Break even difficulty by hardware efficiency (power cost = value of BTC)

[muyuu]

I doubt even that will happen with ASICs. With GPUs, people had other uses for them. With ASICs, lots of people are not even aware of their consumption and they don't have any other usage for them. I don't think they will track the price so tightly if at all... but I guess we will eventually find out when we get closer to break-even.

I think it's highly unlikely that people will order custom hardware like ASICs to mine BTC and NOT track the power consumption and do the math (unless they are the kind of customers BFL got where Josh was laughing at them buying items where they had no clue what it did)

There's also lots of people with "free" electricity (as in, someone else pays for it). For instance my rent includes bill within a certain usage. I run ASICs and honestly I don't look at their consumption (well, I did just for curiosity, but I'm not tracking it).

This is rather common in Europe and Asia.

Obviously these are not going to be big operations, but many people can add up to be significant. Depends on how decentralised mining ends up being for the next few years.

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[SolarSilver]

There's also lots of people with "free" electricity (as in, someone else pays for it). For instance my rent includes bill within a certain usage. I run ASICs and honestly I don't look at their consumption (well, I did just for curiosity, but I'm not tracking it).

This is rather common in Europe and Asia.

I think you mean Eastern Europe and not Europe in general...

Obviously these are not going to be big operations, but many people can add up to be significant. Depends on how decentralised mining ends up being for the next few years.

Even with free power, some people ponied up more BTC for an ASIC (Batch #3 from Avalon for example) than it can ever generate due to the rise in difficulty. I guess some will be so stubborn to let the machines run to recover whatever they can.

[cedivad]

You gave me a rational reason to be bullish on the bitcoin price.

[Ente]

I doubt even that will happen with ASICs. With GPUs, people had other uses for them. With ASICs, lots of people are not even aware of their consumption and they don't have any other usage for them. I don't think they will track the price so tightly if at all... but I guess we will eventually find out when we get closer to break-even.

I think it's highly unlikely that people will order custom hardware like ASICs to mine BTC and NOT track the power consumption and do the math (unless they are the kind of customers BFL got where Josh was laughing at them buying items where they had no clue what it did)

There's also lots of people with "free" electricity (as in, someone else pays for it). For instance my rent includes bill within a certain usage. I run ASICs and honestly I don't look at their consumption (well, I did just for curiosity, but I'm not tracking it).

This is rather common in Europe and Asia.

Obviously these are not going to be big operations, but many people can add up to be significant. Depends on how decentralised mining ends up being for the next few years.

Actually you gave me a new point of view on this: Maybe those "exploiting free energy" people will be the only ones keeping us from a centralized mining environment? Big projects will drive small projects out of business, but those "free energy" guys can only do small operations before they will have trouble..

Ente

[justanickname]

I am scanning this thread and can't see the word "refund" anywhere.

I think if difficulty continues this 30% increase every 10 days, people will start canceling their pre orders and ask for refunds.

So, IMO, to get a more realistic prediction one should check all the refunds policies of all manufactures.

[muyuu]

There's also lots of people with "free" electricity (as in, someone else pays for it). For instance my rent includes bill within a certain usage. I run ASICs and honestly I don't look at their consumption (well, I did just for curiosity, but I'm not tracking it).

This is rather common in Europe and Asia.

I think you mean Eastern Europe and not Europe in general...

Obviously these are not going to be big operations, but many people can add up to be significant. Depends on how decentralised mining ends up being for the next few years.

Even with free power, some people ponied up more BTC for an ASIC (Batch #3 from Avalon for example) than it can ever generate due to the rise in difficulty. I guess some will be so stubborn to let the machines run to recover whatever they can.

I'm in London, UK. Lots of places include bills in London and elsewhere in the UK, as long as you don't exceed a certain "fair usage" limit. I've had similar experiences in Spain, France, Italy. Also in a number of countries in Asia. Only in the US, from the places that I've been, such options are rare.

So no, not just Eastern Europe.

There is nothing stubborn about letting your machines generate whatever they can when your electricity bill is the same. Unlike GPUs, you cannot really resell them or use them for something else.

