Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s

[ChuckBuck]

Looks like one of their peeps snuck a peek in here and added 8, 9, and 10 to avoid getting bitched at to infinity by the angry mob.

There might be hope for June.

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[david105396]

Bitcoin Miners progress update – 09 May 2014
1. The Minion has arrived.
a. Has been tested at 120Ghash. The power measured at the wall was 150Watt. This includes the 8% loss of the PSU and currently 20% on the DC/DC converter. This translates on 0.92W/Ghash at the chip level. We have asked the ASIC designers to come to our office to study how to further improve the power efficiency.
b. The expected loss on the DC/DC should be around 10%. We have identified We identified that part of the power used is lost by the inductor. A new customised inductor is scheduled to arrive in one week.
b. We decided to write a software application which will produce a full report to include details on voltage, speed and efficiency at all ranges. Estimated time to completion is up to 3 weeks but this additional feature will not affect the shipping schedule.
c. We believe that further overclocking is available, further tests are scheduled after we complete the assembly of the 200A board tomorrow.
2. All Minion orders have been shipped today.
3. Most of the X3 and X1 PSUs have been delivered are now in stock.
4. The majority of the heatsinks have been manufactured.
5. The first lot of X3 cases has been received. (Aluminium alloy)
6. The control board assembly has just been completed. This is behind schedule and we are not confident at this stage that we can write the LCD driver in useful time for first shipments. If this is the case we will release firmware updates to enable the LCD functionality.
7. The first batch of LCDs was delayed 1 day and is now due to arrive tomorrow.
8. Unfortunately we have been told that the X1 case will not be delivered in time. If the X1 miners will not be ready at the same time with our X3 miners we made a contingency plan to start hashing with our own X3 units for our X1 customers affected by this delay. Bitcoins mined on their behalf will be transferred accordingly. Full details will be announced directly to customers, therefore please do not flood our customer support with tickets regarding on how to receive Bitcoins.
9. Our main PCB assembly factory failed to initiate the assembly 2 days ago as scheduled. We were forced to switch the assembly production with another local factory which is now scheduled to start the assembly tomorrow.
10. X3s are scheduled to start shipping early next week.

Pictures: http://ecointalk.net/gallery/album/20-09-may-2014-progress-update/

[sorehammer]

Well if they are shipping x3's next week and have no x1 cases my 2 batch 2 x1's which should ship on the 15th look like not coming till June

[david105396]

If a delay occurs for X-1 customers we will start hashing with our own X-3's for those customers. Bitcoins mined on their behalf will be transferred accordingly.

[jimmothy]

Thanks david. Do we have the full minion specs yet? 0.92w/gh is not great but its not bad either. Can the chips reach better efficiency by underclocking?

[sorehammer]

Cheers David  that's good. 😊

[y_boonstra]

BA.

im very sorry that i have to be the negative person here again, but WTF happen your chip is at the same point as was your first design back in feb.. these specs are terrible !!
your in the same range as an ant miner, and yet your price is higher + you don't have the units in stock.

surly you can't deliver the machines with these kind of specs then your screwing your costumers over, are you planning to replace these chips with new ones if the design is reviewd, iff not your screwing batch 1 and batch 2 ppl over big time.

at these numbers the machine will be worthless on diff 30 bil... this can't be true

your machine is running at 1,5W/Gh at wall while your were telling us it WILL preform around 0,75W/Gh on chip level @ T/T corner (120Mhz) !!!!

YOUR CUTTING OUR POTENTIAL MINING TIME IN HALF WITH THESE SPECS..

it almost sounds like your rushing out the machines before PPL realize its crap and start asking refunds

[jimmothy]

150w @ 120gh/s is 1.25w/gh at the wall (compared to 1w/gh had they hit spec)

Anyways what do you want them to do? Send the chips back to design stage and let us wait another 3 months? I'd rather just get my asic now.

[y_boonstra]

150w @ 120gh/s is 1.25w/gh at the wall (compared to 1w/gh had they hit spec)

Anyways what do you want them to do? Send the chips back to design stage and let us wait another 3 months? I'd rather just get my asic now.

it's almost the same W/Gh ratio as an ant miner wich is cheaper and available now.

[Syke]

150w @ 120gh/s is 1.25w/gh at the wall (compared to 1w/gh had they hit spec)

Anyways what do you want them to do? Send the chips back to design stage and let us wait another 3 months? I'd rather just get my asic now.

it's almost the same W/Gh ratio as an ant miner wich is cheaper and available now.

It's worse than both Bitmain and Bitfury, 55nm chips from last year!

[coolmusic]

150w @ 120gh/s is 1.25w/gh at the wall (compared to 1w/gh had they hit spec)

Anyways what do you want them to do? Send the chips back to design stage and let us wait another 3 months? I'd rather just get my asic now.

it's almost the same W/Gh ratio as an ant miner wich is cheaper and available now.

