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I was asking for future REFERENCE.
It is a fair question to ask at this point as many are in the fish or cut bait boat right now so a little heads up on the timing of the decision be nice? 1 week 2 weeks?
As he has planned to do the overclock TESTS... see the git hub read me I don't think this is too much of burden.
Given we have a potential of 450 Mh/s top end on the chips this is not something we can let twist in the wind for too long it is a critical decision so time frame on it be nice.
No offense taken I am doing everything I can to help move this along any way I can trust me this I am not asking to slow the process down I am asking to put some perspective for many of us who are coming closer to getting our BOM lined up in the next 2 weeks. At some point we will have to make orders and given this little bump it is better to know now how much longer we need to wait on this. I am patient I just think the question should be asked and if we get a response ok if not ok.
No one wants to start ordering until we have the data in I agree, but we also should have some hint on when to expect this critical decision sorry but it has to be asked. i would have asked in PM but this seems to warrant a reply here in thread.
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So, Yifu says he prices Batch2/Batch3 and chips not according to their manufacturing cost, but based on profitability calculated by estimated difficulty. And that's why he is offering a refund to Batch3 because the shipment has been delayed and the difficulty has risen significantly.
So if the prices are based on difficulty, why doesn't the chips price go down every day/week? He should keep reducing the prices for new chip orders based on the increasing difficulty!
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Sad to see this go sideways...
I think BKKCoins was clear in his warnings to everyone to "wait" till he had a working prototype. Given what we know of overclocking right now design changes are going to happen hopefully that means stability and minor changes in the BOM only.
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Start a coop and buy everything at cost and have everything fabricated and shipped at cost for members.
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I've got a feeling we're going to see some interesting K16 cooling solutions being created to get more than 4.5GHs out of each unit...
Psst... ask Zefir... he has a design I believe that will be shared open source for a water block. Given that the Avalon seems to be right as rain with some great numbers should be great for Klondikes. |
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What is the chip capable of 350 Mh/s or more?
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What are your thoughts regarding powering the bricks? One big PSU or individual ones for each klego (pain to power up...)?
A K16 will use around 32W, so a K64 will need about 128W each (with 4 leads). They're designed to take a PCIe 6 pin connector much like a GPU. I would guess that you could run a K64 off each PCIe lead from the PSU with splitters to feed each of the 4 sections. I haven't gone to check the specs but they would handle something like that. I wouldn't have a problem running 4x K64 off my 600W supply. I used to run 3 GPUs at 500W without any issues. I'd say you're better off going that route than using crappy low wattage power adapters for each board, or section of board. Like with GPUs stick with solid reliable PSU units like Corsair, preferably high efficiency Gold (90%) rated. With overclocking potentials and the small change in the BOM that can allow for it on the K16 what would the watts for K16 and K64 be with this minor change? K16 = 38.4W ? K64 = 153.6W? When do you think you will decide on this change / no change? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=242423.msg2572272#msg2572272was wondering how long it'd take people to notice ( and more importantly share the constant that we've released on github.)
the number you are all aiming for is 450 of course, that's not really possible on just air cooling.
`Yifu G. | Avalon ASIC Reference Design Release |
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NEWS FLASH!!! NEWS FLASH!!!
My K16 is hashing with 1 chip.
It's not giving a correct result nonce yet but I'm almost 99% sure that's due to errors in precalc code or maybe I'm shifting in word order backwards.
I soldered an ASIC on the board this morning and spent all day twiddling this and that, mostly getting the clock config right. Then bamm I saw something that looked like nonce bits coming out but they were stunted little bits trying desperately to reach high. But the twinkle was enough and I went through the Avalon reference design again to check and realized I'd not used the correct pull-up value for the result lines. Somehow I f'd up and spec'd 100k resistors instead of 470R. So I quickly removed them and soldered in some 1K that I had here. And the bits sprung forth to their full heights. I was totally excited and hopping around my work bench. Even my wife was in to see what the big commotion was about.
So... next step, test the UART receiver, and muck with the send data until the right nonce comes back.
BTW I'm running at half clock b/c no heat sink attached yet. The chip gets slightly warmish to the finger. With only one chip and half clock you have to set the scope trigger and hold the probes for a while until a nonce is found. I counted about 4-8 seconds but of course it depends on what point it is in it's cycle. One chip at half clock (128MHz) would be about 33 seconds for a full sweep.
Brilliant! |
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Anything that can steady your hand and rest it allowing for consistent movement might speed things up given you have a vacuum tip right? Much easier.
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Given that this can be tested and determined to work the # 2 solution is really the best way to move forward given the overall concerns of those interested in this project. Time, difficulty and the costs involved can all be addressed simply with the #2 option. Keeping it as it is now will lead to an earlier "stale" date for the K16 or K64 board itself and that means a greater loss to BKKCoins overall if people simply stop ordering boards and paying him a royalty.
Clearly the best option is stability with the ability to overclock. Remember as an open source hardware project someone could easily do this with a slight revision and undercut BKKCoins and that is unfortunately a concern we need to be aware of given that many people have already JUMPED the gun and produced boards before a prototype. I won't be jumping ship to anyone else even if we are stuck with the current variant I am not sure about the rest of the people here though and I want to be sure that BKKCoins is rewarded for all this effort. I worry with other projects being less than fair and jumping on the design yet again. We as group should not be held back by others like this but we also have to be proactive and protect BKKCoins investment.
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Unfortunately when I started the design I hadn't heard anything about over clocking Avalons and didn't design that in. I added some head room on the power supply just out of safety. I'm not aware of any higher current easy to swap regulator solution so the 3 options I see are:
1. Just place 14 chips / board. The wasted 2 chip board space isn't much of a loss.
2. Scrub the extra power connector behind the PCIe and add a IR3897 9A reg there to supply 4 of the end chips. This would cost a bit extra for parts - rough guess, about $5 maybe.
