SFARDS: Results of “Speaking IMHO”- The Best Miner is…Contest [Update 26/5/2015]

[Sfards]

The trophy has been sent to everyone's wallet address, please kindly check it. If you have any problem, feel free to PM us.

Update 26/5/2015

Results of “Speaking IMHO”- The Best Miner is…Contest

Gentlemen and gentlemen, thank you so so so much for your enthusiastic participation and brilliant inspiration!
It is a little pity that in the second day of the contest, the thread was moved to a “Right”section. Many of you don't even have the chance to see it, not to mention bringing any great ideas.
But we still inspired by many amazing ideas over hundreds replies!
In the process of selecting awards, you know your wonderful thoughts brought us a fierce debate. It was a tough call. Ladies from marketing loved the strange and creative ideas, which might represents future Miner and potential of Mining industry. R&D team of course paid more attention to technical feasibility and practicability. After several rounds of deadlock, we finally selected the following 3 awards. Applauds to the winners!

1.The Most Creative Answer Reward:  1 BTC
Winner:   OgNasty        Floor No. 33#
Value: “Lava Lamp”, as soon as this idea appeared, it won our marketing girls’ hearts. Which also got positive professional comments from R&D team. Make use of the heat coming from dual mining of SF3301, it might be melting the waxes in the Lava Lamp!

http://i59.tinypic.com/28v56om.png
 

2.The Most “Controversial” Design Award:  100 LTC
Winner:   erre        Floor No. 39#
Value:  This is really a controversial and inspirational idea, numerous replies prove it. The possibility to implement is another controversial topic.

http://i62.tinypic.com/2rzcvg0.png
 

3.The Most Market Appealing Design Award:  100 LTC
Winner:   J4bberwock        Floor No. 11#
Value: Winner understands the BTC Mining industry; and amazingly has strong knowledge of software and hardware technology.

http://i57.tinypic.com/2nuksjr.png
 

In order to express thanks to all of your participation, we also selected a critic’s award each day from 12th May to 17th May. Since the thread was moved, we didn’t get as much as expected, but we will still offer the trophy as we promised, congratulations to the lucky guys!

Critics Award List:        Trophy: 10 LTC
Winner:                   Floor No.                     Date
RadekG                    50#                          12th May
notlist3d                  70#                          13th May
RadekG                    77#                          14th May
diodio1                     85#                          15th May
erre                         93#                          16th May
erre                        101#                         17th May



General Award list:             Trophy: 1000 Dogecoins
 
louise123
Lucax
Meech
NeuroticFish
notlist3d
OgNasty
pajak666
philipma1957
pinhead666
quakefiend420
Rabinovitch
RadekG
rizkyhiw
sambiohazard
Searing
SFMiner
sirslayer
starsoccer9
Tad3j
Testing Crypto
thevictimofuktyranny
UnklAdM
Zich
 

In addition, we also got the result of Contest 2: Joining In Facebook. Same congratulations to the following three winners:

1.   Most “liked”reply                 Trophy: 100 LTC
Winner:    Sebastian Pająk              Liked:  42

http://i60.tinypic.com/fbdv9h.png
 
2.   Second “liked”reply              Trophy: 50 LTC
Winner:    Priyatama Mitrajati              Liked:  39

http://i62.tinypic.com/33kx81u.png


3.   Third “liked”reply                Trophy: 20 LTC
Winner:    Priyatama Mitrajati              Liked:  21

http://i61.tinypic.com/2lnz8k1.png


General award list:            Trophy: 1000 Dogecoins          
 
Achmad Afandi
Alexander Riku
Dheddy Il Capitano
Hery Luiz Nazario
József Bertus
Oki Meilisyanto
Ozora Najwa Alvaro
Priyatama Mitrajati
Radek Gronský
Rocker Anfield
Sebastian Pająk
Tadej Brunšek

Please note some guys in the above list haven’t leave their Dogecoin add yet, please remember to do it.

Sfards reserves the rights to interpret the above statement.


Update 13/5/2015


Sfards upload the latest programs of SF3301 chips. Welcome to download the resources on GitHub.

More details: https://github.com/sfards/ASIC-SF3301


Update 18/5/2015

Dear all,

Thank you for all participation! Our contest is over now. We will calculate all results and publish within a week. Thanks again!


