[ANN] Bitfury is looking for alpha-testers of first chips! FREE MONEY HERE!

[.m.]

wow ! Very nice work, congratulation !
How did you manage to make those chips work in chain (if it is not a secret ?

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[minternj]

cscape, a few of us are wondering how much the h-card can be overclocked to. Have you tested that? We know that it is limited to the regulator.

[alfabitcoin]

cscape, a few of us are wondering how much the h-card can be overclocked to. Have you tested that? We know that it is limited to the regulator.

30A reg maxout is on the board. 40A max at core limit.
There is no reg subtitute with higer limits (as I know, I already tried to find). To maximaze the chips hashrate we might need board with less chips.


dave and cscape qutoes;
For 0.65V you need exactly 1K resistor for R01F.
For 0.70V you need 1.5K.

With 1K resistor I get 1.26Amps @ 12.0 V, so 15Watts for an h-board.

[edit] Remember, with 16 chips, soldering that higher value resistor will quickly max out the amps that the regulator can handle.

The 2.7GH/sec result I got with a single ASIC test board required 2.5A, and 0.835V. If you were to attempt that on the whole board, the total current of 40A would exceed the capabilities of the regulator.  

--------
btw great work cscape, awesome!
Picture is kind of look but can not touch  

Come on investors, grab this oportunity!

[minternj]

Thanks, that makes sense. I see why its not easy to change now.

[cscape]

wow ! Very nice work, congratulation !
How did you manage to make those chips work in chain (if it is not a secret ?

It's not a secret. Bitfury described it earlier in this thread. There's a SPI command that causes a chip to forward all SPI signals to/from the next chip. So, when you're talking to the first chip, send the command, and then you'll be talking to the next chip, send the command again, and you're talking to the 3rd chip. After you talked to the last chip, send another command to break the chain. This command will be broadcast through the entire chain, and cause each chip to stop forwarding. After this, you're talking to the first chip again and the process can be repeated.

[ermak72]

cscape, intron, ..
You use LPC1758FBD80? you can lay out a source code,... example?

[cscape]

Yes, that's the CPU model, but there are plenty of other models that could replace it without loss in functionality. Apart from ethernet, plenty of RAM and enough core power to do some SHA256 hashing the are not too many requirements.

The firmware is proprietary.

Edit: to give an example about the SPI interface, you can look at bitfury's example/test code here.

[Dexter770221]

How to determine that work is finished (all nonces are scanned)? When knowing clock this is bassically a simple calculation but when clock is unknown? Bitfury said that clock is dependent on voltage and will propably vary between chips. So, there's any command that chips may be polled with?
Thanks.

[AMD FTW]

First prototype of Bitfury S-HASH board is hashing:


Features:

• 16 Bitfury ASIC capacity
• Adjustable (through 0805 SMT resistor) voltage regulator between 0.7 and 0.9V
• Core voltage regulator has 50A capacity, so chips can be overclocked.
• On-board ARM Cortex M3 processor with standard RJ-45 100 Mbps Ethernet port.
• Built-in mining software can operate stand-alone. No PC or Raspberry PI needed, just an internet connection.
• TCP/IP stack with DHCP and DNS support. Just fill in pool server name, port number, username and password.
• Support for Stratum and backup mining pools.
• Built-in small webserver for chip status/speed reports.
• PCB temperature sensor, could be used for automatic shutdown when temperature gets too high.

If you don't have the budget for a large number of chips, overclocking is the best option, as it will get you 40GH/sec out of a card (probably more with better cooling), instead of 25GH for a standard H-CARD for the same 16 chips. At 40GH/sec, the card uses about 35 Watts, running off a standard 12V DC supply.

Where are these cards going to be sold at for US customers...Cscape you have my attention

[cscape]

How to determine that work is finished (all nonces are scanned)? When knowing clock this is bassically a simple calculation but when clock is unknown? Bitfury said that clock is dependent on voltage and will propably vary between chips. So, there's any command that chips may be polled with?
Thanks.

This line in spitest.c checks if the job is switched:

if (newbuf[16] != oldbuf[16]) { /* Job switched! Upload current vector and start processing new one! */

When a job switches, all nonces have been scanned (actually not all, as the cores only scan 756 out of every 1024 possibilities). While the cores work on the first job, you must prepare the next job, and send it to the chip. As soon as the job is finished, the chip will start on the next one, and you can read the results of the first. When the chip has produced some nonces they need to be decoded and checked in various ways (see spitest.c code).

[Foofighter]

This is some nice work cscape, gz!

