[Work in progess] Burnins Avalon Chip to mining board service

[Foofighter]

We will start sending chips beginning of next week. Probably Monday. I will try to give more detailed info about this tomorrow.

[Grinny]

We will start sending chips beginning of next week. Probably Monday. I will try to give more detailed info about this tomorrow.

Yeah I know. The question is, will burnin get one of those...

[Micky25]

It wont be logical in just one casa.
Bitfury chips comes sooner than avalon ones.
Why develop sommethink witch we cand get, and not to develop thing we have alredy.
I really worry about avalon chips.
Bet was easy - avalon come first, but now it`s not so clear as it was month ago :/

As you are from Poland, you could maybe try to use your knowledge of the Russian language to convince Bitfury to send some chips to burnin, and perhaps take orders which will be shipped timely?
Looking around, Germany seems to be a Russian enclave anyways, so maybe we could get priority status as well  

[SebastianJu]

@burnin... I now read that avalon miner were successfully overclocked to 395, stable at 375MH/s or so. From 282MH normal. Now BKKCoins thinks about how to change the layout of the board to meet the higher power supply needed.
Are the bitburner already ready for those high overclocking or would there a change needed because its otherwise not possible. I know overclocking is planned but i believe bkkcoins already had planned it too even though now he needs to revise his board.

[fasmax]

It seems to me a big part of the problem is no one seems to know what the Avalon chip is capable of doing.
The tests you are talking about were probably done at 1.2 volts.
With a higher core voltage the chips might work reliably at even higher clock frequencies.
But heat transfer efficiencies becomes more of an issue.
Hopefully Burnin will soon be able to test overvoltage and overclocking.
 

[cimpex]

are the chips cooled directly or from the backside like an AM Erupter USB?

[ummas]

@cimpex
Yest it is. More like AVALON or blade. My blade works 20-30% faster when its cooled from top and back. Cooling just radiator is bad :/


@SebastianJu
What was the cooling system of that overclocked AVALON?

It wont be logical in just one casa.
Bitfury chips comes sooner than avalon ones.
Why develop sommethink witch we cand get, and not to develop thing we have alredy.
I really worry about avalon chips.
Bet was easy - avalon come first, but now it`s not so clear as it was month ago :/

As you are from Poland, you could maybe try to use your knowledge of the Russian language to convince Bitfury to send some chips to burnin, and perhaps take orders which will be shipped timely?
Looking around, Germany seems to be a Russian enclave anyways, so maybe we could get priority status as well  

I`m afraid, i`m not able to drink that much

but srlsy, why did You asume, that i understand russian? have no clue:P
Maybe polish and russian sounds for You like korean and japanese to me?

Why Germany looks like a russian enclave. We`re living in 2k+ times now.

[Micky25]

I`m afraid, i`m not able to drink that much

but srlsy, why did You asume, that i understand russian? have no clue:P
Maybe polish and russian sounds for You like korean and japanese to me?

Why Germany looks like a russian enclave. We`re living in 2k+ times now.

Sorry, no offence, I just thought every child east of Germany has to learn Russian in school 

There are around 3 million ethnic Russians living in Germany at the moment. We have Russian supermarkets, nightclubs, restaurants and so on. They are an interesting addition to our community. No offence here as well 

[tiros]

I am pretty confident that Avalon sell units that by their opinion should last for some time (even if not declared).
There are some units that were reported to stop working from batch #1 o #2, I am not sure, so people are selling not working modules.
In my opinion heating is the main cause of it, and even if overclocking is implemented we should be careful not to fry our precious and expensive hardware.
This overclocking story should be subject of prolonged testing and very efficient cooling. It's not question can we overclock ASIC, but for how long.
Me first would like to get better and faster modules which will shorten my ROI, but if I could chose I would rather be safe than sorry.
My 2 satoshi.

[ummas]

@Micky25
Non taken.

Cyrylik letters are like bushes to me, or mouse running on the keyboard. I was newer forced to learn russian.
But i was forced to learn french and german It has deep impact on my prsonality....

@tiros
somme of us are planning to watercool our XX bitSUPERBurnner.
we just need opurtunity to OC. You can choose, do it or not.

[tiros]

@tiros
somme of us are planning to watercool our XX bitSUPERBurnner.
we just need opurtunity to OC. You can choose, do it or not.

That is OK, but will burnin implement such a solution.
These chips are not sophisticated or even tested like GPU and CPU's are. They were just marked as passed, and no extensive testing was made.
I am skeptic about durability of those chips, and assume that chips life span would be shorten drastically if we would overclocked them or increased voltage.
Of course this is not my field of expertise and feel free to correct me anytime you want.

[turtle83]

@tiros
somme of us are planning to watercool our XX bitSUPERBurnner.
we just need opurtunity to OC. You can choose, do it or not.

