Set-up to run up to 25 ASIC units

[bitcoindaddy]

If you mean like see them in BFGMiner or something, they won't all fit on a screen, no matter how big it is (I tried for a screenshot) ... the text got so tiny as to be illegible and it still only had about 120 on the screen.

Too bad, that would have made some great miner-porn.

[Xfinity]

If you mean like see them in BFGMiner or something, they won't all fit on a screen, no matter how big it is (I tried for a screenshot) ... the text got so tiny as to be illegible and it still only had about 120 on the screen.

Too bad, that would have made some great miner-porn.

Yeah, and a great wallpaper as well .

[crazyates]

If you mean like see them in BFGMiner or something, they won't all fit on a screen, no matter how big it is (I tried for a screenshot) ... the text got so tiny as to be illegible and it still only had about 120 on the screen.

Too bad, that would have made some great miner-porn.

Yeah, and a great wallpaper as well .

The Porn? Or the BFGMiner?

[funnow]

I saw this http://www.manhattan-products.com/en-US/products/9583
So I think is the solution for your 25 ASIC units
24 USB2 and 4 USB3 so basically you have to buy 2.

[firefop]

I saw this http://www.manhattan-products.com/en-US/products/9583
So I think is the solution for your 25 ASIC units
24 USB2 and 4 USB3 so basically you have to buy 2.

I use that one myself... very good unit imo. Be aware that it is infact 2 tiers of embedded (smaller) hubs.

So the only way to max out the chain is by linking 3 of these to the 3 of the 4 usb 3.0 ports on your primary.

 

[hardcore-fs]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

The problem with USB is that only ONE device can be on the buss at a time AND you have to signal connection & disconnection
Which means as the number of devices grows, so does the buss collisions.
Hubs solve F*** ALL, the same way that building more roads into a city does, all a hub does is increase the potential for collisions.

It is RAW ports that you need, since they decrease the chance of collisions by a power of the number employed.
Two RAW ports decrease the collisions by a power of two over the number of devices.(since you can split the USB tree)

Overall it is very difficult to work out HOW ASICS will impact the USB communication, because so little details have been released.

Consider the Implementation of a SIMPLE buffer scheme for returned nonces.

Take the following.....

Setup one:
Returns EACH nonce when found

Setup Two
Bundles up nonces and returns a batch every second.

consider that we find 5 nonces that are viable,
Setup Two will only negotiate with the USB ONCE every second, therefore the collisions are limited down.

Setup one will attempt to connect & disconnect ATLEAST 5 TIMES with the USB infrastructure, this will seriously impact the distribution of work to other devices, plus it is going to be exponential for each extra device.


Since the Damned ASIC vendors are telling us nothing about how the devices are implemented, we cannot plan ahead or work out anything.

HC

[Unacceptable]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

The problem with USB is that only ONE device can be on the buss at a time AND you have to signal connection & disconnection
Which means as the number of devices grows, so does the buss collisions.
Hubs solve F*** ALL, the same way that building more roads into a city does, all a hub does is increase the potential for collisions.

It is RAW ports that you need, since they decrease the chance of collisions by a power of the number employed.
Two RAW ports decrease the collisions by a power of two over the number of devices.(since you can split the USB tree)

Overall it is very difficult to work out HOW ASICS will impact the USB communication, because so little details have been released.

Consider the Implementation of a SIMPLE buffer scheme for returned nonces.

Take the following.....

Setup one:
Returns EACH nonce when found

Setup Two
Bundles up nonces and returns a batch every second.

consider that we find 5 nonces that are viable,
Setup Two will only negotiate with the USB ONCE every second, therefore the collisions are limited down.

Setup one will attempt to connect & disconnect ATLEAST 5 TIMES with the USB infrastructure, this will seriously impact the distribution of work to other devices, plus it is going to be exponential for each extra device.


Since the Damned ASIC vendors are telling us nothing about how the devices are implemented, we cannot plan ahead or work out anything.

