BFL ASIC mining board project

[MrTeal]

I'm a little concerned about some direct contact heatpipe designs since there often is a gap between the heatpipes and the aluminum plate between then. That doesn't seem to be the case with the Evo as there isn't a gap between the heatpipes. The copper heatpipe area width is ~28mm, so it's likely that there might be a millimeter or two of the outside dies contacting the aluminum  on the base plate instead of the copper, but the difference between the two is going to be inconsequential compared to the thermal resistance you'll get from your interface between the silicon and the heatsink anyway.

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[crazyates]

I'm a little concerned about some direct contact heatpipe designs since there often is a gap between the heatpipes and the aluminum plate between then. That doesn't seem to be the case with the Evo as there isn't a gap between the heatpipes. The copper heatpipe area width is ~28mm, so it's likely that there might be a millimeter or two of the outside dies contacting the aluminum  on the base plate instead of the copper, but the difference between the two is going to be inconsequential compared to the thermal resistance you'll get from your interface between the silicon and the heatsink anyway.

Ya, I realized the Hypte 212 isn't a bad one, but some of those direct heatpipe ones that work for a CPU would be devastating on an 8 chip design! 

[MrTeal]

I'm a little concerned about some direct contact heatpipe designs since there often is a gap between the heatpipes and the aluminum plate between then. That doesn't seem to be the case with the Evo as there isn't a gap between the heatpipes. The copper heatpipe area width is ~28mm, so it's likely that there might be a millimeter or two of the outside dies contacting the aluminum  on the base plate instead of the copper, but the difference between the two is going to be inconsequential compared to the thermal resistance you'll get from your interface between the silicon and the heatsink anyway.

Ya, I realized the Hypte 212 isn't a bad one, but some of those direct heatpipe ones that work for a CPU would be devastating on an 8 chip design! 

I wouldn't expect very good performance, that's for sure. Again, the plan is that it will be something that's compliant with the mounting hole locations for an LGA1156 heatsink, but things like clearance and having a large enough base plate will be hit or miss. I'll do my best to provide a reasonable selection of coolers that will work with minimal or no tweaking, but it won't be something where you can grab any CPU cooler and toss it on there. There has to be a balance between providing options to people who want to try high end cooling or water blocks, and making the board larger and more expensive.

[felente]

mrteal, can you look at my PM to you?

[MrTeal]

I just realized that I never posted this here. Must have something to do with getting home after working on it at 4am yesterday.


PCBs are delivered and two are populated, other than the precious ASIC samples. I plan to build two more tomorrow (one with an ASIC mounted, one without) and ship two to Chip Geek for firmware testing while I characterize and test the power supply and tweak the power supply compensation loop. This project might take a little longer to get running once hardware arrives as it's a different MCU and there are several other features to add (external clocking, onboard temperature diode reading, dynamic frequency and voltage control, custom chaining interface, etc), but so far the chance of sticking to the timeline seems pretty good.

[dwdoc]

Very cool.  Looks a lot simpler than the jalapeno board (below).  Do I understand correctly that this is a test board that will run with 1 or 4 chips (not seen) but the final board will accomodate 1-8 chips?

ps-will be interesting to see what hashrate you get with each sample chip given the range advertised by bfl...

[jelin1984]

Great

But the board take final 4 or 8 chips?

[iikun]

I'm branching this off from the old group buy thread, as that has a lot of posts that just aren't that applicable to the actual board design.

Project Description
This project is being developed by Mr Teal and Chip Geek, with the purpose to provide a high performance mining platform for the Butterfly Labs ASICs. By leveraging existing infrastructure in the PC space, the plan is to provide the chips with high levels of thermal and power headroom without spiraling cost out of control.
Once the design is proven, orders for the boards will begin. Chips can either be ordered through myself, or you can order chips and have them resent to us to have them populated onto miners.

Hi, could you give an est price for the populated board with chips thru you?  I'm not a part of a group buy.
Thx

[MrTeal]

Jelin, the final board will take 8 although you can mount however many you'd like on it.
iikun, we're still estimating $300 (plus chips) for a fully populated 8 chip board.

[-Redacted-]

OK, I claim dibs on part of the first production run - let me know when I can buy 10 or so of them.

[ysyang21]

I presume $300(plus chips) might be a typo. since 8 chips already costs $500.

[dwdoc]

$300 for board + $400 for chips (using chip credits) + cooling ($30?) + psu ($50?) = $780ish?

Chriss99 at BFL forum is also designing a board for BFL chips but I think MrTeal is a little farther along.

[pembo210]

*tingling sensation detected 

[erk]

I think BFL are going to have to halve their chip price to remain competitive after Oct when KNCminer and possibly Hashfast are shipping.

[-Redacted-]

MrTeal - anything new happen in the last week with the boards??

[minor59er]

This looks very interesting.

A lot of hard work has gone into it so far, can't wait for the final product.

Seems to be a better board compared to the BFL Jalapeno as dwdoc mentioned.

[rammy2k2]

i would laugh so loud if BFL will deliver chips on time and go over avalon 

[Bitcoinorama]

FWIW, outside of these particular intended purposes, the Noctura products rock, I've always used them, and they are super quiet. You probably know this though, but in case you didn't and ambient noise matters to you...

[Loredo]

i would laugh so loud if BFL will deliver chips on time and go over avalon 

Oh, I know.  It would just be too spectacular for words. 

I'd hate to see it only because of the amount of great work put into the Klondikes and the whole Avalon-chip open source infrastructure, but, increasingly, team Avalon needs a good, solid, Fuck You, and I can't think of one with more iron-clad irony that that.

[MrTeal]

Sorry for the lack of updates, I was in the mountains and out of easy internet access over the weekend. Testing is still underway, and coding/testing for all the peripherals is in progress. Most of the low level ASIC code is done and looks good on a scope, so hopefully we should be fully hashing and tested this week, and get the 8 chip board out to fab so it can be built and validated for production.