GekkoScience is now dabbling with 16nm ASICs for new designs

[sidehack]

We haven't decided any numbers yet, but bitshopper and I are definitely working together on this one.

[takagari]

We haven't decided any numbers yet, but bitshopper and I are definitely working together on this one.

I know you are not after investors,
But why not guess at a price, and let us donate those funds, if it pulls through you credit us toward the product,
If you can't make it, then we realize the investment is a loss.
Not many would go for this, but I would, I could spare some btc with the potential plan to get a product.

I've been in riskier investments then you

[HagssFIN]

Will the Bitfury projects also be available via bitshopper.de for EU guys?  

edit: Alrighty then, nice  

[sidehack]

We haven't decided any numbers yet, but bitshopper and I are definitely working together on this one.

This was in answer to pretty much the same question you just asked. We haven't set a price for licensing (I am waiting for proof that it works before moving forward) but bitshopper has already expressed interest in everything discussed in this thread - stocking 2pacs and licensing BF16 designs.

[MacEntyre]

Sidehack and me are in discussions about the 2pac, a Pod and his BF16 designs. If everything goes as expected, I'll be offering basically all these products for EU customers as I did with the Compac.

MacEntyre
bitshopper.de

[agentcash]

If there could be a top/bottom connector for power sharing across pods (something like a pod tower), it would be awesome.  Even if it can share a single USB connection somehow....   But I'm assuming that's a little more advanced than you want to get with a first run

Would love some way to share power. My current setup uses Dell 750W PSUs with three 16awg PCIE power cables coming off each one. Each cable easily handles 250W. Without getting into splitters my current PSUs will be considerably underutilized on these pods.

[JaredKaragen]

If there could be a top/bottom connector for power sharing across pods (something like a pod tower), it would be awesome.  Even if it can share a single USB connection somehow....   But I'm assuming that's a little more advanced than you want to get with a first run

Would love some way to share power. My current setup uses Dell 750W PSUs with three 16awg PCIE power cables coming off each one. Each cable easily handles 250W. Without getting into splitters my current PSUs will be considerably underutilized on these pods.

Exactly.

Even if it was something as simple as a female pin connector on top and bottom, and you can just use a straight pin connector to link them, or leave out to not....

[id5]

If these are coming through bitshopper.de then I will buy a few as well. The reduction in shipping and import VAT makes it a payable hobby again in the UK.

[sidehack]

That's part of why I don't mind at all working with bitshopper, is the cost savings to EU people. I also really appreciate supporting local economy, wherever "local" may be (for reference, all the wire for my cables is sourced through a locally owned supply house in town), and having the assembly done in Germany keeps money a lot more local than sending it to the US or, for a lot of mining equipment, to China.

I don't currently have a plan to stretch power across pods, but it's not inherently a bad idea. One problem with doing that is if people get dumb and try to string 400W worth of pods off one cable and it burns up. I'm accounting for a barrel jack and a 6-pin PCIe; if there's room without causing trouble I could add a second PCIe so people could line up several (depending on clocking, up to about 5 comfortably) in a stack on a single good-quality cable chain.

[JaredKaragen]

Yeah.  Maybe just have a second pcie as a model option to cut costs if the connector cost changes things by a bit.

Cable management with any device setup has always been a concern.  This is why I am liking making GPU rigs for friends.  They are compact units that basically sit on a shelf and only have a power cable =)

[QuintLeo]

If there could be a top/bottom connector for power sharing across pods (something like a pod tower), it would be awesome.  Even if it can share a single USB connection somehow....   But I'm assuming that's a little more advanced than you want to get with a first run

Would love some way to share power. My current setup uses Dell 750W PSUs with three 16awg PCIE power cables coming off each one. Each cable easily handles 250W. Without getting into splitters my current PSUs will be considerably underutilized on these pods.

 PCI-E to multi barrel jack adapters were COMMON back in the Gridseed days, should still be around.

 3 barrels from one 6-pin PCI-E was very common, but I've seen some that did more than that intended for use with the orbs in Scrypt-only mode.

[gt_addict]

They still sell those pcie to 3 barrel jack leads on eBay. But I do prefer the pcie on the unit itself as itjust feels like a more secure and safer power delivery.

[sidehack]

I trust the standard barrel jack up to about 5A, which on 12V means 60W DC. I'm figuring on assigning the "default" power consumption for pods at 60W for that reason.