Bitmain is 2W/Ghs in NORMAL mode
Blackarrow is 1.25w/Ghs OVERCLOCKED

[coolmusic]

They mean the Antminer S2, not the S1. The S2 is basically the same thing as one of the X-3 subunits, but has been available for a bit already.

thats true but my point is wait for the final numbers to make comparisions!

[jimmothy]

150w @ 120gh/s is 1.25w/gh at the wall (compared to 1w/gh had they hit spec)

Anyways what do you want them to do? Send the chips back to design stage and let us wait another 3 months? I'd rather just get my asic now.

it's almost the same W/Gh ratio as an ant miner wich is cheaper and available now.

Bitmain is 2W/Ghs in NORMAL mode
Blackarrow is 1.25w/Ghs OVERCLOCKED

They mean the Antminer S2, not the S1. The S2 is basically the same thing as one of the X-3 subunits, but has been available for a bit already.

S2 is $2500 for 1th or $2.5/gh

BA is $6000 for 3.6th or $1.7/gh

[coolmusic]

They're shiping in less than a week i wouldn't expect a large change in numbers.
[/quote]

ok! so, what is the minion power comsumption when run at 100 Ghs/s?

[Vcore]

I think I can clear some of the confusion (I am not related to them but I know how the circuits/components involved work) .

The choke/inductor is not from the power supply but from the 12 to 0.85v dc-dc converter in the hashboard and that is good news as they are not made yet.

They should be able to provide a 10 to 15% improvement in overall efficiency as long as the rest of the dc-dc converter design is really optimal. Designing a dc-dc converter for those powers is really hard and at 200A a tiny internal resistance anywhere is catastrophic (and inductors are a prime candidate for unwanted internal resistance).

Also knowing the real asic specifications they might extract some extra stability/overclockeability by adjusting the vdroop and some extra efficiency by adjusting frequency and gate drive parameters at the dc-dc converter so there is stil a chance for some improvement.

Also you can't make a power supply or dc-dc converter 100% efficient and we are going to have at least two between the wall and the asics. 1st one turns mains into 12V and 2nd one turns 12V into the asic vcc (0.85V if i am right). So lets say that both those converters are 90% efficient wich would we an awesome job, 0.9*0.9=0.81 so roughly 20% more power at the wall than at the asic would be an awesome job. If they have active pfc they might have even another dc-dc converter.

[fivejonnyfive]

You know, I'm frustrated with the delays - frustrated as all hell just like the rest of us.

But honestly? 150W for 120GH is pretty palatable. It's barely above the power consumption of the antminer S2 - and I don't doubt that these numbers can be improved upon.

The compensation package for batch one should be 2x the units. No question about that. I can get a 180gh antminer for less than what I paid for this 100gh x1. Hell - I already did.

But like, the power consumption seems pretty decent and I bet the final numbers will be better

S2 is $2500 for 1th or $2.5/gh

BA is $6000 for 3.6th or $1.7/gh

Where the hell are you getting that 3.6th number from? Didn't they say they've got 120gh a chip?  The x3 would get 2400th in that case, no? $2.5/gh in that case.....

[tempestb]

Thanks VCore that explains a lot.

How many chips are on the board?  Would it halve the inefficiency with each chip added?  We're looking at 150watts at the wall for one chip currently, I'm thinking that won't translate to 300watts with two chips on the board.  What do you think?

[notindexed]

Dear Black Arrow,

I have a solution for your batch 1 X1 preorder folks!

Example here is a 10 units X1s preorder:

Your current compensation:
- Ship 10 units & 5 units w/o PSU (no real statement on how they will handle shipping, no PSU really? and will this delay shipping even more?)
- Offer some kind of cloudhashing using instock X3s to compensate the delay vs. X3 shipping (pain in the butt to setup/distribute evenly, inc over 9k tickets etc..)

A better solution for your backers and yourselves as it saves you time, headaches, resources and rep.:
- Ship 1 X3 instead of the X1s "on time" (less shippingcosts & the above is about the price of an X3 & you can ship earlier)

tl;dr

Ship 1 X3 per 10 units X1 preorder and ofc adjust X3 preordercompensation accordingly.

[Dot99lr]

b. The expected loss on the DC/DC should be around 10%. We have identified We identified that part of the power used is lost by the inductor. A new customised inductor is scheduled to arrive in one week.



Wouldn't that mean a week to change the inductor, thereby delaying shipping by at least a week? They said shipping early next week. Am I missing something?

[jimmothy]

How many X-3 units are you keeping for your personal collection?

Bobsag said that when you announced your data center it would be used for the compensation package, that doesn't need to happen anymore so how many units are you guys sticking in there that you refuse to compensate us with, because that's all you can do?

EDIT: what is your current hashrate from the chips that are in now?

Why does it matter how many x3s they will have in their DC?

Did you think they were going to build exactly as many x3s as needed for their rent-a-minion orders and no more?

Seems to me like your just grasping at straws for something to be mad about.