere* and get the ball rolling. The older chips were on-hand and they have working boards for them. As a bonus they get to test the DC at full load.

Newer more efficient chips/boards are in the pipeline but not on-hand so you either have a DC sitting there empty/partly used or ya plug in what you have right now and upgrade when the new designs get into full production.

Definitely ja. For home users battery chargers not so great either on single phase. 3-ph to DC and things get pretty rosey real fast with ripple dropping like a stone depending on the secondary side configuration and very stable. A delta-wye bridge on 3-phase 60hz give 720Hz ripple at ~ 0.5% pk-pk with no filtering whatsoever. This has not gone unnoticed by data center power providers pushing the high-DC feed to racks solutions.

No I got that part of the equation. Look into the LED strings inside of any high-power lighting LED chip (clear lens, not ones with phosphors, can't see through it) from Cree or Phillips and you see my work there which hit the factory floor in 2007 giving the ability for fit (currently) just over a dozen emitter dies pushing over 25W total into a chip package >2mm². That in turn with the already known to begin with advantages of any series circuit and the major power LED makers were in heaven to start pushing the lighting biz to new limits.

Got am inexpensive LED bulb from Cree, Philips/LumiLEDs, Osram and no doubt others or one of the great blindingly bright LED flashlights boasting a 1-5w Cree emitter in it? You're welcome. Yes other tech advances were involved with gazillions of Other Peoples Money over the years leading to them but my bit in the chip package mfg'ing equation opened the door for it all to come together relatively inexpensively..

Anywho, back to the topic at hand, and question for me just brings up, how they protect against chip failures?
High current Zeners in the chip package (not on die)?

Since as you've said, the actual miner logic needs are pretty damn small, that leaves the door open for more to be happening in the chip package but off the (now 16nm node) ASIC die real estate per-se. Say just using the die real estate to also hold a safe operation fault logic controller for the off-die fault switches. Perhaps active internal power MOSFET switching to take chips out of the string or other failure protection mechanism?

Ease of very low tech battery backup until the diesels kick in is just icing on the cake for this app. Very easy availability of the power bricks is another.

I was thinking more along the line of TDk's  PFE500S-48  http://www.us.tdk-lambda.com/ftp/specs/pfe.pdf good for 48vdc @ 504w each. Given multiple power feeds to the strings, use as many as needed per board. They'd love being in Novec next to the hash boards...

Power bricks like that have been used for telco and such for decades (can you say easy and near-instant battery backup protection?) so there should be a shitload of them available as pulls not to mention new.

Fair point on Cheap hyrdo power in China eg the 3 Gorges Dam but frankly, that vast majority of overall power production production is spoken for. For most heavily industrialized countries, for just one segment - aluminum production - takes one helluva chunk. ref: http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2011/07/15/electricity-consumption-in-the-production-of-aluminium/
"According to Alcoa, the world’s largest producer of aluminium, the best smelters use about 13 kilowatt hours (46.8 megajoules) of electrical energy to produce one kilogram of aluminium; the worldwide average is closer to 15 kWh/kg (54 MJ/kg).

Worldwide production of aluminium in 2010 was 41.4 million tonnes. Using the figures above this means that 621 billion kilowatt hours of electrical energy were used in the production of aluminium. To put that in perspective, the total world production of electrical energy was 20261 billion kilowatt hours, meaning that more than 3% of the world’s entire electrical supply went to extraction of aluminium."

Toss in the other more pressing power needs of China and you get my point.

Ja certainly a lot of low cost power will be available to local (ish) peta-farms but not as much as you think. Outside of being right next to the power plant/dam (the now closed Alcoa smelter site in Washington state comes to mind) the infra over there just does not support someone suddenly deciding to run 25-50MW much less 100MW or more without a helluva lotta prep and time/cash for it to be done.

I like the 48vdc string feed idea. Considering that is very common telco power it makes for using fairly low(ish) cost but utterly reliable POL bricks to drop higher voltage ac/dc feed lines to board usage levels