Klondike - 16 chip ASIC Open Source Board - Preliminary

[freeworm]

I actually have 2boards now hashing with cgminer (Ubuntu in virtual box) now, although each is hashing 20% less than if they were standalone plus the hardware errors are still there. The temperature displayed by cgminer seems to be correct now also.

Although I am also an assembler, I have also been working with Steamboat on this issue for some time. I purchased my own boards from a different pcb manufacturer and purchased my own smt equipment for this project.

What's the rate of the hardware errors you now get at around 300Mhz?
I think the high rate of HW is mainly caused by the clock delay circuit, especially the capacitor value.

[zipiju]

I actually have 2boards now hashing with cgminer (Ubuntu in virtual box) now, although each is hashing 20% less than if they were standalone plus the hardware errors are still there. The temperature displayed by cgminer seems to be correct now also.

Although I am also an assembler, I have also been working with Steamboat on this issue for some time. I purchased my own boards from a different pcb manufacturer and purchased my own smt equipment for this project.

What's the rate of the hardware errors you now get at around 300Mhz?
I think the high rate of HW is mainly caused by the clock delay circuit, especially the capacitor value.

Nope, that's not a cause of high error rate. We've tried couple of values, which delays clock from data from 20 to 50ns.
With 400MHz and 4 chips hashing you get error rates as low as 0.6%, with delay about 40ns.
But when more chips are hashing, the error rate gets higher, but the delay stays the same. And there is nothing different with power rails, or noise or something like that.
So really probably just fw issue.

I have 2 boards with 16 chip each hashing at 350 MHz. The hardware error rate is high and we are working to solve that issue. We believe it to be SW related. There is a group of 6 or 8 of us working on this.

By chance is Terrahash one of the ppl you are working with?

No

[sensei]

I have 2 boards with 16 chip each hashing at 350 MHz. The hardware error rate is high and we are working to solve that issue. We believe it to be SW related. There is a group of 6 or 8 of us working on this.

By chance is Terrahash one of the ppl you are working with?

Not unless they are using an alternate name.

[btceic]

I have 2 boards with 16 chip each hashing at 350 MHz. The hardware error rate is high and we are working to solve that issue. We believe it to be SW related. There is a group of 6 or 8 of us working on this.

By chance is Terrahash one of the ppl you are working with?

Not unless they are using an alternate name.

Fyi,
Some of the TerraHash customers are banding together for a lawsuit, any information or PM's that you feel may help would be appreciated.

[TomKeddie]

Fyi,
Some of the TerraHash customers are banding together for a lawsuit, any information or PM's that you feel may help would be appreciated.

Saw that coming.  There's fairly good evidence in this thread that they were listed for sale before they were working. Sorry I don't have the time to track down the posts, search for ebay links in this thread (if possible).

[btceic]

Fyi,
Some of the TerraHash customers are banding together for a lawsuit, any information or PM's that you feel may help would be appreciated.

Saw that coming.  There's fairly good evidence in this thread that they were listed for sale before they were working. Sorry I don't have the time to track down the posts, search for ebay links in this thread (if possible).

What was for sale? The boards?

[TomKeddie]

What was for sale? The boards?

They had miners listed on ebay before BKK had a chance to debug them (possibly before he had even assembled one, I can't recall exactly).

Here is the post I was referring to.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2492794#msg2492794

Here is my reaction at the time

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2502914#msg2502914

*edit* BTW I didn't even consider TH as scam but they took a big risk on lots of fronts and most of them seem to have come back to hurt.

[Darktongue]

Am I the only one getting up in my feelings about this? 

The Build:

I really do not give two square shits a day about the ROI or makeing money back at this point.  I just want to build a fuckin machine that I can enjoy saying "Look what I did for fun today". Send a bag of parts for all I care. .. send other peoples parts.  I'll build and build til I'm blue in the face. 

The FW: This takes the taco on the hurt feelings.  What hurts is that TH would spread the notion they had shit covered.  They turned a labor of love Into an object of greed. Thankfully nobdy BUT TH will go down in history for that in the DIY scene.  On a light note.  THANK YOU, to those of you sticking with it. And I mean both sides of this.  Devs and End Users.  I believe even if the machine is worthless when it's all over.  The reward in saying "Its done. .. no really check it out "
 Will be well worth it all.

[aceat64]

I'm still awaiting a refund from BkkCoins, I hope he comes back soon.

[kwilliams]

Move on people - this project is dead. I wish BKK closes the thread to end the drama. The designs are out there on github for you to fork & improve. Someone did it already - there's a working version doing ~ 7GH/s with 16 chips and low error rate (see marto74 's thread)

[redphlegm]

Move on people - this project is dead. I wish BKK closes the thread to end the drama. The designs are out there on github for you to fork & improve. Someone did it already - there's a working version doing ~ 7GH/s with 16 chips and low error rate (see marto74 's thread)

A link would be nice...

