Hi Stinky_Pete, thanks for giving this some serious thought. I can give a bit more info on some of those thoughts now, but others we may just have to wait and see how things develop with the project.
First thoughts:- I'm glad I wasn't involved in the bitburnerXX scheme
Yes, what a shame that was for all concerned
. To be honest, I think burnin was probably the most shafted by all of this - think of the time and effort and money that he must have put in to get that off the ground. Anyway, he's moving on and so shall we!
The hardware on offer seems to be standalone boards, rather than direct plug ins for our M-board (expected in October). So they would need a power source, fans, and some sort of physical support. Does jlsminingcorp have these available, or would part of our money be used for these parts? I'm assuming the useful life time of a PSU and fans is far longer than the mining boards, and don't favour buying new equipment. I do have a spare PSU that could be used if it is required.
Yes, they would be standalone boards, but if the design is bitburnerXX inspired then they are easily stackable and can be connected together with CAN bus to make larger "clusters" (e.g.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179769.msg2900642#msg2900642,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179769.msg2901025#msg2901025). Some power sharing, as well as data sharing, is possible between bitburnerXX boards and I'd imagine will be here too. We have a power supply ready that will run the bitfurystrikesback miner. In principle it should be possible to run both sets of hardware from the same PSU, but I'm a bit wary of this, so another PSU would be better. We don't have another suitable PSU free at the moment, so borrowing one or finding a suitable second hand PSU would probably be the best way to go (only ~ 40W needed per furyburner). I don't believe any fans or supports would be needed (they weren't for bitburners).
I don't see that the >40Gh/s speed is guaranteed, rather it seems to be a design goal. End-user overclocking also appears to be a design goal, so final speeds will probably be variable from board to board, and dependent on PSU and cooling efficiently, as well as the end-users views on safe chip temperatures, life time, and general gungho-ness. Does jlsminingcorp have any experience in overclocking similar hardware?
I wouldn't worry about this actually. The bitfurystrikesback chips are
seriously under clocked - for power efficiency in the 100TH mine that they were designed for. C-scape has demonstrated 40GH/s from 16 bitfury chips with very limited cooling (marto74 has a s-hash board running well at these clocks -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293030.0). Burnin's design goal is 5GH/s per chip, but nobody has demonstrated anything that high with these chips - an interesting idea though. We've overclocked CPUs and GPUs if that counts. No magic smoke yet
.
Do I recall that the equipment will be in a domestic setting? I hope there is good ventilation since I imagine these boards will surpass GPUs in the heat produced.
No need to worry here. A 40 GH/s board would only use ~40W, compared to the ~150W+ from a 7950. Cooling any bitfury ASIC miners will be much easier than getting rid of the heat from GPU mining.
The timetable is unclear, as one might expect. But it seems that CryptX will be handling all the sales and marketing and there is an implication, but no promise, that they will inform people with existing Bitburner orders before the public "We will sent a mailing to all the Bitburner clients with the exact launch moment." also "Prices and Hashrate will be made public at the moment of the launch." (People with existing Bitburner orders also get vouchers as part of a complicated refund scheme). My impression is that the window for purchasing could be short, and so having the funds available to move quickly would be important. (I'm thinking back to the order of the August Bitfury Starter Kit, which sold out in less then 24 hours.)
This is the bit that worries me. We don't actually have much information to go on at the moment. However, I think if we've had the discussion now then we will be in a better position to make a quick decision when the time comes. I am particularly worried about the statement "Prices and Hashrate will be made public at the moment of the launch." If the price increases from burnin's initial estimate then these boards will look less attractive as an alternative to H-boards and there will be no incentive to switch. My suggestion for the group would be that we order the bitfury hardware with the best GH/s/BTC when we have funds to place an order, this makes decisions rather simple.
In these days of difficulty increasing by 30% every ten days, the thought of getting a faster board in early October is very appealing, and I would be happy to invest.
My usual preference is always to keep financial schemes simple, so wonder if this might be better organised as a separate group-buy. If that isn't a viable option, or if the group decides against it, then I would like to see a worked example with some assumed dates, difficulty, and expected payouts, because I get muddled when I try to work them out! Perhaps a spreadsheet so we could all tweak the numbers and see what effect delays or poor hashing rates have.
Our feeling is that to split the hosted bitfury GB into two would be a mistake. Apart from anything else it would penalise this group, who have paid a premium for the starter kit and need to add additional hardware with at least the GH/s/BTC of the H-cards added to the group's mining power in order to offset the higher cost of the starter kit. Having diversified suppliers would for the most part be simple I think. The group's hashrate will grow with more hardware added (whether it's H-boards or furyburners) and a certain number of shares, depending on the price paid for components at the time of order will be issued. If we're able to buy hardware at better GH/s/BTC rates then the GH/s/share for the group will ultimately be better. The only snag is timing - what if furyburner components arrived before bitfurystrikesback components? We've said in the OP that payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered (this is the incentive for early group members, who took the biggest risk). However, it would seem a bit unfair if later joiners whose shares paid for furyburners were to get mining payouts first. I need to give this aspect some thought. Any suggestions would be welcome.