I like flexibility, and I don't know who has what kind of cables laying around already, so I'm putting on a USB-B and USB-mini. I always intended to do this, no sense arguing about it. I had to shift one of the jacks to the side (instead of having them all lined up on one end) to put in a daisy-chain PCIe jack but that shouldn't really cause a problem.

I plan on shipping pods with stick-on rubber feet. I'll probably also put in additional screwholes so folks can make little towers if they want to, but you gotta allow height clearance for the fan to move air proper since these things can be pushed to over 100W.

I think I will go ahead and put a cutoff temp sensor on the old-chip pod, set to about 90C since it'll be tucked right in there with the chips and should be pretty much at thermal equilibrium. This would be a fixed thermostat that stops mining, probably with a 20C hysteresis for cooldown.

The BF16 pod has pretty much already been laid out with slightly different dimensions, but I'll probably adjust it to the same formfactor as the old-chip pod for compatibility. I'll have the same temp sensor on there, but due to the advanced controls set we'll have on the BF16 gear it'll be able to report temps back to cgminer. If I remember, we can see about implementing a user-selectable cutoff threshold in the driver.

[gt_addict]

Sounds bloomin marvellous!!!

[in2tactics]

I am excited! I will definitely be in line for around 4 of the BF16 pods.

[philipma1957]

I am excited! I will definitely be in line for around 4 of the BF16 pods.

yeah I think I will want 10 BF16 pods.  but If there are not enough chips 5 works

a few bf usb  say 3-5

a few 2x compac usbs  say 2 or 3

[sidehack]

"Enough chips" will mostly depend on what kind of terms I can get for an initial batch purchase. If I'm able to buy several thousand on a net-30 agreement or similar, that would allow for a lot of delivery before having to pay. Even buying in smaller quantities (~1000) as necessary, while not ideal, would still allow for a lot of pods.

If I could scrounge up enough for 2100 chips at the start, I could make 500 Compacs and 100 pods just in the first batch. More would be nice, but that's a good start.

Bitfury test PCBs arrived today, so sometime this week I should be able to start playing with them and working on microcontroller code. VH is still occupied with BM1384 drivers; he's figured out a lot of the S5 sniff data I sent him and I'm tasked with redoing some of the tests to provide him with better info, after which it should be pretty simple to complete a cgminer driver.

I have completed a 2-chip BM1384 Compac layout and nearly compled a pod layout; I expect by week's end to be sending off for prototype PCBs. As soon as VH's code works on a test setup built to more accurately emulate the 2pac (right now his chips are in parallel rather than serial, which cuts out a lot of shared-power issues; the final will be a string) I will open up the 3-way funding plan as discussed earlier in the thread - the 1Burger address for donations, a second address for purchases, and a third address for [anonymous] loans to be paid back out of batch sales.

Once the 2pac is functional, the old-chip pod code shouldn't be too difficult.

And there's plenty of documentation on BF16 communication that, once I figure out the basics for my microcontroller code, vh can immediately start working on drivers for it.

Speaking of which, I know a lot of people are voicing support in my general direction for all this stuff but I want to make it pretty clear - these projects would be falling on their faces if I didn't have a good coder on board. I'm gonna be sprinting to catch up just on the embedded part, no way I could have jumped in headfirst on a cgminer driver so I'm really glad vh has agreed to help. He asked to get paid a percentage of sales, which means he won't see a dime until the finished product rolls off the assembly line. He has been working his butt off in free time outside of his real job to get done everything that he has so far. So let's hear it for vh too, eh?

[gt_addict]

Bravo and thank you vh for your continued efforts in conjunction with sidehack to provide us all with a miner for the people.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Bravo and thank you vh for your continued efforts in conjunction with sidehack to provide us all with a miner for the people.

Mui mui ditto ^^

As soon as VH's code works on a test setup built to more accurately emulate the 2pac (right now his chips are in parallel rather than serial, which cuts out a lot of shared-power issues; the final will be a string) I will open up the 3-way funding plan as discussed earlier in the thread - the 1Burger address for donations, a second address for purchases, and a third address for [anonymous] loans to be paid back out of batch sales.

I was just going to ask about that again... Get out of my mind!!

If I haven't said it before, definitely count me in line for 2 of the BM 2pac sticks and and 2 of the BM1384 pods. Once available, 4 of the BF16 pods. And I love the build a little tower idea

[isoneguy]

count me in on a couple bf pods