Avalon ASIC users thread

[jgarzik]

Another reliability update:

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, no longer seeing machine or cgminer restarts.

The most common symptom now is a cessation of mining; cgminer and machine are both responding to status queries, but no work is occurring.

This symptom occurs every 24-48 hours.

A simple machine restart fixes the problem immediately.

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[Photon939]

That's rather poor performance TBH, I imagine it will quickly become frustrating to manually restart your miner every/every other day. My GPU miners easily went over a month with no restarts or failures (on Windows even)

Too bad nobody can do anything about it since they haven't made any of the code available. Disappointing after their "it's not for the money" statements.

[Bogart]

Another reliability update:

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, no longer seeing machine or cgminer restarts.

The most common symptom now is a cessation of mining; cgminer and machine are both responding to status queries, but no work is occurring.

This symptom occurs every 24-48 hours.

A simple machine restart fixes the problem immediately.

Sure sounds like a memory leak.

If you could check and record every hour or so, the free memory reported by 'free', and maybe capture which processes are using how much with 'ps axu', you may be able to find more definitive proof.

For remote/automated restart capability, I like these: http://www.digital-loggers.com/lpc.html

[-ck]

It's a damn shame because the memory leak was very real and trivial to fix and fixed in the next release of cgminer. I'd suggest just using ozcoin (or a pool like it that supports setting high static diffs) to mine with, and set difficulty to 10,000. Then the number of shares submitted will be miniscule and it will take much longer to run out of memory. The only cost of doing that would be some more variance.

[jgarzik]

Another reliability update:

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, no longer seeing machine or cgminer restarts.

The most common symptom now is a cessation of mining; cgminer and machine are both responding to status queries, but no work is occurring.

This symptom occurs every 24-48 hours.

A simple machine restart fixes the problem immediately.

Sure sounds like a memory leak.

If you could check and record every hour or so, the free memory reported by 'free', and maybe capture which processes are using how much with 'ps axu', you may be able to find more definitive proof.

'free' is happy as a clam.  The previous behavior can be attributed to a memory leak.

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, the box reaches a condition where the controller (linux kernel, cgminer) are active and accessible remotely, but no work is progressing.

The box will restart if the memory leak condition is reached.  The box does not restart upon this no-mining condition.

[Bogart]

Another reliability update:

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, no longer seeing machine or cgminer restarts.

The most common symptom now is a cessation of mining; cgminer and machine are both responding to status queries, but no work is occurring.

This symptom occurs every 24-48 hours.

A simple machine restart fixes the problem immediately.

Sure sounds like a memory leak.

If you could check and record every hour or so, the free memory reported by 'free', and maybe capture which processes are using how much with 'ps axu', you may be able to find more definitive proof.

'free' is happy as a clam.  The previous behavior can be attributed to a memory leak.

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, the box reaches a condition where the controller (linux kernel, cgminer) are active and accessible remotely, but no work is progressing.

The box will restart if the memory leak condition is reached.  The box does not restart upon this no-mining condition.

I see.  Does 'dmesg' report anything new once this condition is reached?

[fcmatt]

Another reliability update:

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, no longer seeing machine or cgminer restarts.

The most common symptom now is a cessation of mining; cgminer and machine are both responding to status queries, but no work is occurring.

This symptom occurs every 24-48 hours.

A simple machine restart fixes the problem immediately.

Sure sounds like a memory leak.

If you could check and record every hour or so, the free memory reported by 'free', and maybe capture which processes are using how much with 'ps axu', you may be able to find more definitive proof.

'free' is happy as a clam.  The previous behavior can be attributed to a memory leak.

Now that difficulty is sufficiently high, the box reaches a condition where the controller (linux kernel, cgminer) are active and accessible remotely, but no work is progressing.

The box will restart if the memory leak condition is reached.  The box does not restart upon this no-mining condition.

I am using a semi new version of cgminer and that behavior is what i am seeing. Program is running but no actual work gets to btcguild. Restarting cgminer every few weeks fixes it. No reboot needed  on windows 7 with gpu.

Cant you drop in a new version of cgminer but somehow keep the critcal bits for those asics? Or are the drivers compiled into one big binary? Just thinking out loud. I am prob wrong.

[iCEBREAKER]

Avalon ASIC miner is currently surviving >24 hour stretches without restarting, now that we're on a stable pool with a reasonably high difficulty value (BTC Guild, difficulty 32.0).

However, have now seen the machine get "stuck" in a strange state, where it is not mining or restarting.  The fans ramp up, then ramp down, in a cycle.

BTC Guild is the most advanced and best pool on the planet.

Maybe this is why we've only 3 ASICs in the wild at present?

It's great that Avalon was first to market and all, but your unit was specifically intended for review and it seems sort of...

HALF BAKED

[Nemesis]

Avalon ASIC miner is currently surviving >24 hour stretches without restarting, now that we're on a stable pool with a reasonably high difficulty value (BTC Guild, difficulty 32.0).

