The first mass production batch (sapphire) has finished its PCB production and assembly today.
It has significant improvements in:
Heat reduction: 560mA (emerald) -> 500-510mA (sapphire).
Stability: We stressed it with 9 Block Erupter USBs in a row without heatsinks heating up each other in a very dense USB hub with 25C without active airflow. No unexpected (non-probabilistic) HW errors ever happen.
Speed: This comes after better stability. Now the hashrate converges to its theoretical value of 336MH/s.
Appearance: Manual assembly (emerald) -> SMT machine assembly (sapphire)
Standard heat-sink (emerald) -> heat-sink front-case 2-in-1 logo-ed (sapphire).
LED added.
Four types of front-case:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi42.tinypic.com%2Fbhx7wo.jpg&t=665&c=1BRMSp_rv4WP6w)
All of them are eager to be powered up and hashing!
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi39.tinypic.com%2F1zp6s8i.jpg&t=665&c=cca1ITEirgEiUA)
We had shipped the first 200 USBs today immediately after they are out of the factory. Soon more than 10,000 shiny little stones will be distributed international and quietly erupt blocks.