That is OK, but will burnin implement such a solution.
These chips are not sophisticated or even tested like GPU and CPU's are. They were just marked as passed, and no extensive testing was made.
I am skeptic about durability of those chips, and assume that chips life span would be shorten drastically if we would overclocked them or increased voltage.
Of course this is not my field of expertise and feel free to correct me anytime you want.

1 GH/s today is probably worth a lot more than 1.1 GH/s a week from now... So factor that when talking about shortened lifespan. I am probably fine with 10% increase in hashrate which halves the lifespan... Didnt do the math yet... The rate of increase of wear to the OC'd capacity needs to be measured and can only be done with prolonged testing... I guess if you can cool it fast enough, it should be fine.

[southerngentuk]

I`m afraid, i`m not able to drink that much

but srlsy, why did You asume, that i understand russian? have no clue:P
Maybe polish and russian sounds for You like korean and japanese to me?

Why Germany looks like a russian enclave. We`re living in 2k+ times now.

Sorry, no offence, I just thought every child east of Germany has to learn Russian in school 

There are around 3 million ethnic Russians living in Germany at the moment. We have Russian supermarkets, nightclubs, restaurants and so on. They are an interesting addition to our community. No offence here as well 

If you wish for any messages to be translated English/Russian you can PM me and I will forward them on.
(my wife is native russian.)

[tiros]

I wonder how many times I will hit refresh button in my browser today looking forward to see new burnin's post how motherboards came and how he is constructing future of this community.
Probable outcome of this reminds me of joy I only had as a child, seeing it now from perspective of a grown man.

One thing bothers me, and that is I have uneven number of chips I bought in SebastianJu's thread (batch #5) and wonder do burnin have means to bridge and add those 3 chips I need, so my bitburner xx shipment don't need to wait next batch shipment of ASIC chips. If any of you guys know, and I missed the answer to this question, please quote it or explain it. Thanks. For those willing to sell those 3 chips check out the thread from my signature.

1 GH/s today is probably worth a lot more than 1.1 GH/s a week from now... So factor that when talking about shortened lifespan. I am probably fine with 10% increase in hashrate which halves the lifespan... Didnt do the math yet... The rate of increase of wear to the OC'd capacity needs to be measured and can only be done with prolonged testing... I guess if you can cool it fast enough, it should be fine.

Ok, I tend to agree with you. Thanks for reply.
btw. awesome avatar picture you have.

[juve4v]

I can buy 15 chips more from zefir and I'm not sure if it is possible for a 20 chip board to work with only 15 chips placed on it.
Basically Im asking if it can work underpopulated and add later 5 chips more.

[biddicoin]

I have a similar question:

Lets say one Chip is damaged - Miner still working ?

[Schrankwand]

I have a similar question:

Lets say one Chip is damaged - Miner still working ?

The chips, as mentioned before, are calculating in a "row." Which means, that if one chip in a ten chip cascade is dead, the whole row of ten goes down and produces hardware errors.

[geopolisch]

What kind of hashrates do you see at 256mhz?

The avalon chip does 1 sha256 hash per cycle, so 256MHz => 256 Mh/s

[tiros]

What kind of hashrates do you see at 256mhz?

The avalon chip does 1 sha256 hash per cycle, so 256MHz => 256 Mh/s

The chip clock valid number: 256, 270, 282, 300
http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Avalon

And per say from AVALON web site store "the chips are identical to those in Avalon, clocking 282Mh/s per chip."
http://store.avalon-asics.com/?product=avalon-asic-chips-10000

[burnin]

I can buy 15 chips more from zefir and I'm not sure if it is possible for a 20 chip board to work with only 15 chips placed on it.
Basically Im asking if it can work underpopulated and add later 5 chips more.

I won't do partial assembly, either 10 or 20.

I have a similar question:

Lets say one Chip is damaged - Miner still working ?

The chips, as mentioned before, are calculating in a "row." Which means, that if one chip in a ten chip cascade is dead, the whole row of ten goes down and produces hardware errors.

Depends on the failure mode of the chip.
bang! magic smoke escapes - whole module down, rest of the stack continues to function
chip produces wrong hashes but continues to forward messages - some hw errors in cgminer, hashrate drops by one chip
chip logic completely dead - one row dead from the point of defective chip, hashrate drops by 1 to 10 Chips

My design is spare-no-expense, build for resiliency and reliability.

@burnin... I now read that avalon miner were successfully overclocked to 395, stable at 375MH/s or so. From 282MH normal. Now BKKCoins thinks about how to change the layout of the board to meet the higher power supply needed.
Are the bitburner already ready for those high overclocking or would there a change needed because its otherwise not possible. I know overclocking is planned but i believe bkkcoins already had planned it too even though now he needs to revise his board.

My design is able to provide more current to the chips then bkkcoins (2.5A vs 2A per chip).
Therefore i don't see reasons to increase that even more.

Overall Project status:
Done some more work on the Firmware, it now works flawlessly with cgminer.
The Prototype will not arrive until mid week due to problems with my manufacturing partner for the protype.