However, have now seen the machine get "stuck" in a strange state, where it is not mining or restarting.  The fans ramp up, then ramp down, in a cycle.

BTC Guild is the most advanced and best pool on the planet.

Maybe this is why we've only 3 ASICs in the wild at present?

It's great that Avalon was first to market and all, but your unit was specifically intended for review and it seems sort of...

HALF BAKED

If its a true review, he would have said "This shit doesnt  work, still prototyping. Buyers beware"

You know like any real review of a product being sold in working state.

[jgarzik]

Uptime: 1d 13h 49m 29s

solo mining w/ eloipool + high diff

[fcmatt]

Uptime: 1d 13h 49m 29s

solo mining w/ eloipool + high diff

Good luck. Are you going for a block no matter how long it takes?

[BitSyncom]

overheating is not the issue here. see http://imgur.com/a/5Gqix

I'm sure Jeff can confirm these numbers on his device as well.

as for memleak, we found it but that didn't solve all the issues.

expect a controller update soon and a newsletter.

[Bicknellski]

overheating is not the issue here. see http://imgur.com/a/5Gqix

I'm sure Jeff can confirm these numbers on his device as well.

as for memleak, we found it but that didn't solve all the issues.

expect a controller update soon and a newsletter.

+1

[fcmatt]

overheating is not the issue here. see http://imgur.com/a/5Gqix

I'm sure Jeff can confirm these numbers on his device as well.

as for memleak, we found it but that didn't solve all the issues.

expect a controller update soon and a newsletter.

+1

+1 what? I am unclear how one can interpret those pics without knowing what is too hot for this gear. Am i supposed to think i can compare it to gpu cards and how hot they get?

What numbers exactly? Does the gui report temp values?

Good they found a memleak but if it did not solve all issues... What exact issues remain?

[Inaba]

That entire heatsink on each card is saturated at 50C!  Holy hell on a crutch! 

Are those IR pics accurate?  That seems excessive... if it actually is 40 - 50C, what's going to happen to them in hot weather? 

Maybe Jeff can heat up a room to 85F or so and let it run to see what happens.

[kjj]

That entire heatsink on each card is saturated at 50C!  Holy hell on a crutch! 

Are those IR pics accurate?  That seems excessive... if it actually is 40 - 50C, what's going to happen to them in hot weather? 

Maybe Jeff can heat up a room to 85F or so and let it run to see what happens.

Even better, get a sheet of IR-transparent plexiglass and put it where the missing side of the case should be so that the fans can generate proper airflow, and then take the thermal images again.

[Dalkore]

That entire heatsink on each card is saturated at 50C!  Holy hell on a crutch! 

Are those IR pics accurate?  That seems excessive... if it actually is 40 - 50C, what's going to happen to them in hot weather? 

Maybe Jeff can heat up a room to 85F or so and let it run to see what happens.

Why would he want to do that?   I think we can guess what happens. Either they slow down or it hits a temp cutoff that shuts down mining.  FYI, high temperatures will have adverse effects on mining operations.  What happens to BFL singles when they get too hot, they down-clock until they are within the optimal temperature range. 

[crazyates]

That entire heatsink on each card is saturated at 50C!  Holy hell on a crutch! 

Are those IR pics accurate?  That seems excessive... if it actually is 40 - 50C, what's going to happen to them in hot weather? 

Maybe Jeff can heat up a room to 85F or so and let it run to see what happens.

Why would he want to do that?   I think we can guess what happens. Either they slow down or it hits a temp cutoff that shuts down mining.  FYI, high temperatures will have adverse effects on mining operations.  What happens to BFL singles when they get too hot, they down-clock until they are within the optimal temperature range. 

Inaba: Hey, lets do some scientific and procedural testing so we can determine an outcome given a set of constants (hardware) and variables (temperature).
Dalkore: That's stupid. It's either going to be situation A or situation B. I don't know which, and I have no way of finding out unless we follow Inaba's suggestion, but it's still stupid.

Really? 

[Inaba]

That entire heatsink on each card is saturated at 50C!  Holy hell on a crutch! 

Are those IR pics accurate?  That seems excessive... if it actually is 40 - 50C, what's going to happen to them in hot weather? 

Maybe Jeff can heat up a room to 85F or so and let it run to see what happens.

Why would he want to do that?   I think we can guess what happens. Either they slow down or it hits a temp cutoff that shuts down mining.  FYI, high temperatures will have adverse effects on mining operations.  What happens to BFL singles when they get too hot, they down-clock until they are within the optimal temperature range. 

I don't know if you noticed, but many parts of the world get to be 85F or more during the summer months.  Personally, I would want to know if my expensive mining hardware was going to shutdown when the temp rose as it would dictate how much power I had to consume to cool the thing with an AC unit.  Maybe you don't care, but I sure as hell would.

[BitSyncom]

Maybe Jeff can heat up a room to 85F or so and let it run to see what happens.

Avalon is designed to operate at 35C, not a problem.