"Condo" for your Avalon chips: Price Drastically Reduced!

[dan99]

Philippines = Among most expensive electricity in the entire world.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/10/10/11/ph-power-rates-5th-highest-world

Yes even 30 cents is very expensive and the unrest in the south Philippines...

[flyonwall]

The PCB assembly house we have contracted with in California has all the following certifications. Their failure rate is among the industry's lowest. Your chips will be in very good hands.

Nadcap Accredited
Nadcap is the leading worldwide cooperative program of major companies designed to manage a cost-effective consensus approach to special processes & products (such as electronic manufacturing and others) and provide continual improvement within the aerospace industry.

AS 9100 Certified
The aerospace industry's quality system standard, this PCB assembly house became AS9100 registered in 2005. AS9100 fully incorporates the entirety of the current version of ISO 9000, while adding additional requirements relating to quality and safety. All major aerospace manufacturers and suppliers worldwide require compliance and/or registration to AS9100 as a condition of doing business with them.

ISO-9000 Certified
Industry Standard that defines fundamentals relating to quality systems. this PCB assembly house achieved ISO-9000 certification for manufacturing in June of 1997. Since quality is our utmost concern, members of our Audit Team attended 16 hours of training with QAI and were certified as Internal Quality Auditors. In addition, we are audited by NSF (an independent auditor) every six months to ensure ongoing compliance.

ISO 13485 Certified
This PCB assembly house became ISO 13485 registered in 2008. ISO 13485 is an ISO standard, published in 2003, that represents the requirements for a comprehensive management system for the design and manufacture of medical devices.

J-STD-001 Certified
Joint Industry Standard that provides a blue print or how-to-guide for electronic manufacturing. this PCB assembly house became J-STD-001 certified in December of 2002. Our Hand Soldering Team is led by an IPC-ANSI-J-STD-001 Certified Trainer in the Requirements for Soldered Electrical and Electronic Assemblies.

J-STD-001ES Certified
J-STD-001ES (an addendum to J-STD-001E) provides requirements to ensure the reliability of soldered electronic assemblies that must survive the vibration and thermal cycle environments getting to and operating in space.

NASA Certified Solderers
Since 2008, this PCB assembly house has provided NASA 8739.3 certified solderers and NASA 8739.2 SMT certified operators for your Flight electronics; we also have NASA 8739.1 certification for conformal coating and NASA 8739.4 certification for cable harnesses. This PCB assembly house has participated in projects with JPL, NASA and DARPA as well as the Canadian Space Agency.

ITAR registered
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a set of United States government regulations that control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List (USML).[1] These regulations implement the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), and are described in Title 22 (Foreign Relations), Chapter I (Department of State), Subchapter M of the Code of Federal Regulations. The Department of State interprets and enforces ITAR. Its goal is to safeguard U.S. national security and further U.S. foreign policy objectives.

[flyonwall]

Status:
PCB for Hashing Unit about to be completed and will be sent to assembler next week.
PCB for Control Unit is now in the hands of PCB fab for prototype.
JTAG programmer and Xilinx software will be ready for programming the Flash PROM on the Control Unit.
Simple test jig for Avalon chips still being built.
By June we will just be waiting for the sample chips.

[flyonwall]

Here's where we are with respect to the rough list of milestones I posted on April 29th:

Rough Plan Milestones:

April 28th -- Avalon chips ordered (Group Buy #1, eafir)  DONE

May 10th -- reference design from Avalon becomes available  YES, on May 13th

(NOTE: First PCB should use sockets for surface-mount Avalon chips, order 1 pair for each part for prototype.)

May 17th -- board circuit design done, parts ordered, PCB layout technician starts work through ODesk.com  DONE

May 24th -- Gerber files sent to prototype shop for inspection, condo management software design completed  DONE

June 7th -- parts ordered arrive, condo management software coding starts

--> about SIX weeks of software agile development <--

June 30th -- expected delivery of Avalon chips

July 12th -- ALL condo owners must send their chips in by this date, all parts received at prototype shop

July 19th -- first prototype received from prototype shop, tested with condo management software alpha

July 22nd -- reworked design sent to prototype shop

July 30th -- second prototype received, tested with condo management software beta

[flyonwall]

I have inquired with the Douglas County PUD, and the response has been very positive: this kind of business is welcome in Douglas County.

