[Avalon ASIC] US-based burnin alternative

[shibaji]

I understand. However, we need people with sufficient experience in PCB layout and assembly. This is a time critical operation, so whoever delivers first gets the biggest piece of pie. There is no time for research / learning. You will need to know stuff beforehand - once the specs and plans are released, it needs to be realized and manufactured ASAP.

Well it is NOT included with the group buy but you definitely have other options available - If my operation is a success then it will save you a lot of time and money because I can build machines with your chips and  just ship them right to you. I'm just hoping for the best.

Absolutely! I wish you success, and I am very interested in your operation as well - which I have already mentioned. There is no harm having alternatives. I hope you would agree that in case you plan did not work out on time, then you would also like to get your chips assembled by someone who figured it out, right ?

I am open to any service. It would certainly be best if you (ragingazn) can sort things out, as there would not be any need to transfer chips elsewhere.

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[ryepdx]

ryepdx - I guess it is time for you to look into this as well.

Understood. I'm working with bkkcoins, who knows this stuff, and sharing the 5% markup with them. The PCB design will be hosted on Github at http://github.com/bkkcoins, thus making it available for anyone to critique. I also have some EE friends from college that I could potentially tap, and once I get some sort of PCB design from bkkcoins I plan on getting quotes from some of the PCB printers and assemblers in the area.

At any rate, phaeonix is right: it's all conjecture at this point. My bottom line is getting the group buy full and ordered as soon as possible, and then getting those chips onto circuit boards and mining. I don't particularly care if ragingazn does it or if I do it.

And ragingazn handling manufacturing does make more sense, honestly, since they'll be taking initial receipt of the chips, and I'll only be receiving them once they've had a chance to ship them to the other side of the country. And, if we give all the chips to a single plant, it may mean bumping us up into another bulk-order discount bracket. On the other hand, that would give us a bottleneck, with ragingazn's plant handling all the orders, which might end up causing delays for some.

I'm not about to close down my effort, though I might yield to ragingazn if they come up with an open-source PCB design that works for the quantity of chips I'll be taking and the community at large deems it viable.

[shibaji]

ryepdx - I guess it is time for you to look into this as well.

Understood. I'm working with bkkcoins, who knows this stuff, and sharing the 5% markup with them. The PCB design will be hosted on Github at http://github.com/bkkcoins, thus making it available for anyone to critique. I also have some EE friends from college that I could potentially tap, and once I get some sort of PCB design from bkkcoins I plan on getting quotes from some of the PCB printers and assemblers in the area.

At any rate, phaeonix is right: it's all conjecture at this point. My bottom line is getting the group buy full and ordered as soon as possible, and then getting those chips onto circuit boards and mining. I don't particularly care if ragingazn does it or if I do it.

And ragingazn handling manufacturing does make more sense, honestly, since they'll be taking initial receipt of the chips, and I'll only be receiving them once they've had a chance to ship them to the other side of the country. And, if we give all the chips to a single plant, it may mean bumping us up into another bulk-order discount bracket. On the other hand, that would give us a bottleneck, with ragingazn's plant handling all the orders, which might end up causing delays for some.

I'm not about to close down my effort, though I might yield to ragingazn if they come up with an open-source PCB design that works for the quantity of chips I'll be taking and the community at large deems it viable.

Agreed 100%. Thank you.

[hchc]

Maybe you should consider the zefir group buy too. There should be a lot of US buyers in their group as well.
I myself is getting 360 chips from zefir and would be great if there is a US based pcb.

[ryepdx]

Not a bad idea. Thanks. We'll see how things play out. If bkkcoins can come up with a solid design before ragingazn does, I'll consider handling US assembly for zefir's group.

[Bicknellski]

I understand. However, we need people with sufficient experience in PCB layout and assembly. This is a time critical operation, so whoever delivers first gets the biggest piece of pie. There is no time for research / learning. You will need to know stuff beforehand - once the specs and plans are released, it needs to be realized and manufactured ASAP.

Here in Indonesia we will be using a PCB fabricator after we get the DIY design / BOM. I am keen on hearing more once the specifications come from Avalon. There will be multiple designs that are open source by the sounds of it. I am keen on working with a number of different people who are doing the same thing in the USA or CANADA or EUROPE as well as Asia. My goal is to have ASIC's assembled here in Indonesia only for the Indonesian market and given the direction of the DIY thread I do not think it will be as problematic if you have a good PCB fabricator and one of the DIY designs.