HC

   Very interesting delimma,I hadn't even thought about this being a problem 

I hope its not true,if it is then we're gonna have to find a mobo or PC alternative with as many USB connections as possible.Any ideas,just in case 

Raspberry or such device maybe 

[SAC]

I hope its not true,if it is then we're gonna have to find a mobo or PC alternative with as many USB connections as possible.Any ideas,just in case 

Raspberry or such device maybe 

I'm thinking something like this could be it and as they helpfully point out the front usb can be used internally for an OS drive. Four usb ports on the back, it is not too expensive, 25w max. power my only concern would be it is 32bit only and would that matter for running the mining software.

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=69271&promoid=1360

[MrTeal]

It should be pretty easy to get enough USB chips to fix scaling issues in any reasonable number. A lot of motherboards have USB3.0 through their chipset in addition to an additional chip like the VIA VL800, as well as a couple USB channels. Toss in a couple $10 PCI or PCIe USB cards and you should be able to run a few hundred thousand dollars worth of mining equipment on a single computer if your really wantedto.

[meowmeowbrowncow]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

The problem with USB is that only ONE device can be on the buss at a time AND you have to signal connection & disconnection
Which means as the number of devices grows, so does the buss collisions.
Hubs solve F*** ALL, the same way that building more roads into a city does, all a hub does is increase the potential for collisions.

It is RAW ports that you need, since they decrease the chance of collisions by a power of the number employed.
Two RAW ports decrease the collisions by a power of two over the number of devices.(since you can split the USB tree)

Overall it is very difficult to work out HOW ASICS will impact the USB communication, because so little details have been released.

Consider the Implementation of a SIMPLE buffer scheme for returned nonces.

Take the following.....

Setup one:
Returns EACH nonce when found

Setup Two
Bundles up nonces and returns a batch every second.

consider that we find 5 nonces that are viable,
Setup Two will only negotiate with the USB ONCE every second, therefore the collisions are limited down.

Setup one will attempt to connect & disconnect ATLEAST 5 TIMES with the USB infrastructure, this will seriously impact the distribution of work to other devices, plus it is going to be exponential for each extra device.


Since the Damned ASIC vendors are telling us nothing about how the devices are implemented, we cannot plan ahead or work out anything.

HC

Agreed.

The USB root port PCI-E cards are a little pricey.  Might be worth it.

[ninjaboon]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

So only Avalon units have WIFI/Ethernet ? and BFL + bASICs have USB ports ?
I should have checked this out before I got a 8 port switch the other day.
Now I need to buy 1 or 2 powered USB hubs.

[jjshabadoo]

What about the usb ports which attach to the rear slots and plug directly into the motherboard ?

I have msi gd70's from my gpu set-ups and have attached three of the usb add-ins directly to the motherboard which gives me 12 extra ports.

Does that solve the collisions ?

[Unacceptable]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

So only Avalon units have WIFI/Ethernet ? and BFL + bASICs have USB ports ?
I should have checked this out before I got a 8 port switch the other day.
Now I need to buy 1 or 2 powered USB hubs.

You'll only need powered hubs if your running Jallies,the rest should be ok with non-powered hubs..........maybe 

[PuertoLibre]

http://www.onestopsystems.com/direct_attached_products.php

Maybe with some PCIe USB cards?

[firefop]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

The problem with USB is that only ONE device can be on the buss at a time AND you have to signal connection & disconnection
Which means as the number of devices grows, so does the buss collisions.
Hubs solve F*** ALL, the same way that building more roads into a city does, all a hub does is increase the potential for collisions.

It is RAW ports that you need, since they decrease the chance of collisions by a power of the number employed.
Two RAW ports decrease the collisions by a power of two over the number of devices.(since you can split the USB tree)

Overall it is very difficult to work out HOW ASICS will impact the USB communication, because so little details have been released.

Consider the Implementation of a SIMPLE buffer scheme for returned nonces.

Take the following.....

Setup one:
Returns EACH nonce when found

Setup Two
Bundles up nonces and returns a batch every second.

consider that we find 5 nonces that are viable,
Setup Two will only negotiate with the USB ONCE every second, therefore the collisions are limited down.

Setup one will attempt to connect & disconnect ATLEAST 5 TIMES with the USB infrastructure, this will seriously impact the distribution of work to other devices, plus it is going to be exponential for each extra device.


Since the Damned ASIC vendors are telling us nothing about how the devices are implemented, we cannot plan ahead or work out anything.

