GPU/FPGA miners have already become the minority with regards to hashing throughput. Sure, I don't have actual numbers, but we're around 60 TH/s at the moment compared to ~20 TH/s a few months ago. Even if the remaining GPU/FPGA miners leave, it would have a minimal affect on BTC. It does concern me though that mining has gone from a hobbyist project to a concentrated business so quickly. More, cheaper mining devices would help push this off a bit.

In multiple threads I've been expressing the need for a smaller cheaper device. We don't anymore $1000-15000 devices, we need more sub-$1000 devices. GPU mining took off because you could drop $150 at a local shop on a HD 5830 and bam, you're making $20-30/month. What happened to that? Avalon pricing is ridiculous, bASIC imploded, BFL has little incentive to deliver on a schedule(they already have your money), and scammers are having a field day.

Is your plan to take pre-orders to develop your hardware or do you have external financing to cover the development process? I only ask as if you are in the second situation then you can accept a trivial($5 USD) non-refundable 'pre-order' to reserve a unit. When the device is completed and functioning as expected you can then open up sales to your 'pre-order' customers and sell the remaining units in a first come first served process.

Also, consider a smaller device. This surge in prices effectively leaves BFL as the only company shipping a sub-$1000 product, of which I imagine there are thousands of customers looking for an alternative in that price range.

From Google translate

Yes, you can contact us at Swedish. Send your questions to info@kncminer.com we will try to answer them as soon as we can. We post otherwise the majority of our posts in English to make it easier for everyone.

Well hopefully if something actually results from this discussion then there'd be an alternative to Avalons and BFL. Sure, the chips from from Avalon but there would at least be a third hardware vendor. If the chips are so expensive that it requires a group of people to purchase the chips and pay for assembly then I suppose you could consider it a group buy.

I wonder how much it would cost to have someone like Enterpoint assemble a device based of Avalon chips. Community provides the PCBs and controller firmware, Avalon provides the chips, Enterpoint assembles them.

I'd really like to see a device hit the market that you could expand in a modular fashion as you become more confident in mining. With each chip providing 275 MH/s, use 8 chips like one of the sub-module's in the Avalon for 2.2 GH/s. Each module would consume ~25w so you could power 3 from a 6-pin PCIe connector. This could be an interesting product to bridge the gap between BFL's Jalapeno and the 66 GH/s Avalon and the 25 GH/s BFL SC. I fear if you aim too small then it won't be that interesting. $25 is a neat price point but if anyone does the math the monthly income would be depressing. Right now a 6.6 GH/s device @ 75w @ 0.11USD/kWh would produce $60 USD/day. That's a significant amount. With 10x difficulty it is still making $42/week. At 100x difficulty it has a 4 year ROI @ $250 USD price point but by the time we hit that difficulty we'll hopefully have more efficient chips. This all however becomes useless if Avalon prices their chips in a similar fashion to their rigs.

Something stackable like Enterpoint's Cairnsmore boards should be something to consider. A parallel data bus using a cheap cable so you can stack a couple units and save cable clutter. Power stacking such that something like a 6-pin PCIe power connector can power three boards would also be great. Learn from Enterpoint's mistakes and include simple things like an on/off switch.

Due to the insane costs of BTC @ $138/BTC, a $100 HD 5830 @ 300 MH/s @ 120w @ $0.11USD/kWh has a ROI of 37 days. This of course is dependent upon the BTC price maintaining such a high price and the difficulty not increasing much more. If the price continues to jump at a similar rate to the difficulty then it may be possible to maintain this ROI. If the price crashes to $40 but difficulty doesn't change much(which it won't due to energy efficient ASICs making up a large chunk of the network) then you are looking at a 195 day ROI. It'd be a weird time to fire up a new GPU rig but you might be able to make some money from it.

*doh* for some reason I thought usb was +12vdc. Oops.

I wonder if BitSyncom would consider distributing 5-10k chips to a trusted individual to serve as their developer contact. "Want to work with our chips? Contact xxx, provide $100 collateral, and we'll ship you 16 chips, the chip pinouts and specifications, and a sample controller to get started. Place an order for 10k chips and your collateral applies towards that order."

I will agree that I do not posses the skill set to develop an ASIC. Given past experiences with VHDL I suspect I could at least create a design that that implements BTC's hashing algorithm but I would have no clue how to make the jump from a wad of code to a hardware implementation of my design. From what I understand, a fully unrolled core is simpler to design so I'd go with that to start. At the end of the day I could give you a gate count for my implementation but I imagine someone like ngzhang would know more tricks to optimize the design by removing redundant components and increase the maximum frequency of the design. At the end of the day that's why he works and builds hardware while I tinker with higher level languages.

