Klondike - 16 chip ASIC Open Source Board - Preliminary

[sensei]

I've found a rather bigger difference in pricing between Mouser and Digikey, with Mouser always being better priced. I found a couple of alternates in the BOM with a better price. Ordering 500 to several thousand for a large quantity build can make a big difference. I will forward what I have to you.

[Bicknellski]

Might also be worth a GROUP buy on boards with components if BKKcoins can get his prototypes to fly.  Bit early for all that I guess but really I am willing and able to work with a group so we can get the best price we all can.

[nekonos]

Probably you are interested in view this page http://terrahash.com/ use this build.

Dont know who are..

Might also be worth a GROUP buy on boards with components if BKKcoins can get his prototypes to fly.  Bit early for all that I guess but really I am willing and able to work with a group so we can get the best price we all can.

Me too I'm trying to do Spanish group to get better price.

Regards

[NorthChileanG]

Few points that may or may not be relevant:

* Avalon 10x slices allow sandwiching between 2 radiators. PSU components are separated, reasonable design feature and this might be favorable layout considering overclocking and extending.

* There might be chain member number limit dictated by serial speed and driving capability, so it might be reason for 10 chip per chain.
Reasonable would be to calculate theorethical max datarate needed to be in the ballpark.

[TomKeddie]

The interesting thing is that the hash engine doesn't even know when to stop. It will continue hashing right into each others range if let alone. So the PIC needs to know when it has completed work based on time and send the next work unit to keep it on valid work.

(a bit off topic here)

A lot of the open source FPGA designs have this "feature" too.  It's really dumb - I added stop on end of range to my FPGA code - if my work fifo is empty they stop working, this drops the power consumption and the temperature (and eliminates the wasted bandwidth of reporting duplicate results).

Perhaps the next generation of Avalon chips will improve this.

[BkkCoins]

The interesting thing is that the hash engine doesn't even know when to stop. It will continue hashing right into each others range if let alone. So the PIC needs to know when it has completed work based on time and send the next work unit to keep it on valid work.

(a bit off topic here)

A lot of the open source FPGA designs have this "feature" too.  It's really dumb - I added stop on end of range to my FPGA code - if my work fifo is empty they stop working, this drops the power consumption and the temperature (and eliminates the wasted bandwidth of reporting duplicate results).

Perhaps the next generation of Avalon chips will improve this.

On K16 the PIC will be able to either cut power or clock to the chip. I can do either but may have to choose one way (depending on pins available). I'm leaning towards cutting clock as it's less drastic. eg. your net connection goes down and so work drys up, by cutting the clock everything freezes, and no clock should mean no switching and little power consumption.

But another option is to disable the buck reg and just starve the chips completely. The down side to this is that I can't cut the 3.3V supply since the PIC itself runs off that, and I'm not sure how the ASIC would deal with only one supply powered.

[roybitcoin]

I have a Project Manager project on mouser.com with all the parts in it. Apparently this can be shared but when I checked they require an email to send it to who you will share with. If someone wants that shared too them then PM me your email and I'll plug it in. and it can be accessed at this url:

http://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=b645e5b812

It may be inaccurate now as I haven't updated it in at least a few days. I find mouser's web site much easier to work with. Digikey is ok but looks like late 90s style. They have one nice thing missing from mouser - you can sort based on lowest price at a given qty rather than just qty 1. That's really useful because who cares what qty 1 costs when you want to price qty 100 etc.

What makes the project manager useful is that you can enter qty for your project and then tell it you want to make 500 qty and it will extend them out with price breaks.

@roybitcoin

Just checked my power supply test board and realized I haven't fixed the layout. I copied the big board and deleted all the unrelated stuff. Now need to put the pours ("zones" in kicad talk) back in. So let me know - either I can throw it up now, or wait for me to fix it up and put up.

I've been on the software project for a couple days as I wanted to make sure everything is in order there before ordering chips to work with. eg. no issues that would prevent this PIC model from working out.

Very nice the Project Manager at Mouser; you are right it´s a lot easier. I see the PIC is available at Digikey but I´ll ask to the Microchip distributor to send me some samples. I buy only ASICs for 3 boards + several singles (I like the pendrive look)

For the files, I´m downloading Kicad right now. I use Altium Designer only.

Thank you for the good work and support.

[ecliptic]

If you are going to get these pick & placed, most assemblers will not want cut tape components, only reels.  - like i mentioned earlier, if you don't want to buy a full T&R of 5000/10,000 components you can usually pay a fixed 7$ + unit cost.  but for things like resistors you might be able to get a 10k reel for 10$ anyway

[BkkCoins]

Very nice the Project Manager at Mouser; you are right it´s a lot easier. I see the PIC is available at Digikey but I´ll ask to the Microchip distributor to send me some samples. I buy only ASICs for 3 boards + several singles (I like the pendrive look)

For the files, I´m downloading Kicad right now. I use Altium Designer only.

Thank you for the good work and support.

I'm just editing the test power board right now. You're going to hate using Kicad compared to Altium, I'm sure. It drives me nuts with it's various idiosyncrasies. For a few days it's was crashing randomly every 20-40 minutes. Then I reverted to 20130427 version and that aspect improved a lot. Part of the problem is that I didn't start in Kiad and the converted files were terrible. They had been converted in 1mil resolution which meant I couldn't use snapping at all to get nets to connect. Everything was converted smaller than normal in Kicad so default library parts were way too big. I ended up making new parts for power rails, and then their nets wouldn't connect, so had to put labels on them all. If it wasn't such an issue to keep it open source I would have got a pirate copy of Altium on the street here and used that.