[Roy Badami]

One other reason why people might rationally mine with hardware that is apparently no longer cost-effective: if they want the heat output anyway.

For people who use electric heating, why not run an old miner instead of a conventional electric heater?  One could even imagine die hard enthusiasts hooking up miners to thermostats and time switches to supply heat when needed.

What would be a decent 1kW miner to buy, as a space heater, I wonder?  This time next year I imagine I will be able to pick up a 4-module Avalon for little more than the cost of a fan heater :-)

-roy

[Roy Badami]

One other reason why people might rationally mine with hardware that is apparently no longer cost-effective: if they want the heat output anyway.

I've been thinking about this a bit more....

Perhaps the very long term equilibrium is that the electricity costs of mining will be somewhat, or maybe even substantially higher than the returns...

The bulk of mining will be done, for example, in combination with electrical heating (with the coins defraying a part of the electricity cost) and other similar circumstances.  The idea of mining and throwing away the heat output (or even worse, using more energy for AC) will be reserved only for the few who have the absolute cheapest electricity, if it happens at all.

That end game is probably a decade or two off, though

roy

[gingernuts]

Even with free power, some people ponied up more BTC for an ASIC (Batch #3 from Avalon for example) than it can ever generate due to the rise in difficulty. I guess some will be so stubborn to let the machines run to recover whatever they can.

Rising difficulty doesn't give you a hard stop in BTC production though - it just makes your mining more expensive in terms of electricity per BTC - and if your electricity is free, you can keep going until either you, or your miners die, can't you?

[SolarSilver]

Rising difficulty doesn't give you a hard stop in BTC production though - it just makes your mining more expensive in terms of electricity per BTC - and if your electricity is free, you can keep going until either you, or your miners die, can't you?

Yes, but if you can sell your power hungry 110 nm ASICs and one month later buy far more efficient 28 nm ASICs, why not get a far higher return? It's all about finding another fool to hold the hot (cold?) potato

[Roy Badami]

CoinCraft @ 0.6J/GH - not seen the orignial announcement (if there was one) but zefir announced that he was distributing them here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=294235.0

roy

EDIT: Oh, this is BitMine.  And that's 0.6J/GH at chip level....  

Based on this page a CoinDesk system is 4.7J/GH is turbo mode and 0.53J/GH in low-power mode.  Unfortunately they don't quote power at the wall in 'normal mode' (This is the mode which is 0.6J/GH at the chip, I think - and the mode on which the stated hash speeds are calculated)

[lastbit]

Good list.

Bitfury is somewhat better than that though, I measured +116W for adding a 150GH/s Bitfury unit to my rig. Gold-rated 1300W PSU at 440W@230V total now so I'd assume about 90% efficiency. Anyway, <0.8J/GH at the wall for Bitfury. Another guy had similar results.

Was this on the reduced speed boards?  The reason I ask is if the boards intended for 25 GH/s are getting 21 GH/s then they are essentially underclocked (even if unwillingly) and that will improve efficiency. 
Was the 116W increase at the wall? 

Thanks for the thread, D&T.

BTW, as I'm sure you know, if voltage of the chips is constant, efficiency is roughly independent of frequency(hashrate). While there is a very slight increase of efficiency at lower hashrate, due to better efficiency of DC/DC and main PS, we are talking of single digit percentages only.

Indeed if the voltage can be adjusted, and if you do this properly, efficiency is roughly inverse dependent with the square of frequency(hashrate). For a 10% increase in hashrate you pay a ~33% penalty in power consumption.

On 4 modules Avalon, where voltage is fixed, I have ~8.4J/GH@256MHz degrading continuously to ~8.6J/GH@360MHz. I assume efficiency is a little higher at lower frequencies due to better efficiency at lower power of the DC-DC converters and main PS.

On the other hand, on a 2x7970 rig, at the wall, including motherboard and HDD power consumption:
465 J/GH (2.15 MH/J) @ nominal voltages (1.175 and 1.112V) = 1300MH/s, 605W
322 J/GH (3.10 MH/J) @ undervolt 0.95V = 1100Mh/s, 355W

   

[btcusr]

Why did you make this?