Update 12/5/2015

Thank you so so so much for your enthusiastic participation. On the first day of our contest online, we have seen a lot of excellent product concept, some fit for family mining, some fit for big scale farm mining, and there are still some realistic proposal such as a little device of bitcoin full node(Like BITSEED); In addition, we also find some interesting conceptual products such as Tumble dryer, Lava Lamp,ocean wave create electricity miner, hashing the power wasted at your local gym and etc.

We hope more and more people comment on each other's ideas to add details of the products and even to make the ideas can be really developed.

Base on these, we decided to add an special award. You can quote an idea which you interested in and leave your comment there, we will select one critics award per day from the comments on the day, the trophy is 10LTC. Time is from today to the end of this contest, and there will be 6 Critics Awards waiting for you!


PS: Just remember, all of you guys can also join our second contest in Facebook, let your friends help you forward, and there are still a lot of rewards waiting for you!



Update 11/5/2015

http://i59.tinypic.com/2ln7jhk.jpg

SF3301, latest 28nm chip, low power consumption, dual-mining ability, which gives future miner more exciting feature, brings infinite possibility to industry.
Aside traditional steel box-style miner product, we are looking for all different designs of miner product. We eagerly hope you join us and show your imagination!

Such as:
“ I am a practial investor, my ideal miner has low power consumption, big mining ability……”, good!
“I am passionate in my life, the miner I am looking for is a magic machine which can be used to keep pets, grow flowers, feed my cat and dog…a all-in-one home appliance machine……”, cool!
“I am not a rule-follower, I prefer a miner flush……”, awesome!
“ I wanna a miner drone, even a miner rocket……”, excellent!

Contest 1: Post Your Idea In Thread on Bitcointalk

Contest Time: May 11th – 17th  12:00 pm, Bitcointalk.org time

All participants can reply under this thread, using text or picture to describe the best design of the ideal miner in your heart, one sentence description is OK, but the more details, the better. One ID can join more than one time, each post shall be more than 20 words, repetitve post are not valid, copying from other people’s idea are not valid.
Please leave your DogeCoin Address in your reply, and if you are lucky enough to get our Floor Award, please leave your Litecoin Address too.

Trophy:
1.   General Award:
Each participant will get 1000 Dogecoin.
2.   Winner: ( We will choose the following winners from all participants)

• The most creative answer reward: 1 BTC.
• The most “controversial” design award: 100 LTC.
• The most market appealing design award: 100 LTC

All the results will be published within a week after the contest ended and the rewards will be sent together.
Sfards reserves the rights to interpret the terms of this contest.

Contest 2: Joining In Facebook

Contest Time: May 11th – 17th  12:00 pm, GMT+8 (Beiijing Time)

Follow Sfards’ Facebook account https://www.facebook.com/sfardstech , share the thread of this contest, describe the ideal miner design in your heart and @sfards. Each facebook account can only participate once, description shall be more than 10 words, copying from others’ ideas is invalid.
Please leave your DogeCoin and LTC Address

Trophy:
1.   General Award :
Each participant will get 1000 DogeCoin

2.   Most Popular Award:
The idea you posted gets the most “like” will get 100 LTC, second will get 50 LTC, third will get 20 LTC.
All the results will be published within a week after the contest ended and the rewards will be sent together.
Sfards reserves the rights to interpret the terms of this contest.

[1714796080]

1714796080

[1714796080]

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[1714796080]

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[Dexter770221]

Better lower sample chips price, then will be more ideal miners based on your chip.
Or, better give as an estimate price of chip in bulk quantities (1000pcs+)

[notlist3d]

The most market appealing entry:

I am an accountant at heart counting my debits and credits, my ideal miner brings ROI back using lower electricity and packing more of a punch.  One that is fairly priced, and not made to break customers pocket books.  It's makers realize the hard mining conditions for today's miners and price it with a price that is fair for both miner and the miner makers.   And one that brings new tech to the table, something that makes electricity ratio much less.  A chip that is versatile and lets me underclock in my normal conditions and run on as low of electricity as possible.  But in those special times I need it I can overclock it to a significant amount without the miner stressing a bit.   A miner that is so great not only miners want to buy it, other manufactures want to copy it!

Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
LTC: LhjeiSU5cgXJGPUGa3nTjjqLoa2E4HFRDx

[Zich]

I would like the miner come with button to activate power save mode, normal mode and turbo mode.
The setting for that 3 mode should be adjustable via web interface.




Doge: DP2DPsCrmXjrNoGEyc412FRsHsEpEmX3JB
LTC : LXL1QvtXamjoD55eAeK2YfJ3bWv9UcKiwR

[Zich]

I would like the miner have dual band wireless router (2.4GHz & 5GHz) capability, have usb port for connecting 3G/ 4G USB modem & usb storage. We should be able to disable the miner & let the router run alone. Probably miner & controller+router on different board.

Doge: DP2DPsCrmXjrNoGEyc412FRsHsEpEmX3JB
LTC : LXL1QvtXamjoD55eAeK2YfJ3bWv9UcKiwR

[notlist3d]

The most “controversial” design entry  

I want a device that does not need special boards, limited to just it's needs.  I want a miner that listens to my needs of it being easy to expand and fit my needs.    I want that main board to be built from a Raspberry Pi and miner to work via usb.  Make the miner upgradable!   Have where in this case I can slip in a new board of chips.  Out with old gen and in with new gen!  Support for this miner promised for generations to come!  I want the miner to be able to expand with ease, don't lock me into a certain Terahash of power.  Let me choose and pick how many miners/boards I want to connect to the easy to use Raspberry Pi base!  

Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
LTC: LhjeiSU5cgXJGPUGa3nTjjqLoa2E4HFRDx

[ElGabo]

0.3W/ghs at wall

10th/miner

ROI in 2 months, with calculated 10% increase each difficulty adjustment


 

[notlist3d]

"most creative" entry

I want a miner that is not just some box that sit's on a shelve.  I want to interact with it, see how it's doing. Don't just show some device stats page like others, tie it in with software to support most popular pools.  Show right there it's luck, amount mined at pool level! Don't let design stop at being locked into the "standard" miner. Give us more connectivity.  

Imagine waking up checking your miner seeing it's having good luck at the pool, right there in miner I tell it overclock!  Get in on this luck.  Imagine a smarter miner.  Not some dumb box.  One that I can tell if pool luck is up automatically overclock! If luck is down go for efficiency!  I want it to do the mining for me!

A status indicator of I can see visually.  It does not have to be a fancy lcd screen, but give me some feedback when i look at the miner walking past!

Give up the confines that miners seem to stick to, be more,  be better!

Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
LTC: LhjeiSU5cgXJGPUGa3nTjjqLoa2E4HFRDx

[Sfards]

Better lower sample chips price, then will be more ideal miners based on your chip.
Or, better give as an estimate price of chip in bulk quantities (1000pcs+)

Sorry for that, since our first batch of sample chip with a high production cost, after mass production, be sure the price will be down a lot.  
Are you developer? Welcome to join this contest and share your idea in this thread.

[Bicknellski]

I am a realist, so the most controversial design entry would be the following.  

Don't make the next miner to sell to the home users keep them for yourself or larger B2B customers who have over 1$ USD million to invest.

Create a massive farm, using the cheapest electricity in China somewhere in Inner Mongolia typically using 'abandoned' or 'decommissioned' coal fired plants that are fired up just for your farm, and then mine only for larger investors or your company until you ROI massively so you can afford the better smaller more efficient chip and miner you are planning next. Then you can sell those older units in about 2 months to lower level consumers and B2B clients with smaller orders AS IS! Oh and make it an 8 week pre-order for those small home miners and B2B anyone with less than 100K to spend on miners.

Then rinse and repeat that process until you have amassed a great fortune and pretty much sucked all the smaller miners money out of the market all the while increasing the hashrate faster and faster while keeping all the more efficient miners under your control during the process mining for yourself SFRADS.

 

Size: Doesn't matter.
Power: Doesn't matter.
Price $$$: Whatever the market will bear. Someone will still buy up all your older units at cost.


====

Already liked you on Facebook.


Doge: Release to SFARDS upon request.
Litecoin: Release to SFARDS upon request.
Bitcoin: Release to SFARDS upon request.