[flyonwall]

The female 20-pin header on the hashing unit is unusual. My PCB designer says normally that should be a male connector. We were aiming for 100% compatibility with Avalon, so we looked for a female connector with the same dimensions. Turned out that female connector from 3M costs $4 a piece, even in quantity. Ouch. The price has nothing to do with quality, but more to do with its rarity.

In the end, after much discussion, we decided to throw away the idea of 100% compatibility: selling Avalon replacement parts may not be a big enough market after all. We made the decision to use a simple card edge connector instead. So Avalon compatibility of the cards we will be manufacturing will be at the electrical and software levels only.

Card edge connectors are so far the best solution in terms of price and reliability, as proven extensively in the desktop PC. Why choose some other solution?

[darksoft]

A couple of announcements:

1. The chip condominium will be located in the state of Washington. Washington has one of the lowest electricity rates in the U.S. Summer season is not too hot and short, ideal for Bitcoin mining.

You've never been there, obviously. I spent most of my 47 years alive there, having grown up there. It's semi-arid, temps usually hitting 100+ for long stretches during the summer. The rates on electricity are accurate however.

Why Douglas County instead of Chelan County? Who do you have there taking care of things for you? Names, please.

[flyonwall]

Answer for darksoft:

I plan to move there myself before the end of June. I have looked at a couple of possibilities in Wenatchee, but nothing final as yet. Here is most recent communication I have had with Douglas County PUD:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for your response Mr. Bill Dobbins. Now I know that we are indeed welcome.

At this point we are a very small startup, and the number of machines we are contemplating on putting on your grid is such that the power consumption will be well below 2500kVA. These machines consume more kWh than normal because these are constantly powered at full capacity 24/7. However, the average power consumption per machine is only 800 Watts. At this time, we are not planning on installing more than a hundred.

If business is good, then the number of machines installed will increase, and we will have to build a full data center.

There is one other similar startup I know who will be locating in Douglas County. Like I said in my initial email, I believe there will be more, and if things look good, the number of similar businesses will only increase.

--Carlos


From: Bill Dobbins [mailto:billd@dcpud.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 2:34 PM
To: ctapang@centerus.com
Cc: Jerry Kyle; Meaghan Vibbert
Subject: Your message submitted through the Douglas County PUD website

Good morning Mr. Tapang,
I am responding to the following message from you:

My company Centerus Inc (Washington state UBI #602-885-621) is planning to locate a business in Douglas county. The main reason for selecting Douglas county for this business is that you have among the lowest electricity rates in all of the U.S.A.

What is this business? It is an Internet business, specifically Internet currency business. We will be installing specialized computer systems in a rented space. The currency we will be "mining" is called Bitcoins, which is today all over the Internet (please google it if you are interested in the subject).

There will be more businesses like us that will locate in your county in the coming months. This "gold rush" will start in July.

My question is, will you welcome us? How much electricity rate are we looking at? Is it really less than 3 cents per kWh?

Thank you.

Carlos C Tapang
President
Centerus Inc.

To address your questions in the final paragraph:
1. Douglas PUD is here to serve the electricity needs of residents and businesses in Douglas County.  Our electric prices are as stated on our website.  They are subject to adjustment from time to time as needed to prudently fund our operation.
2. Large customers need to negotiate a contract for service with us rather than just planning to receive service according to the rate schedules.
3. If you are planning to locate in an existing building and also planning to install a large volume of electronic equipment, it is possible that the electric system serving that location may need to be upgraded.

The best course of action may be for you to start by completing a customer service request through our engineering department.  One way to start is to call our office 509-884-7191 and ask for Distribution Engineering.  Alternatively, you may ask for me and I will make sure you are talking to the correct people here.