I find it silly people have projections with difficulty going to 1 trillion or more (I think the highest I have seen is 200 trillion). At a mere 300 billion difficulty all current and proposed mining devices would be operated at a significant loss (assuming $100 exchange rate & $0.10 electrical rate).  So at 1 trillion in difficulty even a Cointera rig would be converting $4 in electricity into $1 in Bitcoins.  Anyone think that is likely?   Significantly higher difficulty is going to require either more efficient hardware, a higher exchange rate, or the average cost of power for the network to decline.

Interesting numbers. We can understand that home / basement / garage based miner's time has come to an end, or will end soon. Considering a data center environment, where hosting / rent is calculated based on 'Rack unit', I am wondering how these numbers would be calculated.

Total network hashrate is still a unpredictable. Is it possible to say an investment amount (miner + hosting cost) will break even in 6 months?

[Ente]

Why did you make this?

I find it silly people have projections with difficulty going to 1 trillion or more (I think the highest I have seen is 200 trillion). At a mere 300 billion difficulty all current and proposed mining devices would be operated at a significant loss (assuming $100 exchange rate & $0.10 electrical rate).  So at 1 trillion in difficulty even a Cointera rig would be converting $4 in electricity into $1 in Bitcoins.  Anyone think that is likely?   Significantly higher difficulty is going to require either more efficient hardware, a higher exchange rate, or the average cost of power for the network to decline.

Interesting numbers. We can understand that home / basement / garage based miner's time has come to an end, or will end soon. Considering a data center environment, where hosting / rent is calculated based on 'Rack unit', I am wondering how these numbers would be calculated.

Total network hashrate is still a unpredictable. Is it possible to say an investment amount (miner + hosting cost) will break even in 6 months?

Not necessarily.
Home based miners don't calculate costs for manpower/administration, will often not use AC (which doubles the electricity price) and might more easily mine on a very thin or negative margin. And then there's an army of people with no (self paid) electricity costs at all.
But yes, those groups probably won't ever reach a percentage of the total mining power as in CPU or GPU times..

Ente

[DeathAndTaxes]

Updated Cointerra efficiency from 0.7 J/GH at the wall (0.55 J/GH at the chip) to 0.8 J/GH at the wall (0.6 J/GH at the chip) based on this statement.

Updated (lowered) Cointerra efficiency based on this statement.

We have recently released a new video demonstrating a working FGPA, as well as additional GoldStrike1 ASIC chip details.

To watch the video and read the full release, please head to http://cointerra.com/cointerra-demonstrates-working-fpga-releases-additional-chip-details/ .

If you can't wait and just want the GoldStrike ASIC specs, here they are!
Global Foundries: 28nm HPP process.Clock-speed: 1.4 GHz (min binning speed) to 2 GHz (max binning speed)

Die size: 3 dies of 10x10 mm for a total of 300 sqmm.

Hash rate: 504 GH/s to 720 GH/s based on binning speed

Hashes per sq mm: 1.68 GH/s/mm2 to 2.4 GH/s/mm2

Power consumption: <0.6 watts/GH/s (@ 0.765 volts)

Architecture: pipelined unrolled hashing units

Tape-out due: 1st week of October

System cooling:  Custom designed liquid cooling by CoolIT Systems capable of 400 watts per chip, though the chip will not exceed 300 watts in normal operating condition. incorporating  3x high speed 12cm fans with 4U sized radiator at the back.  System box was recently upgraded from 2u to 4u to allow for larger fans and radiator to provide significant increase in cooling capacity and reduced fan noise  - 12cm fans are much quieter than 9cm fans.

Logistics: By design, all suppliers (excluding ASIC), including PCB design, board and box assembly provided locally in Austin to reduce shipping delays of parts between locations and eliminate delays due to logistics or customs.

Significant payments made to fab to expedite process from usual 90+ days to 65 days.

Chips expected back, early December.

Systems expected to begin shipping to customers, Mid December.


If you have any questions, you can always reach us at info@cointerra.com or 512-270-6050.