[w33mhz]

link :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293030.0

EDIT:

This is the bitfury chip board but the link to his website is in there and it has the HEX16 boards.

[btceic]

What was for sale? The boards?

They had miners listed on ebay before BKK had a chance to debug them (possibly before he had even assembled one, I can't recall exactly).

Here is the post I was referring to.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2492794#msg2492794

Here is my reaction at the time

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2502914#msg2502914

*edit* BTW I didn't even consider TH as scam but they took a big risk on lots of fronts and most of them seem to have come back to hurt.

How do you know that it was their ebay account?

[Axion_Zen]

Move on people - this project is dead. I wish BKK closes the thread to end the drama. The designs are out there on github for you to fork & improve. Someone did it already - there's a working version doing ~ 7GH/s with 16 chips and low error rate (see marto74 's thread)

That looks more like a bitburner board than a K16, looking at the renderings..

[ScaryHash]

What was for sale? The boards?

They had miners listed on ebay before BKK had a chance to debug them (possibly before he had even assembled one, I can't recall exactly).

Here is the post I was referring to.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2492794#msg2492794

Here is my reaction at the time

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2502914#msg2502914

*edit* BTW I didn't even consider TH as scam but they took a big risk on lots of fronts and most of them seem to have come back to hurt.

How do you know that it was their ebay account?

It wasn't Terrahash's E-bay acccount. It was obviously some other person, in retrospect, but it was still pretty PREMATURE.

And now, because of all the troubles with Avalon shipping, it basically means people got scammed, literally. Whether it was intentional or not, it doesn't matter, the end result is the same as a scam, therefore it was/is a scam.

As for the Klondike project, there are still quite a number of people that are still working on getting this right, and I believe its VERY close to working.

Regardless of what happens, Bkkcoins is a hero, and eventually, other people were going to be involved with it/take it over anyway. So this is just the natural progression of things.

There has already been a HUGE amount of development work for the K16, and in my humble opinion, it would be completely foolish to throw it all away. Avalon (regardless of what I think of them, it aint good..), has already said that their 55 nm chip will be pin compatible with their older generation, but it will obviously be more power efficient.

So, at least to my mind, it would be GREATLY beneficial to take advantage of all this development work already done for the 110 nm chips, and have it be ready for the new generation chips when they do arrive. To throw it all away would be pretty foolish.

There are actually still examples of K16 hashing out there, and I think we would have had these problems anyway, even if Avalon had shipped the chips on time. It's just the natural progression of things, and I think the future still looks good for the K16. How do I know this? Well, let's just say I'm an optimist, for a good reason or two.

[Biomech]

What was for sale? The boards?

They had miners listed on ebay before BKK had a chance to debug them (possibly before he had even assembled one, I can't recall exactly).

Here is the post I was referring to.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2492794#msg2492794

Here is my reaction at the time

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2502914#msg2502914

*edit* BTW I didn't even consider TH as scam but they took a big risk on lots of fronts and most of them seem to have come back to hurt.

How do you know that it was their ebay account?

It wasn't Terrahash's E-bay acccount. It was obviously some other person, in retrospect, but it was still pretty PREMATURE.

And now, because of all the troubles with Avalon shipping, it basically means people got scammed, literally. Whether it was intentional or not, it doesn't matter, the end result is the same as a scam, therefore it was/is a scam.

As for the Klondike project, there are still quite a number of people that are still working on getting this right, and I believe its VERY close to working.

Regardless of what happens, Bkkcoins is a hero, and eventually, other people were going to be involved with it/take it over anyway. So this is just the natural progression of things.

There has already been a HUGE amount of development work for the K16, and in my humble opinion, it would be completely foolish to throw it all away. Avalon (regardless of what I think of them, it aint good..), has already said that their 55 nm chip will be pin compatible with their older generation, but it will obviously be more power efficient.

So, at least to my mind, it would be GREATLY beneficial to take advantage of all this development work already done for the 110 nm chips, and have it be ready for the new generation chips when they do arrive. To throw it all away would be pretty foolish.

There are actually still examples of K16 hashing out there, and I think we would have had these problems anyway, even if Avalon had shipped the chips on time. It's just the natural progression of things, and I think the future still looks good for the K16. How do I know this? Well, let's just say I'm an optimist, for a good reason or two.

Even if your reasons suck, it's good to be an optimist.

That being said, I can see several positives from this already, not necessarily in any order.

1. People like me learned a hell of a lot about modern circuit design just by being spectators. If BKKcoins completely left the building, he still contributed a lot of education to a very interested amateur.

2. In that same spirit, he attracted a lot of other really smart and talented people.

3. Following from that, those same people learned to work together toward a common goal. Doing it again should be easier as new chips/technologies become available. As smart as a lot of you are, you still get to learn from each other, and each other's mistakes. Winning situation right there.
4. Y'all demonstrated that a complex project like this can be done out in the open with minimal funding by people, not faceless corporations. (I'm not anti corporation, but I do get tired of the idea that only the "established" players have a shot at anything)

5. If it gets finished and works out, the design can probably be modified to accept Bitfury and other similar chips, or at least the experience in making this happen will help shorten the development time.