Drop me a PM if you are also interested in some sort of board royalty if you have a design ready once the specs are out. I have 540 chips on order and 16 chip board that bkk is designing is something that is interesting to me but also the 20 chip higher density board that Burin mentioned as well. I am very hopeful that the DIY end of this spawns many local asic developers / distributors and kills off the over priced weaker efforts of BFL to get something viable to the market. This will be the future of the BTC for the next few years as Avalon I suspect will be working on newer and better chips.

We should work together where possible so that the community supports developing the DIY avalon worldwide in local situations.

Maybe we could form an organization that can support this once we are all up and producing boards and marrying avalon chips to them. I see this as the best way to weed out the likes of BFL from the marketplace if it is done well. Asics could be cheaper and readily available to a much much wider audience even in places like Indonesia where Bitcoin is not even a novelty yet.

[ryepdx]

We should work together where possible so that the community supports developing the DIY avalon worldwide in local situations.

+1

[greaterninja]

I am interested in this.  I know people that are E.E. masters and phd candidates.   If you want chip to pcba then I know people as well as I work in the semi conductor industry.

[conv3rsion]

I have a few hundred chips in zefir batches and a much smaller number (26) in the ragingazn628 buy.  I'd like to have some of those chips assembled in the US as a hedge because while I'm predicting that Burnin is going to do great work, the shear volume that is coming his way (could be 50000 or more chips) plus the fact that his design accommodates a max of 20 chips, means he's going to be extraordinarily busy.  Since speed is of the utmost concern, I'm definitely interested in spreading around the chips, so if you are open to chips from Zefir, then I'm definitely interested. 

[ionstorm]

why dont we consider outsourcing this to china? there are hundreds of listings of companies that do custom work relatively cheap that I found on alibaba.com

What we could do is organize a group buy for the boards from a well known manufacturer and you can resell them with 5% markup in the group buy

I'd get to contacting allot of different companies, there are a few hundred companies in the states that will do this, but they may not be able to beat china's pricing, lets do some shopping

[ecliptic]

I'm an EE with experience in PCB Design and i'd be very interested in helping work on this

However will you be taking orders from ragingazn628 Batch #2 as well? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=189220.0

I have a few hundred chips in zefir batches and a much smaller number (26) in the ragingazn628 buy.  I'd like to have some of those chips assembled in the US as a hedge because while I'm predicting that Burnin is going to do great work, the shear volume that is coming his way (could be 50000 or more chips) plus the fact that his design accommodates a max of 20 chips, means he's going to be extraordinarily busy.  Since speed is of the utmost concern, I'm definitely interested in spreading around the chips, so if you are open to chips from Zefir, then I'm definitely interested.  

I agree, the fastest thing may be getting the chips, and going to a PCB Assembly house to produce them in large quantities.  Involving specific people or bitcoin-exlusive manufacturing/etc introduces slowdown that is unnecessary.  It should be a cut and dry standard assembly, at which point it simply becomes choosing one of the many places that can pick & replace + reflow your PCB assembly with a given turn time at a given cost.  All you have to provide them is the Avalon chips.  They can order the PCB and everything else on the BOM.

It might be slightly more expensive up front (we'd want to get as many people in on the PCB Assembly as possible, and of course do a test run of a few to make sure everything is good) but would definitely be the fastest and most reliable method.  Cut out the middle man

If the board is only 10-16 chips per, and people are ordering generally 50-500 chips, it may not be hard to get the price down, we're already talking several PCB assemblies per person.

[Reckman]

Tracking,

Who is assembling these?

[scotjam]

I'm in ragin's 1st buy, and definitely would like someone experienced to build them into rigs for me.

I'm on exactly the same page as conv3rsion - I have some chips with burnin, but am concerned about the volume he has to process.

ragin, ryepdx, ecliptic - very keen to get my boards built by whoever can get an experienced person / firm lined up to build them (happy to go with community consensus as to which person or firm that might be, so please keep me posted once the designs are out and you are able to make concrete plans).

Cheers!

scotjam

[erschiessen]

I have an order for 51 ragin chips.
Originally, I liked the BKK 16 chip board.
3 of those would have left me with 3 for single chip "Eruptalons".