Only a heap of Avalon 6 chips so far for Kilo's commissioned project.

But, folks are working on BitFury to pitch-in with the Community aspect of it by lower the MOQ for this project. After all, they DO keep on talking about helping to spread and decentralize BTC along with helping grow the Community to do it...

By how much BitFury or any other 14/16nm miner chip maker helps or even if at all remains to be seen.

You still get to use your PI's. The boards would plug into a USB hub or ports on a computer running CGminer, the computer connects to the 'net. Can be an old laptop, an el'cheapo fanless Atom(R), or a PI. Anything that will run CGminer and has USB and LAN ports.

If you have one a surge suppressor is always first in line with the PDU or power strip or UPS plugged into it.

Nor I for a BTC Community miner. If the failed WASP project teaches anything it is to stay focused on 1 thing at a time whenever possible.

I've mentioned this idea before in other threads: Ever think of selling them to hotels/spa resorts/ day-spa's where warm to hot water is used in abundance? Things like heated pools and spa tubs. Since they are heated anyway, why not offset their electric cost used to heat with btc income? I mean, typical 'safe' maximum water temps are 120F and since all those applications use constant circulating water the ASICS would love that.

For temp control, have the miners supply enough BTU's to satisfy say 80% of the needed average heat input with temp controlled final heaters leading to the pools to supply the rest as--needed.

Got the notice from Bitmain that my 2x batch 10 miners have shipped. I should have them Monday and hopefully sans any UPS broker fees this time...

What crappy chip ID stenciling.. Looks almost like they found a chip packaging house that normally does counterfeit chips.
That said, would be nice if they show up for us.

Competition for us would be great but rather depends on the pricing model the mfgr's are wanting to follow. It's a slippery slope between what market will bear (good profits) and Consumer electronics pricing with next to nil profits.

Once the various new chips come out and get any needed batch-2 tweaks it will only take 1 vendor to decide to sell a near loss to kill the others.

Software no but I'll see what links to design articles re high-speed design and PDN considerations to watch for I can pull off of my computer at work manyana..

My guess is that the 'snakey' lines are parallel coms of some sort and the bendy bits are to make sure the traces are the same length so signal propagation times are the same on all lines. Also note the lack of 90-deg corners aside from in the bendy bits. With 90-deg corners a trace is wider across the diagonal of the corner and that creates an impedance disruption in the transmission line at those points.

EDIT: As promised
Damn good one on PCB routing and how it has changed http://electronicdesign.com/what-s-difference-between/what-s-difference-pcb-routing-then-and-now

Reflections and transmission lines http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1280937

On EMI in general http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1280798

On PDN design considerations http://powerelectronics.com/power-electronics-systems/five-things-every-engineer-should-know-about-pdn

Buck converter design http://powerelectronics.com/dc-dc-converters/buck-converter-design-demystified

Another on EMI in general http://machinedesign.com/motion-control/eliminating-emi-motion-systems

As for articles on stripline layout tips.. most of what I know is from decades of reading on it/working with it.

Er, SideHack and I were just discussing them early this morning... Get out of our minds!!!
the pic of the  BitFury 48 chip board is pretty but considering all those traces are address and data coms lines that is just begging for trouble from crosstalk and depending on the actual speed the coms to each chip are, signal reflection. Problematic but usable with careful termination at both ends of the traces but shorter is better and easier to push to higher speeds.

Think it is the pic of the 12v boards that looks far better. Coms multiplexers in the middle of chip groups keeping the data lines short to/from the ASICS.

As for air cooling.. so far pics from like the B-11 are showing just backside cooling. History repeating itself? We've see how long that lasts. Soon direct contact topside cooling of the chips is showing up.... Now if they can get away with it and the chips are actually only slightly warm to the touch with just cooling through a big thermal resistor called the circuit board -- then I'm impressed. Until then...

Oh, KNK: Thanks for repointing me to the PDF's (again) http://dl.bitfury.com/28nm/pdf/ dunna know how I missed them. Leave a lot out to really do it such as coms protocols but also answered a few question I had about the BitFury boards - mainly WTF was that big loop structure? Is RFID tag to identify boards in the tanks. or at any other stage when board ID is needed.

No 2 different things although PF does impact efficiency.

Power Factor is how well the load compares to a purely resistive load which is a PF of 1.0. A purely resistive load has current draw exactly in-phase with the voltage.

Toss in capacitance or inductance eg. the cap inputs to a switching supply or a filter choke and current then either leads or lags behind voltage. Normally not an issue for users but when you start running heavy loads like several 10's of kw -- then the power grid starts to complain because the out of phase current draw will start to become much higher that what the average current reflects.

PF can either be passively or actively corrected in a PSU. Passive correction works at the expense of overall efficiency, active control is more efficient but costs more to implement.

EDIT: All about PF http://powerelectronics.com/power-electronics-systems/back-basics-power-factor-and-why-we-correct-it

Of course they aren't selling 28nm anymore. But the website on their 16nm chips talks of using the same communications as their prev gen (28nm) chip. So... why not at least release that info for folks to chew on until the 16nm chip is seen running in quantity outside of a lab or trade show demo.

And therein lies the problem.
a. How many chips does that buy and what is the delivery schedule?
That right there is main thing that matters to anyone considering designing/building a miner.

b. Very few if any in the Community here at least  -note the big 'C' - have that kind of disposable coin to fill the MOQ. Those that do most likely will not run it as an eventual open-source venture.

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.