Avalon ASIC users thread

[Micon]

Paging Jgarzik.  Party of one.  Jgarzik, party of 1!  Your seat at the ASIC table is ready.  JGarzik, party of 1!

I think this is one dinner you'll be happy to eat alone.

I'm sure the fair and balanced mods will be all over this one and warn him for trolling.  Disgusting coming from a guy claiming to be CEO of a company holding millions of community coin and dollars.  And also more importantly taking away from the real discussion that is the dawn of the ASIC age of bitcoin mining, something Jeff Garzik is sure to be instrumental in the ushering in process, which he has done like a boss:

Here is a general thread for owners of Avalon ASICs.

This is the review I posted: http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-asic-miner-review.html

The restart issues mentioned appear to be have subsided (knock on wood) since I laid the unit down, and adjusted some air flow issues in my office.

Damn fine work Jeff.  [and separately, bitcoin foundation]  This important technology is best put first in the hands of the good guys.

Do not let any drama derail your important work as the Avalon ASICs come online all over the world, further securing the network as long as too many of them don't work band together with a pool of FPGAs and work for evil.

[1714931591]

1714931591

[crazyates]

Disgusting coming from a guy claiming to be CEO of a company holding millions of community coin and dollars.

I don't think he's the CEO, nor has he ever claimed to be.

[keewee]

Paging Jgarzik.  Party of one.  Jgarzik, party of 1!  Your seat at the ASIC table is ready.  JGarzik, party of 1!

I think this is one dinner you'll be happy to eat alone.

I'm sure the fair and balanced mods will be all over this one and warn him for trolling.  Disgusting coming from a guy claiming to be CEO of a company holding millions of community coin and dollars.  And also more importantly taking away from the real discussion that is the dawn of the ASIC age of bitcoin mining, something Jeff Garzik is sure to be instrumental in the ushering in process, which he has done like a boss:

Trolling? I don't see his comment that way at all. It sounded like a light hearted jab at the "users" part of the thread title

[Nemesis]

Disgusting coming from a guy claiming to be CEO of a company holding millions of community coin and dollars.

I don't think he's the CEO, nor has he ever claimed to be.

Some punk kid doesn't know the difference between COO and CEO.

Are you surprised?

[goxed]

Chip's power consumption is <6.6W/Ghs

ATX power loses(82%), DC/DC power loses(87%), Fan(5~20w), etc…

So…

650W * 0.82 * 0.87 - 20W = 443W, About right.

[kaerf]

Chip's power consumption is <6.6W/Ghs

ATX power loses(82%), DC/DC power loses(87%), Fan(5~20w), etc…

So…

650W * 0.82 * 0.87 - 20W = 443W, About right.

so an equivalent bfl number would be something like:

60w / .87 / .82 + 2W (fan) + 5W (host) = 91 W    (host can be discounted for many since it can run several units)

or "bfl's worst case" 60W * 1.2 = 72W ===> 72w / .87 / .82 + 2W (fan) + 5W (host) = ~108W

[jgarzik]

Software bug:  changing cgminer configuration claims to work at runtime, but does not.  Thus, changing pool settings requires a reboot.

[repentance]

Jeff, in your opinion what was the "surprise"?  The extra slot seems a bit underwhelming to have been the surprise Avalon was talking up before delivery.

[kano]

Software bug:  changing cgminer configuration claims to work at runtime, but does not.  Thus, changing pool settings requires a reboot.

Yes editing the configuration file has no effect on a running cgminer.
There are other ways to do it of course ...

[jgarzik]

Software bug:  changing cgminer configuration claims to work at runtime, but does not.  Thus, changing pool settings requires a reboot.

Yes editing the configuration file has no effect on a running cgminer.

Your comment is entirely unrelated to the problem at hand.

The management software is fully capable of restarting cgminer.

[sephtin]

Maybe I missed it...
As this is the "Avalon ASIC users thread", I was hoping to hear from other Avalon users... 
We're all aware of Jeff and the Foundation having received theirs... anyone else?