[dani]

First prototype of Bitfury S-HASH board is hashing:


Features:

• 16 Bitfury ASIC capacity
• Adjustable (through 0805 SMT resistor) voltage regulator between 0.7 and 0.9V
• Core voltage regulator has 50A capacity, so chips can be overclocked.
• On-board ARM Cortex M3 processor with standard RJ-45 100 Mbps Ethernet port.
• Built-in mining software can operate stand-alone. No PC or Raspberry PI needed, just an internet connection.
• TCP/IP stack with DHCP and DNS support. Just fill in pool server name, port number, username and password.
• Support for Stratum and backup mining pools.
• Built-in small webserver for chip status/speed reports.
• PCB temperature sensor, could be used for automatic shutdown when temperature gets too high.

If you don't have the budget for a large number of chips, overclocking is the best option, as it will get you 40GH/sec out of a card (probably more with better cooling), instead of 25GH for a standard H-CARD for the same 16 chips. At 40GH/sec, the card uses about 35 Watts, running off a standard 12V DC supply.

is this the same board as it was advertised here?
http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/product/25gh-miner-starter-kit-october-delivery/

or this this a new design? it does not tell which board or design is used on bitfurystrikesback.com

[tom99]

  not same board.

[cscape]

is this the same board as it was advertised here?
http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/product/25gh-miner-starter-kit-october-delivery/

or this this a new design? it does not tell which board or design is used on bitfurystrikesback.com

No, it's not the same board. Look at the pictures:


The right side of the board with the 16 ASICs is virtually identical, but the left side is different. On the H-CARD from bitfurystrikesback.com, you see that the left side is much simpler. It only has the power regulator for the chip core voltage and the edge connector.

On my S-HASH board, the left side contains a different power regulator (50A instead of 30A), and a CPU with Ethernet interface. Functionally, they are different too. The H-CARD on bitfurystrikesback.com plugs into an M-BOARD, and the M-BOARD hooks up to a Raspberry Pi computer board with the miner code.

My S-HASH board works stand-alone. You don't need any other boards, no Raspberry Pi. Just hook it up to 12V power supply, plug the ethernet cable in your internet router, configure it for a mining pool, and start making coins.

Of course, the S-HASH board will be more costly to produce than a bitfurystrikesback H-CARD, simply because it has more components and a more expensive power regulator. Of course, when you add the M-BOARD and the Raspberry PI, the S-HASH board will be cheaper to produce. But if you need more hashing power, and stick in additional H-CARDs, the bitfurystrikesback system will win again. So, it all depends on what people need.

The other difference is that the H-CARD runs at a lower core voltage, and will be more power efficient. So, for large applications where electricity is an important part of the cost, that may turn out to be a better choice. For small home miners, the cost of purchase will be more important, and power consumption/heat generation will be secondary. In that case, running the chips faster will get more coins for your coins.  

[Milan77]

That was clear at the first look Cscape )) and made me happy

Heatsink is not mounted yet on those photos, as I can see, but it is highly recommended.

BTW do you still offer few sample chips?
I will send you contact of person developing board for avalon, but wants to switch to bitfury, because of much better spec.

Is it OK?

Milan77

[cscape]

I will send you contact of person developing board for avalon, but wants to switch to bitfury, because of much better spec.

Ok. No problem. I don't have any samples anymore, unfortunately.

[vs3]

cscape - are any schematics published/available anywhere? And/or PCB drawings? (even if that's just the H-Card)
And/or the specs and list of components? (e.g. what kind of filter capacitors, how many, where, etc)

I'm guessing you guys have already gone trough the pain of testing various components ... so any future designs won't have to discover again the hot water.

[KNK]

Does anyone have sample chips?
I will need 2 chips for my project, but i have missed the first batch unfortunately

[cscape]

cscape - are any schematics published/available anywhere? And/or PCB drawings? (even if that's just the H-Card)
And/or the specs and list of components? (e.g. what kind of filter capacitors, how many, where, etc)

I'm guessing you guys have already gone trough the pain of testing various components ... so any future designs won't have to discover again the hot water.

We haven't actually tested that many components. We picked a certain type, tested it, saw it performed well, and stuck with it. In the bitcoin world, time = money Around each ASIC there's a ring of 3x5 small caps from AVX, part #04026D105KAT2A (0402 size, 6.3V, 1uF, X5R). In addition, there are groups of 8 caps, 47uF, 6.3V, X7R. On the S-HASH board they are 1206 size, but on the H-CARD they're 1210 because these are a lot easier to get, and there's plenty of room anyway.

The amount of caps is probably overkill, but you can never have too much overkill.

[aneutronic]

Nice board cscape!   

What power regulator are you using?

Also is the heat stressed area around the regulator output on the main board from a repair or just a result of normal operation?