ASICs - which should you choose?

[organofcorti]

I've written a short post detailing how to estimate an ASIC device's yearly earnings, the time it will take to recoup the initial cost, how long you can can expect to mine profitably with a given device and more. I won't repeat the entire post here, but I've posted a teaser chart below.  Post your own analyses and chart, and help fellow miners figure out which device they should purchase. I look forward to your comments and suggestions either here or at the blog.

http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2012/11/91-asic-choices.html
http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2012/11/92-asic-choices-update-2nd-november.html
http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2012/11/93-more-on-asic-choices.html

[Korbman]

Excellent work! 

You used two of my favorite things when writing up an article; Math and Proof of Work!

I actually didn't know there was such a disparity between device wattage of BFL, Avalon, etc. I'm sure I've seen it around, but it just never stuck with me. I'm glad to see everything compiled into one doc! 

[Morblias]

Tom hasn't released his power usage yet unless I missed it. Where did that 300 watts come from?

[heinz]

On the site it says this 1000 watt psu will power 10 bASIC units. What it doesn't say is if that is the 27 or 54 Gh/s unit.

https://www.bitcoinasic.net/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=54

[niko]

Great work! Life is full of surprises, though - and in this case surprises will turn out to be critical to the outcome. It will all make sense in retrospect.

[MrTeal]

Also, the price and hashrate on the Avalon is wrong, it's $1300 for 66GH/s, with a maximum power draw of 400W.

[psilan]

General consensus is basic 54g is 100W.
You missed another post where the flickr account said it and was then deleted. It may have been wrong, but it's a better confirmation than the psu and assuming the worst for your graphs.

[crazyates]

First of all: Awesome chart! A few things that need to be updated, tho, which all have the potential to change the general outlook of the chart:

1) The Avalon team has confirmed it will run at at least 66GH/s, rather than 60GH/s. 10% speed boost? Hells ya!

2) The Avalon will retain it's $1299 price even after the pre-orders have finished. They will NOT be raising their prices to $1999 like they originally said.

3) The Avalon has confirmed a 400W draw, but they said that that could go down further by the time they ship.

All of those facts can be confirmed in the first post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120184.0

3) We dont have exact power numbers for the bASIC, but 300W is a little high. That number about the 1000W PSU being able to drive 10 bASICs doesn't clarify whether that's the 27 or 54GH/s units, but I'm inclined to think the second. I'm guessing 1000W will power either 10 27GH/s units, or 5 54GH/s units.


End result: Increase the Avalon hash rate, decrease the Avalon price, and swap the Avalon and bASIC power numbers.

[organofcorti]

Thanks for your comments, everyone.

End result: Increase the Avalon hash rate, decrease the Avalon price, and swap the Avalon and bASIC power numbers.

Yes, I think that somewhere in transcribing data I swapped bASIC for Avalon. I also didn't know that Avalon was stand-alone, or that it's hashrate would be increased. Since the first two of these are errors on my part I'll update the figures and post an update tonight.

Please keep posting corrections and any updates to device specs - I don't have much time to spend reading relevant threads.

[psilan]

3) We dont have exact power numbers for the bASIC, but 300W is a little high. That number about the 1000W PSU being able to drive 10 bASICs doesn't clarify whether that's the 27 or 54GH/s units, but I'm inclined to think the second. I'm guessing 1000W will power either 10 27GH/s units, or 5 54GH/s units.

Why would you guess the worst?

He accidentally said 54G was 100W. Deleted reference to it.
Accidentally posted 10 bASIC units would run on a 1000W PSU.

I think it's pretty safe to assume 100W is the aim for bASIC.
60W is the aim for BFL SC 60G.
400W AVALON.

[crazyates]

Why would you guess the worst?

I never actually saw Tom's post that gave rough power numbers, so I'm going off everyone else's claims. As far as why I might come across as a pessimistic, what's the saying: Plan for the Worst and Hope for the Best? I'm going to run my own personal numbers based on the worst case scenarios, but I am more than willing to be proven wrong.