[J4bberwock]

Ok, I've been working for almost 1 year now when I had time to try and imagine the next mining revolution.

First steps were made with the GC3355 chip in mind, that's why I had most of the schematics ready for the SF3301.

We had CPU, we had GPU, we had FPGA, and now ASICS, next step will be "waste heat recycling":

to replace most of the heating elements needed in house / offices by boards populated with asics.

-Tumble dryer will be one of my first trials later this year since I have 2 of them with defective heating element.
They only need 2 settings for power: 1000w/2000w, so easy to do with a 2 boards setup.

-Space heaters have been discussed for some time now, and I'm sure they will be the first commercial step to this revolution.

-Central heating can even be imagined with a large liquid cooled unit, with heat exchanger to use in a similar way we do with heat pumps, either to replace completely your furnace/boiler, or to help it.

-Low temperature drying is also a good candidate to get potential buyers.

Basically, everywhere you need heat, you could generate it with computing power (and get paid for it) instead of wasting this heat and paying air conditioning to cool down the miners.

Then, we have 2 options:
-selling the units and letting the buyer do whatever he wants with it
-selling the heating units, use the hashing power for cloud mining, and give back some money to the buyer based on the up time / mining revenue.


Doge: D5htmjYnF3i9R29eG5shEFXm1Pm4Woo6S5
LTC: LbkDsxKfznKq8DdVXQkShn2JovD2QGjtv3

[quakefiend420]

Take the Gridseed G-black approach(except for power, give us direct PCIe to the hashing boards please!).  Boards that can be mounted in flexible configurations in various types of chassis and connect to an internal hub via mini or micro USB, no proprietary backplanes that change with each generation or ribbon cables to controllers that can't be upgraded or support more than a hashing board or two.  Keep the mounting points and heatsink requirements the same across several generations so that home miners can buy new hashing boards and reuse the same case/fans/PSUs/heatsinks/USB hubs/etc.  Use a raspberry pi or a beaglebone black for the controller, something easily moddable and hackable/replaceable.  Open source your software, offer rewards for devs doing cool things with it and making new and interesting functionality.  Build a few different types of cases, let miners "build their own" on your website, pick a case, pick 1/2/3 hashing boards, pick air or water cooling, etc etc.

Offer a trade-in program for old hashing boards/miners.  By doing so you will inspire customer loyalty if they know that they can trade up when the new gear comes out.

Make waterblocks that can be attached at the same mounting points as the standard heatsinks and offer a setup with a massive radiator(think car or truck sized) and powerful pump/fan setup.  Make it weather resistant so that home miners can move the heat/noise outside with 10-15 ft of tubing while keeping the miners themselves inside.

That's all I've got right now...

[Searing]

talk to someone at www.bitseed.org incorp an option of a baby miner for fun (with) a bitcoin node device....even if it makes dust..just a chip or two...people would get a kick
out of it and if nothing else it promotes your chip.......something to watch besides the node chug'ing along



(i'm about to find out i suspect why this is a BAD idea in so many ways i suspect)

[Sfards]

0.3W/ghs at wall

10th/miner

ROI in 2 months, with calculated 10% increase each difficulty adjustment


 

Hey come on,  we believe there must have some more funny creations and special miner ideas. Please not only focused on hash rate and consumption, anything interesting will be applauded. 

Have you guys heard 21 Inc? Just look at the following site and you know Sfards wants to explore the same thing. So get involved and it's more interesting than you think!

“Under the company’s new business plan, 21 Inc. will inset ASIC chips for bitcoin mining into such daily devices as routers, gaming consoles, USB battery charges, toasters, set-top boxes and chipsets.”
http://www.coinspeaker.com/2015/05/10/startup-21-inc-wants-to-put-bitcoin-miner-in-toaster-9190/

[ElGabo]

0.3W/ghs at wall

10th/miner

ROI in 2 months, with calculated 10% increase each difficulty adjustment


 

Hey come on,  we believe there must have some more funny creations and special miner ideas. Please not only focused on hash rate and consumption, anything interesting will be applauded.  

Have you guys heard 21 Inc? Just look at the following site and you know Sfards wants to explore the same thing. So get involved and it's more interesting than you think!