[archetyp]

Maybe I missed it...
As this is the "Avalon ASIC users thread", I was hoping to hear from other Avalon users... 
We're all aware of Jeff and the Foundation having received theirs... anyone else?

yeah,

I really like to order as well,
what I fear is that avalon guys will mine for themselves for a while before shipping.

but as long as they have the product and are willing to ship I am alright with that.

[meowmeowbrowncow]

Any system needs to pay these extra power, including BFL.

Can we have honestly from one builder ONCE?  You guys were doing so good up to this point.

That is pure and utter crap and you know it to.

The host in this case is a OpenWRT board pulling what 10W? Ok so 620W vs 610.  Claiming 400W on your site is disingenous.  Sure you have DC to DC losses so does anyone but that is part of the power load.  AMD doesn't quote the power consumption of the raw chip when selling an entire graphics cards.  They quote the card power usage which includes GPU, RAM, VRMS, fans, and any associated control circuitry.   

Your system doesn't use 400W.  Don't advertise that it uses 400W.  It uses ~600W.  Claiming anything less and then saying "oh it needs a host" when you know the host board is pulling a tiny fraction of that is just plain dishonest.  Period.   620W vs 400W is a 55% increase.  That is significant.  Rise above your competitors and start acting like a real company.  You know a real one which wouldn't pull a stunt like this because they would be facing a class action lawsuit for blatant misreprenstation of a material fact.

Yep.  I'm surprised.  This isn't a small matter.  Quite a bit of spin, actually.

To say that the full power load shouldn't be published as the first, and primary power usage figure is .... contrary to the standard practices of any consumer electronics equipment I can think of.


It's kind of insulting to be told the sky is green.

[kjj]

DC Power supplies are marked by the DC wattage provided, not by the AC wattage consumed.  There is nothing at all strange about a device marked "450W" pulling 600+ watts from the wall. 

[bitmar]

Did you ever try it in p2pool

Yes, see the review linked in OP.

or with a high diff share?

Yes, "vardiff" works on BTC Guild with this miner.

After some very helpful advice from p2pool's author and #p2pool channel, it appeared to start working.  Then Strange Things Happened.  The miner and p2pool both started reporting very odd values for everything from hardware fan temperature to software share difficulty on the pool side.

 So, it does not work with p2pool. right?

[kano]

Software bug:  changing cgminer configuration claims to work at runtime, but does not.  Thus, changing pool settings requires a reboot.

Yes editing the configuration file has no effect on a running cgminer.

Your comment is entirely unrelated to the problem at hand.

The management software is fully capable of restarting cgminer.

Yes I know, I wrote the interface and the code that hooks into the internal functions to do all that without killing the software, but instead shut it down properly.
The interface is called the API (I wrote almost all of the API)
The commands to stop or restart it are 'quit' and 'restart'
I also wrote the code that deals with who can access the API and the cgminer options that set that.
None of that existed before November 2011 ...

As for what is in there in their version? No idea. But most likely all they've done is get Xiangfu to add hooks into getting extra work for the 24? work items required to be sent to the device each time, instead of 1 (no it's not a bASIC/BFL MCU queue - oh well) and write a driver-xyz.c that uses that and fpgautils.c

The screen output you show of the miner performance is directly from my API.
Pity they didn't use miner.php (that I wrote) that's in there also ...

Though since we don't have access to the source, they probably have a bug in there that ckolivas found today that doesn't release all work created ... and on a machine that creates work items 80x faster than a typical BFL FPGA Single, you can of course expect that memory issue to be way more obvious ...

[rchapoteau]

So does this mean that the 4 module unit will pull around 800w?

[jgarzik]

what I fear is that avalon guys will mine for themselves for a while before shipping.

They mined on a test pool, according to Yifu.

[jgarzik]

So, it does not work with p2pool. right?

Just mined all night on p2pool.

It looks like fixing the air flow/physical configuration solved the issues.

No miner or machine restarts while I was sleeping, and while it was mining p2pool.

(no p2pool blocks either, alas)

[coastermonger]

What are the odds that you could get an Avalon to run with a program like 50miner or guiminer?
I think the more pools you are able to use the better.