[psilan]

Plan for the Worst and Hope for the Best? I'm going to run my own personal numbers based on the worst case scenarios, but I am more than willing to be proven wrong.

I would just line up everything fairly.
Take what the companies have let out, and use those figures, rather than only doubling Tom's.

[crazyates]

Plan for the Worst and Hope for the Best? I'm going to run my own personal numbers based on the worst case scenarios, but I am more than willing to be proven wrong.

I would just line up everything fairly.
Take what the companies have let out, and use those figures, rather than only doubling Tom's.

I understand what you're saying, but facts leave no room for error. Estimates do. We have no official statement about the final power draw. Rough numbers thrown up and quickly taken down do not count.

[psilan]

Plan for the Worst and Hope for the Best? I'm going to run my own personal numbers based on the worst case scenarios, but I am more than willing to be proven wrong.

I would just line up everything fairly.
Take what the companies have let out, and use those figures, rather than only doubling Tom's.

I understand what you're saying, but facts leave no room for error. Estimates do. We have no official statement about the final power draw. Rough numbers thrown up and quickly taken down do not count.

Going by that logic I would remove bASIC completely! Both 200 and 100W are the same rough numbers.
I'm suggesting 100W is FAR more likely a number since that is how the detail was presented.

[Jutarul]

nice post. Given that the BTC-USC exchange rate at break even and the starting difficulty are perfectly correlated it would make sense to normalize the graphs against that. Which means a plot: Days to break even VS. ($breakeven / average or starting difficulty)

Actually what would be even nicer is to use some combined efficiency measure on the x-axis. Right now the efficiency factors are distributed across different graphs.

[organofcorti]

nice post. Given that the BTC-USC exchange rate at break even and the starting difficulty are perfectly correlated it would make sense to normalize the graphs against that. Which means a plot: Days to break even VS. ($breakeven / average or starting difficulty)

Actually what would be even nicer is to use some combined efficiency measure on the x-axis. Right now the efficiency factors are distributed across different graphs.

I agree these would be good measures, and I did do a few charts along those lines (unpublished). But I think they might mystify most miners, and the idea here wasn't to present charts but to present the math that will allow people to make their own decisions, and to illustrate that with charts.

That being said, I love a pretty contour plot, and I generally prefer them rather than use a synthetic variable (eg I'd prefer a tile or contour plot of starting diff vs exchange rate at break even, colour indicating number of days to break even).

Any preferences? Get them in now and I'll try to do it when I fix my errors tonight.

[Jutarul]

nice post. Given that the BTC-USC exchange rate at break even and the starting difficulty are perfectly correlated it would make sense to normalize the graphs against that. Which means a plot: Days to break even VS. ($breakeven / average or starting difficulty)

Actually what would be even nicer is to use some combined efficiency measure on the x-axis. Right now the efficiency factors are distributed across different graphs.

I agree these would be good measures, and I did do a few charts along those lines (unpublished). But I think they might mystify most miners, and the idea here wasn't to present charts but to present the math that will allow people to make their own decisions, and to illustrate that with charts.

That being said, I love a pretty contour plot, and I generally prefer them rather than use a synthetic variable (eg I'd prefer a tile or contour plot of starting diff vs exchange rate at break even, colour indicating number of days to break even).

Any preferences? Get them in now and I'll try to do it when I fix my errors tonight.

contour sounds interesting. plotting 'starting diff vs exchange rate at break even' may not give you a lot of information since it's strongly correlated. If you want to do a three dimensional graph (which is a contour plot) you'd preferably have 3 independent variables of significance.

Actually I don't really understand why you'd want to use the exchange rate at break even point. AFAIK you should rather use the exchange rate at the time of buying the hardware / pre-order since this factors in opportunity cost. What matters is the time required to recoup the equivalent amount of bitcoins through mining, and this is rather independent of exchange rate (of course low exchange rates at ordering time discourage hardware investments, because more BTC have to be mined...) with the exception of having to sell some BTC for covering for electricity. (actually your post makes no reference to opportunity cost, why?).