“Under the company’s new business plan, 21 Inc. will inset ASIC chips for bitcoin mining into such daily devices as routers, gaming consoles, USB battery charges, toasters, set-top boxes and chipsets.”
http://www.coinspeaker.com/2015/05/10/startup-21-inc-wants-to-put-bitcoin-miner-in-toaster-9190/

Ok sorry!

Running ambient -20C-60C.

Can fit in a 40cmx40cm box, 0db noise and of course an integrated microwave owen.  

And every time when it submit a share, a different nude chick picture come out from it.

[Bicknellski]

This is what we really need from SFARDS and others. But this would kill their own bottom line unless they know they can't compete then it would be very disruptive to all the other big fabs out there.

The only way to break the SFARDS future monopoly in mining would be for SFARDS to produce a chip that would be put into cheap sub $20 miners and bitcoin core node units that would be after market DIY add ons that could be attached to consumer products like a potable and washing hot water heating units these add ons also provide wifi for mining the node and control of the consumer product.

Coffee Miner and Bitcoin Core Node:


Hotwater Miner and Bitcoin Core Node:

Killing two birds with one stone both the core node issue and the distributed mining issue this would be the best solution to future development and distribution of Bitcoin / Altcoins (PoW).

[Sfards]

Do not forget to  leave your DogeCoin and LTC Address in your reply!!! Or we cannot send you the trophy!

The following member please reedit your reply and add your  DogeCoin and LTC Address there.

@ElGabo @Bicknellski  @J4bberwock  @quakefiend420   @Searing  @Bicknellski 

[RadekG]

Ideal miner should re-use heat energy and should be able to scale its power and efficiency - like CPUs and GPUs does, not just underclocking, but also undervolting.

You can simple make heat radiator with shell made from ASIC, but it needs to switch to better efficiency at lower power needed, not just slowering the clock. Also pre-defined times or external pin trigger should switch miner to "efficiency mode" to take an advantage of low price periods (night time). Miners should be passive cooled or very quiet for home use.

High output version of above should have the same key features, but the shell should have heat exchanger with regular pipe connections for central heating. It can also heat warm water, I think 60C is enough for most people, but chips can work at 150C+ (tested).

This is the next step to home miners, without energy re-coupling they can't compete with datacenters.

This thread is for best miner, the electrical concept (such as string design) or ROI or GUI details are not base part of best miner - it is just add-on. ROI will always reflect current diff and price.

Basically, you should divide miners at least for two main segments - home and professional miners. One 4U machine with 10THs+ will be much better even noisy for datacenter, but quiet and small box with pipe connections will be much better for home heating. Small stand-alone "HiFi size" passive or very quiet miner with HDMI output can be very useful for home mining.


Doge: DGsXhaQDQtAC7tbL11SnZdYsaJDXGZR3Sy
LTC: LV64EXaKVgoUyuyo7xxPK1s6WcgfFQCusf

[Rabinovitch]

What can I say about ideal miner?  

1) Not overpriced;
2) Standalone with Ethernet (or two Ethernet) port(s), with possibility to deploy wi-fi (like on antminer S3 controller);
3) It should consist of steel (maybe) chassis and (why not?) plastic side/top/bottom panels to reduce weight and shipping cost. Probably good solution is to use a PC case (like in HashCoins Apollo) - buyer can buy specific case (and maybe the components of cooling system) at his/her local market. And yes - miner should be sold without power supply for the same reason. Someone use ATX PSU, someone use server PSU...
4) The cooling of the chips should be worked over very carefully to provide maximum possible heat dissipation. Customer should not rework it, only in case he is geek.   Ideal miner should be cold and quiet, or at least devs should try to make it cold and quiet.

LTC: LiCzfZvP2oL3kAUR6n8MztkKVPbNMcEL2o
DOGE: D6ggTX66whJ2qvW5DYAezpgC47KQaELJyC

[RadekG]

There is no need for impractical controversal toaster, I think re-use of wasted electric energy is the key. Big datacenters will have always cheaper electricity than home miners.

Why not use peltier coolers to generate electricity from heat? They can cool our miners and produce some energy.


Doge: DGsXhaQDQtAC7tbL11SnZdYsaJDXGZR3Sy
LTC: LV64EXaKVgoUyuyo7xxPK1s6WcgfFQCusf