3. As #2 but extend the board by about 2cm and add 4 more chips, plus a full 16A IR3895 reg behind the PCIe conn. This would supply 6 chips, with 2 of those taken from current 16, making a 20 chip board. This would cost only a bit more than #2 due to higher board cost and the parts being a bit more costly, rough guess, about $8 maybe, but a more radical design change due to heat sink size also being different.
Another data point - the IR3895 over current protection kicks in at 18A minimum, so how well it behaves at max load probably depends a lot on how well it's cooled. Also, some of the reported power use in the other thread is for control board, 3.3V supply and fans so it could be somewhat less for actual ASIC power.
I'd vote for number #2 as that seems a simple solution. No radical change. Parts swap and a little more in price. Seems like the best route. Again if we can chip in for this redevelop or board order let us know. And in all seriousness heat sinks can be easily redesigned and as for anyone that did a mass production run already that is just foolish given that BKKCoins clearly warned everyone to WAIT till he had a working board. I might add can the K64 have the additional IR3895 9A and the K16 retain the power connector? That way those who are wanting the same design because they have already heavily produced or lined up production for these prototype boards can jerry rig their units for 14 chips etc and those who are looking to maximize overclock etc and build farms can have this solution in the K64 boards? I do not think that 14 chips on a 16 chip board is a solution given the simple #2 solution. 282 >>> 350 is a significant jump especially when we are talking 1000s of chips. I really think that those of us who are in groups or have larger orders need to have this boost. The potential of 68 mhz per chip adds up and really shouldn't be ignored given the design and layout of the Cairnsmore 3 which is delayed but could be available in a few months. We really need this sort of change so that Klondikes are not a one off novelty and give us all an advantage. Waiting patiently for the decision. That extra $5 in board cost can mean faster ROI given the difficulty jumps. |
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Any rough ETA of our chips?
I need to order some stuff soon just need a rough guess.
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My personal oppinion is that you should consider the overclocking in this stage of development and change some elements on the fly if needed for K16
I agree to look at overclocking headroom early. I believe the most important factor in deciding which avalon platform to use is which one is available first. Then, immediately, comes which platform can overclock. This would even be more of a priority than the price for the board, as the chips are a lot mor expensive and the platform will cost in the same ballpark. You people know how fast time runs in bitcointalk. I don't think a lot of avalon-miners with no overclock option will be sold just one month after first shipment. BKKCoins, many people would go insane in your position. Hats off to you for staying sane! :-) Ente Agreed also. If you need extra cash or support for rapid redevelopment in this direction please let us know. We are keen on being ahead of the curve in terms of overclock so we can run these boards longer before they are crushed by faster chips. |
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Not an important question really.
Just sit back and wait. Just like everyone else. Why get all verklempted?
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We have found a fabricator in Batam as well. We will be posting more information about their prices soon.
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Kami telah menemukan fabricator di Batam juga. Kami akan posting informasi lebih lanjut tentang harga mereka segera.
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No on site pick up.  Oh well. |
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BitSyncom, I know you don't give a fuck about customer service, but it would take less than a minute to answer this.
Pfft. Patience grasshopper. |
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I wish I could double check everything and help "proof" read all the changes and make sure the new additions to the files are error free, clean and ready to go. Those lurking and following the thread with some experience in this can you go through BKKCoins changes and make sure he has posted corrected files?
I think if we can help him double check things in that way it would go a long way to getting a finished working board that everyone will be able to produce.
+1 to everyone helping and I hope we all can do whatever we can to help BKKCoins push this to the finish line.
Let us know how we can help proof the work BKKCoins.
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I have a single rail 650 watt OCZ PSU ( http://ocz.com/consumer/psu/zt-series-550w-750w-power-supply/specifications). It only has 2 PCIe outputs. Using the proper guage wire, can't I just chain splitters to run multiple K16 boards? How many boards do you think I could run off each PCIe output? 8??? I'm trying to figure out how this can be done and what gauge wire I need to use. You have 54A @ 12V total on a single rail. But I doubt you can pull that on the PCIe cables alone. You would want to check what gauge wire they used and look up how many Amps is safe. They expect you to use the 12V over several cables - 24pin ATX, 4pin CPU, Molex cables, SATA and PCIe. All of those could be adapted to provide several PCIe connectors spreading the load over the various outputs available on the PSU. With 54A and being conservative for safety you may limit yourself to 12 boards @ 4A each, total 48A or about 89% max load. I would expect on average lower draw than 4A so that fits with optimum efficiency at 80% load for your PSU. Above 12, I would recommend either higher power PSU or 2 PSU to share the load. Everyone seems to figure this stuff differently so this is just my rough estimate. ***** K16 took me 6 hours to populate by hand and is about to go into the oven after I run a couple oven tests. Jeez, there is a lot of caps on that board. Can I interest you in a Pick Place Machine? |
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Crainsmore1 [ 800 MH/s ] expensive as well. For 10BTC I can get 5 block erupters [ 5x330=1650 MH/s ]
Correct me if I am wrong (it's late) but your block erupters are costing 10 BTC ~= £653 for 1.65GH/s. = £395 per GH/s. How is that better than £80 per GH/s for a major piece of engineering? We are not aiming to be the cheapest with this equipment as some of the supposed maybe competative offerings are way too cheap to be viable as professionally engineered and manufactured products. A rig on this scale needs a lot more engineering than a lash up design of a few chips. That said we think it is good value for this sort of rig. There are not many offerings at the 0.3-0.5 TH/s size range. This is technology that will build 100Th/s rigs and not just hang out of a laptop USB port. +1 HERE HERE! Can we direct ship you 10K in chips for discount runs? |
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