A more intuitive graph would be a ROI graph, with the x-axis being the time of operation. the y offset is the initial hardware cost, and the xoffset is the break even point... I didn't see one.

[organofcorti]

nice post. Given that the BTC-USC exchange rate at break even and the starting difficulty are perfectly correlated it would make sense to normalize the graphs against that. Which means a plot: Days to break even VS. ($breakeven / average or starting difficulty)

Actually what would be even nicer is to use some combined efficiency measure on the x-axis. Right now the efficiency factors are distributed across different graphs.

I agree these would be good measures, and I did do a few charts along those lines (unpublished). But I think they might mystify most miners, and the idea here wasn't to present charts but to present the math that will allow people to make their own decisions, and to illustrate that with charts.

That being said, I love a pretty contour plot, and I generally prefer them rather than use a synthetic variable (eg I'd prefer a tile or contour plot of starting diff vs exchange rate at break even, colour indicating number of days to break even).

Any preferences? Get them in now and I'll try to do it when I fix my errors tonight.

contour sounds interesting. plotting 'starting diff vs exchange rate at break even' may not give you a lot of information since it's strongly correlated. If you want to do a three dimensional graph (which is a contour plot) you'd preferably have 3 independent variables of significance.

You misread me. My suggestion was to plot starting diff vs exchange rate at break even vs number of days to break even.

Actually I don't really understand why you'd want to use the exchange rate at break even point. AFAIK you should rather use the exchange rate at the time of buying the hardware / pre-order since this factors in opportunity cost. What matters is the time required to recoup the equivalent amount of bitcoins through mining, and this is rather independent of exchange rate (of course low exchange rates at ordering time discourage hardware investments, because more BTC have to be mined...) with the exception of having to sell some BTC for covering for electricity. (actually your post makes no reference to opportunity cost, why?).

I have no idea how you could possibly include these things without making lots more assumptions. As I mentioned in the blog post I didn't want to make any assumptions about what the exchange rate would be at a given point in time, so it is the independent variable. In order to make sense of this, you have to assume a miner is holding on to all mined coins. Hence the importance of exchange rate at break even point.

As they stand, I think the calculations provide the average miner with a simple method of comparing several different ASICS based only on hashrate, power consumption, assumed starting difficulty and assumed change in difficulty per difficulty period. We can make some educated guesses about these last two assumptions, but not about the exchange rate at a given point in time.

A more intuitive graph would be a ROI graph, with the x-axis being the time of operation. the y offset is the initial hardware cost, and the xoffset is the break even point... I didn't see one.

Post a link to an example and an explanation of the calculations you're talking about and I'll try to make one. Otherwise I've provided a method to calculate the data - go for it!

[BitSyncom]

Avalon is 66Gh/s at $1,299, currently topping out at 400Ws. the reason is we are still finding the good balance between power consumption and speed. which means speed can still go up and power can still go down.

Here are my estimation on the competition's power consumption based on simulation using tools we have at Avalon - do make yourself clear of this fact.

With that said,
from the look of things and information released by Tom, they will be running 100W per module, each module at 27Gh/s, their 54Gh/s rig will be around ~200Ws. ( Yes, I also believe 300 is too high. )

BFL, I expect to reach ~1.5W or more per Gh/s with their 65nm chip. whether they can power their 8 slot board at 7.5Gh/s/7.5W chips each to met their announced specs is a totally another story.

p.s.
been a long time reader of your blog, keep up the good work, some donation has been sent your way.

[organofcorti]

I've written an updated post with the suggested specifications:

http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2012/11/92-asic-choices-update-2nd-november.html

I've attempted to stick to consensus, so I wont update again until there's new published information about device specs or I've made another transcription error.