HC

Your idea about how USB works is factually incorrect. Start reading about the technology on wiki which correctly states:

The host controller directs traffic flow to devices, so no USB device can transfer any data on the bus without an explicit request from the host controller. In USB 2.0, the host controller polls the bus for traffic, usually in a round-robin fashion. The throughput of each USB port is determined by the slower speed of either the USB port or the USB device connected to the port.

In case you need a translation. The speed of the chain/hub determines how quickly each attached device is polled for transfering data. This operation in double digit milliseconds (around 12 iirc) in most cases, but there do exist some that poll speed is in the single digit. This is for usb 2.0. Furthermore, the signaling method for USB 3.0, while still host-directed, is now asynchronous instead of polling. and drops that access time to each device by a factor of 10.

So no, there's no "attempt to connect and disconnect ATLEAST 5 TIMES" it is in effect a flag that's set on the device (closing the ground line???) that indicates it has data to transfer. Polling would be a query from the usbcontroller to the device asking if it's got data... When that happens and the device has data to send... it transmits.

Also, this is why it's called Universal Serial Bus it's using the same methods that a data bus on any circuit board uses but to communicate with external devices (and logically instead of physically).

[hardcore-fs]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

So only Avalon units have WIFI/Ethernet ? and BFL + bASICs have USB ports ?
I should have checked this out before I got a 8 port switch the other day.
Now I need to buy 1 or 2 powered USB hubs.

Yep.... Maybe bit more research..........
However ....... There  may be a solution to scalability, but it would depend on the  other manufacturers having TWO USB ports and some *specially written firmware, possibly it would work with ONE USB port, but again it would need  Custom firmware, and a modified mining client.

HC.

[hardcore-fs]

What about the usb ports which attach to the rear slots and plug directly into the motherboard ?

I have msi gd70's from my gpu set-ups and have attached three of the usb add-ins directly to the motherboard which gives me 12 extra ports.

Does that solve the collisions ?

It would depend HOW they are routed... some of these multi-port setups are cons........
Basically the motherboard supplier has ONE hard USB port, which they route to an internal USB HUB CHIP!!!!!!, so you are f***d before you start, they do it because the hub chips have abuse protection built in, so on repairs, they replace one shitty hub chip, instead of a more expensive Port chip.

Other manufacturers or SOC chips have 4 HARD USB connections WITHOUT a hub, so if the software is written properly you have the bandwidth of 4 USB ports+ DMA
You have to pull some data-sheets.
Even with these new PCIe cards, you have to ensure they are raw ports and not some shitty USB hub implementation with  a bit of PCIe 'magic' shoved on the outside.
 (it all comes back to WHY should I pay $10,000 for an intel server when an ASUS motherboard costs $40)

[meowmeowbrowncow]

Re:  USB hubs vs root ports


Typically a vendor will identify a multi port USB PCI-E card as "full bandwidth" to indicate that each port is a root port and not hubbed.

I have seen very few "full bandwidth" cards.  Most are hubbed.

By looking at the PCB it's usually easy to spot the hubbed cards.  They have a single set of 2 large IC's.

[Unacceptable]

Re:  USB hubs vs root ports


Typically a vendor will identify a multi port USB PCI-E card as "full bandwidth" to indicate that each port is a root port and not hubbed.

I have seen very few "full bandwidth" cards.  Most are hubbed.

By looking at the PCB it's usually easy to spot the hubbed cards.  They have a single set of 2 large IC's.

Any links to show what your talking about 

I looked some up,but had no idea what I was looking for....Thanks!!!! 

[hardcore-fs]

So I'm trying to get my mind around what the best set-up would be for up to 25 ASIC units. Either the BFL SC singles or bASIC.

What about USB bandwith ? Can you use a couple high quality usb hubs or will they have bandwith issues ?

Bandwidth has less to do with it......., since actual bandwidth is quite small, the REAL issue is the protocol.
In another post I'd recommended that the  Chinese ASIC system could potentially scale better, since they have opted to include WIFI/Ethernet.

The problem with USB is that only ONE device can be on the buss at a time AND you have to signal connection & disconnection
Which means as the number of devices grows, so does the buss collisions.
Hubs solve F*** ALL, the same way that building more roads into a city does, all a hub does is increase the potential for collisions.