I do not troll. If I trolled I'd have given you numbers that sounded believable but were full of crap 

Power consumption = amps * volts. Avalon's power consumption at the wall, through the PSU, is ~620w @ 120v, so 5.16 amps @ 120v. The PSU converts that down to +12vdc to feed each of the three modules, figuring ~80% efficiency let's just call that 500w of +12vdc. This is 41.6 amps of +12vdc. Now each module has groups of chips fed by a +12vdc to +1.2vdc converter to feed the cores. ~500w @ +12vdc divided by 240 chips = ~2w per chip BEFORE the losses of the +12vdc to +1.2vdc converter. Those are usually incredibly efficient, let's call it 95%, so 475w of +1.2vdc, 395 amps.

I'm sure I'm butchering all the math here with calculating PSU efficiencies and such but this shows 1.979 watts @ +1.2vdc or 1.64 amps per chip.

I hope this makes sense to you. With these numbers, 3 of their chips, which provides (63,000/240)*3=786MH/s could be powered by a USB port providing 0.5 amps @ +12vdc. Call it 2 chips to give a nice buffer under the 0.5 amp limit and you have a neat little device. It won't generate crap for BTC though.. better off targeting something in the 5-10 GH/s range.

You are likely to get not answer due to 1) nobody outside of those companies know the answer 2) those companies aren't likely going to reveal that answer 3) you come off as foolish and uneducated. Regardless of what financial resources you have, you appear to be using this forum in an attempt to understand how one goes about building an ASIC that hashes. This does not bode well for your endeavor, if it is anything more than a scam. Perhaps instead you should configure a FPGA to understand the process and then proceed from there? There are a few FPGA designs scattered across the web to help you get started.

huehuehuehue I don't care what is happening in Brazil. Countries do not matter in this dispute. Take your BTC and stop trying to scam your way into a money printing machine.

Holy shit, rudrigorc2 should be slapped with a scammer tag right now. I'm surprised logic fails to overcome his greed.

The only cards that have given me troubles are my HD 5970s. Invariably one of the cores will just die. Considering how old they are and how irrelevant they have become I just pull the card and add it to the stack of dead 5970s. I'm ready for some no maintenance ASIC machines.

No clue, forever if Avalon never actually sells any chips. From what everyone said about FPGAs I imagine a skilled person or two could whip up a PCB in short order. No clue what would be required to interface with the chips, likely an FPGA running some interfacing software. You would only be able to mine alt-coins that are forks of the BTC protocol.

I regret not picking up more Cairnsmore1 nodes  For CairnsmoreNext I can't afford 1 TH/s at Avalon prices. I might be interested in 1 TH/s at or (ideally) under BFL prices. Depending on when this launches, 1 TH/s might actually be worth so little that I could purchase a few. Look forward to seeing what you guys release.

I have zero experience in testing ASICs but I wish somebody that did have experience could step in and explain this process. I would imagine that testing the chips would involve confirming that the logic that was implemented in hardware is yielding the result that you want (1 + 1 = 2). I imagine there are also other tests like voltage and temperature sensitivity(450 MHz requires 1.2v but 425 MHz only requires 1.05v, but if the core temp exceeds 67C it requires 1.15v) but how difficult is this? My understanding is that a BTC implementation in hardware can be simply tested for correctness by feeding in a known input and comparing it to a known output.

If my understandings are correct, BFL could at least have some tangible results such as "We've achieved 2 GH/s per chip and we are working to ramp up to our target of xxx GH/s. Stay tuned for exciting overclocking potential!". Or hell "We've managed to get one of the xxx 'hashing engines' functional and we're tuning things to bin our chips." I know they mentioned a few weeks ago they managed something like 250 MHz, those details are useful and would quell the angry mob.

Why aim so low? A 10 GH/s device based on Avalon chips running at the same frequency as in their unit would utilize 37 of their chips @ roughly 60w of power consumption. Price that around $200-250 USD and compete with BFL's Jalapeno. At current prices, 10x difficulty(66,958,260) and 60w consumption you are looking at 0.0751 BTC/day or $5.85 USD/day(after power @ $0.15/kWh). That gives you a 45 day pay-off period for what is effectively a moderately priced consumer electronic.

I imagine such a unit would sell more easily than the full-blown Avalon due to much easier to accept pricing. Even at their old price of $1500 USD, that was no small bill to pay compared to $200-250. Just something to consider.

Had you spread those 4 periods around this would have been so much easier to comprehend. Also, for one who has been mining for 2 years you'd think you would realize a gold rush when it hit you in the face. Don't complain if you can't afford a shovel.