Anyway, before you try to do anything with that board file let me know and I'll push whatever changes I've made. I should be done soon anyway. Power supply noise and it's location between the ASICs is probably the biggest concern with this circuit as the data signals are all low speed and not that complex. I'd certainly be interested in feedback, though I've followed as closely as possible the reference design in the datasheet.

[BkkCoins]

I've found a rather bigger difference in pricing between Mouser and Digikey, with Mouser always being better priced. I found a couple of alternates in the BOM with a better price. Ordering 500 to several thousand for a large quantity build can make a big difference. I will forward what I have to you.

I welcome your input.

[BkkCoins]

If you are going to get these pick & placed, most assemblers will not want cut tape components, only reels.  - like i mentioned earlier, if you don't want to buy a full T&R of 5000/10,000 components you can usually pay a fixed 7$ + unit cost.  but for things like resistors you might be able to get a 10k reel for 10$ anyway

They seem to have a 5000 pc minimum and multiple now so that's not too bad. At 0.003 each it's $15 a reel so no real complaint (pun intended). I can't put that in the mouser project manager properly as at qty less than 5000 it shows an error, but if I put 5000 in then when I tell to multiply to 100 qty of the project it will treat it as 500,000 pcs. Thye kind of need an option that lets you assign a min. order qty for projects too. Maybe I'll go suggest that to them.

[erschiessen]

Hey.
If there are things that you will need (USB ports, pin connectors and such) PM me...
I would gladly purchase some stuff for the benefit of the Bkk projects.

My 'plan'
1) - buy moar Avvie chips
2) - purchase Bkk 'big' boards (goal of >/= to a production Avalon miner)
3) - purchase BUMMs (Bkk USB Mini Miners)

2 co-workers approached me about BTC today.
They asked a bunch of questions, and for a while I tried to answer as best I could.
After a bit, though, I thought that theynwere making an ass out of me, so I blew them off.
(we're a cold-hearted, fun-loving bunch)
A bit later they approached again.
They told me that they would purchase a miner, if I would mine with it.
They would then have the right to purchase, from me, BTC that it mined at a discount.
I asked them if they wouldn't rather have their own mini-miner.
(they almost bought a GPU rig on ebay a bit earlier)
The mini-miner wouldn't be as potent as a miner, but it would be significantly cheaper.
They want a few BUMMs.

[BkkCoins]

3) - purchase BUMMs (Bkk USB Mini Miners)

I'm calling them "Klondike 1" or "Klondike Nano" in my docs.

[erschiessen]

:-)

Klondike Nano

Sounds good

[SebastianJu]

Did you think already about the firmware or mining-software that could be used? Will it work with the already available software or has something to be coded for it extra?

[BkkCoins]

Did you think already about the firmware or mining-software that could be used? Will it work with the already available software or has something to be coded for it extra?

I've already started working on the firmware for the PIC controller but won't be able to debug it until I get some more items lined up. Mostly just figuring out structure now.

There will be a custom cgminer driver for this that will be much the same as the Avalon one but modified to talk to the PIC rather than simply send raw serial data.

[roybitcoin]

Very nice the Project Manager at Mouser; you are right it´s a lot easier. I see the PIC is available at Digikey but I´ll ask to the Microchip distributor to send me some samples. I buy only ASICs for 3 boards + several singles (I like the pendrive look)

For the files, I´m downloading Kicad right now. I use Altium Designer only.

Thank you for the good work and support.

I'm just editing the test power board right now. You're going to hate using Kicad compared to Altium, I'm sure. It drives me nuts with it's various idiosyncrasies. For a few days it's was crashing randomly every 20-40 minutes. Then I reverted to 20130427 version and that aspect improved a lot. Part of the problem is that I didn't start in Kiad and the converted files were terrible. They had been converted in 1mil resolution which meant I couldn't use snapping at all to get nets to connect. Everything was converted smaller than normal in Kicad so default library parts were way too big. I ended up making new parts for power rails, and then their nets wouldn't connect, so had to put labels on them all. If it wasn't such an issue to keep it open source I would have got a pirate copy of Altium on the street here and used that.

Anyway, before you try to do anything with that board file let me know and I'll push whatever changes I've made. I should be done soon anyway. Power supply noise and it's location between the ASICs is probably the biggest concern with this circuit as the data signals are all low speed and not that complex. I'd certainly be interested in feedback, though I've followed as closely as possible the reference design in the datasheet.

I installed Kicad and open the power.sch just for test it and I see some garbage (or missing parts I don´t really know). Do I need anything else? a library maybe?

Thanks for your help in advance

[BkkCoins]

I installed Kicad and open the power.sch just for test it and I see some garbage (or missing parts I don´t really know). Do I need anything else? a library maybe?

Thanks for your help in advance

I just pushed an update now. It probably does need my k16.lib, and k16.mod, so I'll put that up too. Just a moment. Done. Let me know if that works.

[zerodrama]

There wouldn't be so much scamming in the ASIC market if:
1. case, control board, and wifi bundles were sold prior to batch sale
2. large batches of modules were sold
3. small batches of full units were sold
4. the community gave two shits about real people commodities like cookies and diapers

I'd be willing to buy 100 boards worth if you can make this something we can all participate in. I've read the profile on the Avalon guys. These guys are awesome. They wanted to prevent monopolies in BTC and ended up being the only major success story aside from ASICminer. I am weary of shares of a company that will pull a pirateat40 on us.

But THIS I can support.

[sensei]

For those that have yet to buy their ASICs:

I had paid for 720, but that group buy closed because it couldn't be filled.  What group buy looks promising?

I just had to ask for a refund and need to place another order.