Best Regards,
CoinTerra Team

[DeathAndTaxes]

Update (improved) KNC to 1.0 J/GH based on reported 455W @ 12 VDC running at 502 GH/s.  Assume 90% AC power supply efficiency results in estimated 505W at the wall.  Also moved KNC into the "actual devices" category.  Bitfury still holds the efficiency crown though.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg3307091#msg3307091

On edit: revised slightly to 1.1 J/GH.  The 455W was the output (0.75V) of the DC to DC converter.  Based on GE spec sheet the input current would be ~10% higher.  That puts it closer to 560W at the wall.  This appears to be inline with other customer reports using kill-a-watt type meters.  On some firmware and with the 4 VRM model the wattage is significantly higher ~1.3 J/GH.

[Bicknellski]

[Goldshredder]

I think a likely outcome of corporate hashrate monopolisation would be the death of crypto. It's just not a viable way to go because it would remove fundamental human interest in the entire concept in these early years.  The technologists of the world, who are you and I, would leap off in droves, and the concept would die.  Because we make it, in the end.

I don't doubt that big capital is putting more in as time goes on, but if they go too far and take over what isn't settled yet, they'll end up with nothing.

The thing about Bitcoin is that so far (and probably for quite a long time yet to come) it is an alternative, we all can just dump it at any time and resume our normal fiat lives, should we become sufficiently disillusioned with it for any reason.

[sickpig]

Update (improved) KNC to 1.0 J/GH based on reported 455W @ 12 VDC running at 502 GH/s.  Assume 90% AC power supply efficiency results in estimated 505W at the wall.  Also moved KNC into the "actual devices" category.  Bitfury still holds the efficiency crown though.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg3307091#msg3307091

On edit: revised slightly to 1.1 J/GH.  The 455W was the output (0.75V) of the DC to DC converter.  Based on GE spec sheet the input current would be ~10% higher.  That puts it closer to 560W at the wall.  This appears to be inline with other customer reports using kill-a-watt type meters.  On some firmware and with the 4 VRM model the wattage is significantly higher ~1.3 J/GH.

just to add a few datapoints.

I own 2 jups both with a 8 VRMs per PCB and a faulty asic module with a die with all 48 cores disabled each.

At the pool I got something like 490-95 GH/s each.
 
with fw 0.90 the power consumption combined was 7.5 Ampere @ 220 V at the wall --> 1650 Ws  = 825 Ws each.

with fw 0.95 the hashrate remains the same and I got 4.4 Ampere @ 220 V at the wall --> 946 Ws = 473 Ws each.

bertmod reports that ASIC slots total DC/DC power output is 433 and 438 Ws  respectively.

I user the same PSU model for both: Cooler Master V850.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Thanks for the datapoints.  It is strange the reported DC/DC output doesn't change.  ~430W out regardless however the input wattage changes significantly.
On edit: fixed misunderstanding of numbers reported. Both output DC numbers are v0.95.  There are no DC output numbers for v0.90.

Need to make some assumptions but lets say the 6 fans use 6W ea (someone can look at the fan sticker and let me know wattage or amps) and the host uses another 5W.  That puts the balance of the system at ~40W.    Lets also assume your PSU is 90% efficient at 220V pretty reasonable for 80 Plus Gold unit over most of its operating range (208V-240V tends to be 1% to 2% more efficient than 120V).

v0.95 =  473W @ 220VAC ~= 425W DC @ 12VDC  (425-40) = 385W Input for VRM (96W per module).

That would put the reported DC output of the module higher (430W ) than the computing DC input (385W).  Something isn't correct.   So either your wall wattage numbers or the output reported by the VRM is incorrect, they both can't be right.  Under ideal conditions (no cooling or host power consumption), 90% DC efficiency, 93% ATX PSU efficiency.  430W output would mean (430/(0.9*0.93) = 513W) >500W at the wall.

Still lets look at the wall efficiency.
v0.90 825W / 495 GH/s = 1.7 J/GH  OUCH.
v0.95 473W / 495 GH/s = 1.0 J/GH

If anyone else has KNC datapoints please provide the following:
KNC Mode.
Average hashrate.
Wattage at the wall.
Firmware version.
# of VRMs present (4 or 8 ).
Power Supply model.
Mains Voltage (120V, 208V, 220, 240V, etc).

Thanks.