Thank you for your interest in Douglas County.
Bill Dobbins
General Manager

[flyonwall]

Here's how a condo unit looks like:

[flyonwall]

We kept the original Avalon layout, leaving space and pads for the original 20-pin female header. This is in case current Avalon system users want these cards too. The card edge connector can be sawed off, and the original 20-pin header soldered onto the space provided for it.

Edit:
Sorry, current Avalon system owners, you will have to pay a premium for us to solder the original 20-pin header and carefully saw off the card edge connector. We will test before shipping to you, of course. We are setting the price for one hashing unit (what we call the "condo unit" here) at BTC 5.99. This is with Avalon ASIC chips loaded (how can we test it without the chips loaded). This price can go up or come down, depending on our present value versus future earnings calculations.

What is present value / future earnings? You ask.

Put simply, the price of any mining product is based on how much it can earn in the future. This makes a lot of sense because, if we can use that mining product ourselves to mine Bitcoins, why sell it? So to help us in our decision, we attempt to come up with a "present value": a value that would entice us to sell, and still be attractive for you to buy when you calculate future potential earnings.

[flyonwall]

While waiting for the Avalon sample chips, I am putting together a test jig for incoming condo chips ...

I've got the Condo Management System designed in my mind, just need to write it down, and then hire developers from ODesk or eLance to build it. Why not open source it? We might decide to open source it later. Right now getting it done on time is important.

[flyonwall]

Added FAQ in the OP message:

Question: Can I buy Avalon chips from you, to put in the Condo?
Answer: At this point we only cater to those who have already participated in a number of group buys in this forum. I suggest you start your own group buy for this Condo project. I cannot start one myself because I would rather keep my focus on this project.

Edit:
Rather than say absolutely no, the answer should be, yes, at the right price. I have had several requests for this, so I will set a price for those chips shortly. I regret having set a price lower than market for a couple of people, but they decided to back this project early, so they deserve the deal they got.

Further Edit:
The price of each chip in that April 30th order is now 0.29 BTC.

[flyonwall]

NASA-certified PCB assembly house in California all set to start building the prototypes. They will receive all the little components by next week, which is also (hopefully) about the time we will receive some Avalon sample chips.

[flyonwall]

Watch the kind of machine that picks and places your chips onto your condo unit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKJ34ATlvK4

[flyonwall]

Avalon has published all necessary details of V1.5 of the Control Unit. This is a better version than those who bought the first batch of Avalon systems. This is normal in the computer industry: those who buy the first version enjoy new technology first, but then they also get early-version bugs. Those who are in the second batch are not so lucky either, because the USB hub on the Control Unit is prone to over-heating. The fix is to remove the fuse that powers the USB type A connector. This connector is not used anyway.

In our clone, we have removed the USB type A fuse altogether, and to save some dollars per Control Unit, we have removed all parts pertaining to the type A connector. (Why have it there when it can't be used?)

So, people who bought the first two batches, I have a replacement for your Control Unit. It's going to cost you, though. PM me if you are interested, and maybe help me set a fair price.

[megvon]

looks like response still not there

[flyonwall]

Welcome to the Beach Side condo, frontbit!

Frontbit bought his condo along with 10 chips from the Aprtil 30th order. I gave those chips to him at 0.19 BTC per chip. The price of those chips has just increased to 0.29 BTC per chip.

[flyonwall]

Welcome to the Beach Side condo, BitcoinLady!

[Kernel32]

Hi flyonwall,

I would like to ask for your opinion on BFL offer we got today at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=223571 .

They are willing to sell us (as GroupBuy) advanced 65 nm chips (4 GH/s per piece) on 100% escrow (John K.), on-time-or-deal-is-off policy.

Is developing and producing mining boards capable of running those chips more challenging than for Avalon's 110 nm ones? Would you be interested? (Avalon boards are surely to stay the top priority.)

Since, I'm refining the deal right now, I can use any suggestions about documentation, sample chips etc. I should require for you/other developers as part of the deal.

Thank you.

[Bicknellski]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVx26LlNXA <--- Yifu Guo of Avalon skeptical of Butterfly Labs