6. It's fun to watch, and if I had the resources, would be fun to play!

I can think of a bunch more. I think this was a good thing, despite how some of it turned out. I am frankly somewhat worried about Chris, as him just vanishing like this seems very out of character.

[Bogart]

I have some Mitten Mining K16s.  What do I need to do to build cgminer to try to use them?

The bkkcoins files on githib look like an overlay to go on top of the base cgminer, but I'm not sure how I should overlay them/switch to that branch or whatever.  I'm not too familiar with git.

[ScaryHash]

Try this.

Open a shell in your download folder. I'm using Linux Mint 14.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install autoconf libtool libncurses-dev yasm curl libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config libusb-1.0

git clone https://github.com/bkkcoins/cgminer-klondike
cd cgminer-klondike
./autogen.sh --disable-opencl --disable-adl --enable-klondike—enable-icarus (this was for me trying to get the icarus stuff working, you don't have to do it if you have no block erupters)

That was from Bkkcoins directly, and it did work to compile, but it only drove my block erupters (I don't have a klondike yet), to 110 mh/s.

Problem is, you have to install the libusb extensions..and I haven't figured out that part yet...


Hopefully, there will be a working klondike cgminer soon. I think somebody is working on it.

[Bogart]

Well it's trying to do something.  It wouldn't start with 2 K16s connected, but with 1:

Code:

cgminer version 3.3.1 - Started: [2013-09-26 03:02:07]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):628.6M (avg):952.3Mh/s | A:0  R:0  HW:45  WU:40.0/m
 ST: 2  SS: 0  NB: 1  LW: 47  GF: 0  RF: 0
 Connected to mmpool.bitparking.com diff 1 with stratum as user blah
 Block: 0011f749df1b932d...  Diff:149M  Started: [03:02:08]  Best share: 102
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
 KLN 0:       31C 1.2V | 707.8M/952.3Mh/s | A:0 R:0 HW:45 WU: 40.0/m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 [2013-09-26 03:02:04] Started cgminer 3.3.1
 [2013-09-26 03:02:05] Probing for an alive pool
 [2013-09-26 03:02:05] Pool 2 slow/down or URL or credentials invalid
 [2013-09-26 03:02:06] Pool 3 difficulty changed to 0.999985
 [2013-09-26 03:02:07] Klondike config (0: Clk: 300, T:77, C:65, F:89)
 [2013-09-26 03:02:08] Network diff set to 149M
 [2013-09-26 03:02:13] API running in IP access mode on port 4028 (14)

No accepted shares, though I'm mining at diff 1.

I tried something else:

git clone https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer
git pull https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer klondike

Building that, it runs with both K16s connected now, but still no shares are accepted.

Code:

cgminer version 3.4.3 - Started: [2013-09-26 03:59:47]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):2.238G (avg):3.633Gh/s | A:0  R:0  HW:15  WU:0.0/m
 ST: 2  SS: 0  NB: 1  LW: 36  GF: 0  RF: 0
 Connected to mmpool.bitparking.com diff 1 with stratum as user blah
 Block: 000266d97e430b85...  Diff:149M  Started: [03:59:48]  Best share: 74
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
 KLN 0:       38C  90% | 1.158G/1.695Gh/s | A:0 R:0 HW:7 WU:0.0/m
 KLN 1:       43C  90% | 1.727G/2.906Gh/s | A:0 R:0 HW:12 WU:0.0/m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 [2013-09-26 03:59:43] Started cgminer 3.4.3
 [2013-09-26 03:59:46] Probing for an alive pool
 [2013-09-26 03:59:46] Failed to connect to stratum on 192.168.23.131:3334
 [2013-09-26 03:59:46] Pool 2 slow/down or URL or credentials invalid
 [2013-09-26 03:59:47] Switching to pool 1 stratum+tcp://theseven.bounceme.net:3333 - first alive pool
 [2013-09-26 03:59:47] Pool 0 http://mmpool.bitparking.com:3333 alive
 [2013-09-26 03:59:47] Switching to pool 0 http://mmpool.bitparking.com:3333
 [2013-09-26 03:59:47] Pool 3 difficulty changed to 0.999985
 [2013-09-26 03:59:47] Klondike config (0: Clk: 300, T:17, C:25, F:89)
 [2013-09-26 03:59:48] Klondike config (0: Clk: 300, T:17, C:25, F:89)
 [2013-09-26 03:59:48] Network diff set to 149M
 [2013-09-26 03:59:48] Failed to connect to stratum on 192.168.23.131:3334
 [2013-09-26 03:59:53] API running in IP access mode on port 4028 (11)

I hear there's some newer firmware around, but I don't know where to get it or how to flash it.

[fasmax]

@Bogart
Do you have a K16 board with 16 chips installed ?