It is RAW ports that you need, since they decrease the chance of collisions by a power of the number employed.
Two RAW ports decrease the collisions by a power of two over the number of devices.(since you can split the USB tree)

Overall it is very difficult to work out HOW ASICS will impact the USB communication, because so little details have been released.

Consider the Implementation of a SIMPLE buffer scheme for returned nonces.

Take the following.....

Setup one:
Returns EACH nonce when found

Setup Two
Bundles up nonces and returns a batch every second.

consider that we find 5 nonces that are viable,
Setup Two will only negotiate with the USB ONCE every second, therefore the collisions are limited down.

Setup one will attempt to connect & disconnect ATLEAST 5 TIMES with the USB infrastructure, this will seriously impact the distribution of work to other devices, plus it is going to be exponential for each extra device.


Since the Damned ASIC vendors are telling us nothing about how the devices are implemented, we cannot plan ahead or work out anything.

HC

Your idea about how USB works is factually incorrect. Start reading about the technology on wiki which correctly states:

The host controller directs traffic flow to devices, so no USB device can transfer any data on the bus without an explicit request from the host controller. In USB 2.0, the host controller polls the bus for traffic, usually in a round-robin fashion. The throughput of each USB port is determined by the slower speed of either the USB port or the USB device connected to the port.

In case you need a translation. The speed of the chain/hub determines how quickly each attached device is polled for transfering data. This operation in double digit milliseconds (around 12 iirc) in most cases, but there do exist some that poll speed is in the single digit. This is for usb 2.0. Furthermore, the signaling method for USB 3.0, while still host-directed, is now asynchronous instead of polling. and drops that access time to each device by a factor of 10.

So no, there's no "attempt to connect and disconnect ATLEAST 5 TIMES" it is in effect a flag that's set on the device (closing the ground line???) that indicates it has data to transfer. Polling would be a query from the usbcontroller to the device asking if it's got data... When that happens and the device has data to send... it transmits.

Also, this is why it's called Universal Serial Bus it's using the same methods that a data bus on any circuit board uses but to communicate with external devices (and logically instead of physically).

Actually it is NOT factually incorrect... perhaps  a little unclear in the wording. (The 5 times WAS AN EXAMPLE OF FINDING 5 nonces, and collisions perhaps would have been better to describe as  "work waiting to be serviced" would have been better),
Sometimes I forget that not everyones first language is English, I apologize for my mistake.

I.E
poll slavex...... I have a nonce for you......transfer.. Disconnect... poll next device....... nothing.. back to salve x... I have a nonce for you....

A better solution would be.......

poll slavex...... I have a X nonces for you transfer..disconnect poll next device....... nothing... back to slave x


As I stated at the start... we do not know about HOW they have implemented the USB system.

Even if you took the trouble to do a very basic search of Wikipidia (god help us....) and from your text I see that you have indeed just copied and pasted from Wikipedia without correctly Citing.

if you read down a bit you would see:
"On-The-Go Supplement 1.3: Released in December 2006.
USB On-The-Go makes it possible for two USB devices to communicate with each other without requiring a separate USB host. In practice, one of the USB devices acts as a host for the other device."

So it would be possible with such a setup to have a "chain" of devices (two ports) where each device was BOTH a host and a slave, ideally two.

As regards you description of USB and how it relates to how "its based on ANY databus"

"it's using the same methods that a data bus on any circuit board uses but to communicate with external devices (and logically instead of physically "

Sorry Wikipedia <FAIL>........
Some external devices CAN POLL, and so do most INTERNAL devices (its called interrupts) and in this case the "signaling" is EXTERNAL to the databus using separate control wires (parallel printers are another example, but RS232 can be either)

 USB CANNOT do this, because as you stated yourself copied and pasted from wikipidia... it is MASTER/SALVE and has to be " polled in round robin"

Whilst we are on the subject of reading up.......

Jan, Axelson (2005) USB Complete Third Edition. http://picvietnam.com/download/Tutorial/USB_Complete_3rdEdition.pdf

It's a bit out of date... but it will get you up to speed on the subject, look at section 2 and 3.

Look USB is a complex subject, not just the protocol, but how simple design decisions in the controlling software can have a MAJOR impact on the protocol.

HC