[CLOSED] Bitmine CoinCraft A1 28nm chip distribution / DIY support

[zefir]

News

Update (2014-02-27): chip distribution closed
Update (2014-02-12): 2-chip board reference design available
Update (2014-02-01): chips arrived and re-shipped / update on terms for sample chips supply
Update (2014-01-28): chips shipped to Europe, orders, availability
Update (2014-01-20): chip distribution re-opened (see below)
Update (2014-01-19): first DIY board hashing at 30+ GHps per chip
Update (2014-01-11): chip bring-up mini-howto
Update (2014-01-06): initial tests with real chips
Update (2013-12-31): preliminary findings relevant for DIY designs
Update (2013-12-23): initial A1 cgminer SPI driver released
Update (2013-11-07): Offer halted

Resources

• (preliminary) chip specification on github
• cgminer A1 SPI driver (tested on RasPi) on github; short info on how to get and compile it
• Bitmine A1 announcement and chip sales

DIY Projects

• Technobit HEX8A1 - 6/8 chip Coincraft A1 board
• [Open Source Hardware Project] Hive & Wasp Prototype Development
• TBA

Chip Distribution in DIY Volumes (50+)

About
Bitmine is offering Coincraft A1 chips in 500+ volumes to the masses, which for DIY folks might be unpractical. Therefore I am distributing some of the chips I ordered for personal use to the scene with non-profit intentions. Take this as a symbolic compensation for 2013's disaster the DIY scene was hit by. I am herein offering up to 5000 chips from the first chips in volumes in lots of 50 chips. The price is what Bitmine asks for the chips at time of order, with an 8% surcharge to cover S&H expenses.

Is this for me?
There was a great confusion with the initial announcement, so to clarify here: this offer is NOT for you if

• you need more than 500 chips
  => order at Bitmine and you will save the 8% surcharge and even get discounts on higher volumes
• you want a manufacturer to build your board(s)
  => order your boards at the manufacturer of your choice, he will get better prices with higher volumes
• you want to organize a group buy
  => please organize your group buy so that you can make a 500+ order at Bitmine directly; I do this at no cost to support the open source DIY scene and don't want to run into multi-party deals and related troubles

How to order
I expect only a limited number of orders and will therefore follow a manual order processing.

• orders are placed via email to this address (please leave the Gmail alias suffix intact)
• with the order, please include your shipping address (if possible with phone number for express); if you are concerned about your privacy, please use PGP encryption (my public key is in my sig)
• chips are offered at Bitmine's price for 500+ chips at time of order +8% (today 3.5$/GHps, including surplus: $4'725 / 50 chips)
• you will be asked for payment once I know chips are on their way to Switzerland
• payments will be in BTC only and based on BitStamp exchange rate at time of payment
• should I fail to ship your chips within 2 weeks after your payment, you will be refunded the exact amount of BTC you paid
• orders are processed FCFS, no pre-order, no down-payment
• buyer is in charge for taxes and customs

Good Luck!
Initial Offer (for the records)

With the past BTC exchange rate movement this offer for buyers became not acceptable any more and is therefore halted.

Down-payments collected so far will be refunded in full.

A better offer will be available when chips are ready for distribution.


Folks and miners,

I am glad to announce that I have been selected by Bitmine as exclusive tier-1 chip distributor for the 28nm CoinCraft A1 mining ASIC. I will also provide the interface to the DIY scene and supply everything needed to enable community driven development and production of mining products as open source.

About
The CoinCraft A1 is Bitmine's first mining ASIC, which is rated at 20GHps at <0.6J/GH. It supports low-energy (down to 0.35J/GH) and high-power (up to 40GHps/chip) modes to allow optimal resource utilization during different stages of mining (please follow above link for more info). Throughout this offer, the rated specs are considered, i.e. one chip is worth 20GHps.

Bitmine offers bare chips to larger customers directly from their web-shop in minimum quantities of 500, while lower quantities are distributed by me in lots of 50 chips (or 1 THps). If you need smaller quantities, please organize a group buy yourselves to reach this minimum size.

I ordered chips from the pilot-run that is scheduled to be finalized by end of November - i.e. the earliest available chips. Those I am herein offering to DIY folks, which will be shipped out before December 13th (W50).

Chip specifications, design documents, reference software, and everything that is required to design mining rig development will be provided through github incrementally, with a guaranteed availability of all required support material by end of October.

Pricing
The price per chip is 8% above Bitmine's for lowest order quantity, which for December delivery is set to $5/GHps and corresponds to $108/chip. I am operating only in the BTC domain and set the price using BitPay's exchange rates. With today's rate, the price is 42.5BTC per 50-chip lot (1 THps).

Shipping
I will receive chips in W49 (first December week) and will distribute them no later than December 13th.

Priority shipping is included. Urgent / express is available on request for an additional 1 BTC.

Bitmine provides a Customer Protection Plan (CPP), which fully applies for the chips offered here. The agreed shipping date to be considered for that plan is December 13th.

Availability
I have 100 lots available (5000 chips). Chips are distributed in the order down-payment is paid (see below).

Availability ends October 19th.
Edit: Chips will be available at least until their delivery date. A final notification will be made prior to closing the order window.

How to order
Since the number of potential buyers is limited, the orders will be processed manually as follows:
1) Place your buy order via email
2) If not sold out, I'll provide you with a payment address
3) You pay 20% down-payment, which is only refundable if I fail to deliver in time (see CPP)
4) You pay the remainder right before chips are shipped


Addendum (2013-09-17):
Sample Chips
The chips offered here are from the pilot-run and are exactly meant to be sample-chips, i.e. they are the first available ones. Obviously ordering a full lot of 50 chips only to test board designs is a barrier for DIY hobbyists. Therefore the following special conditions to support the DIY scene are added:

1) chips for design verification can be ordered in smaller quantities (1-31 chips, 0.85 BTC / chip)
2) an additional low-quantity fee of 1 BTC per order is charged to make up for S&H expenses
3) down-payment is at least 1 BTC
4) all other rules stated above for lot orders apply



Cheers,
zefir

[zefir]

-- reserved --

[zefir]

-- reserved --

[shapemaker]

Are there any developers or hardware manufacturers already committed to making boards or devices for these chips?

[eraziel]

Are there any developers or hardware manufacturers already committed to making boards or devices for these chips?

Burnin,
However he will probably order a whole batch of chips and sell the boards ready to hash incl. chips and everything else

[AdamKD]

Shouldn't this be in group buy subforum?    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=137.0 ....

[RoadStress]

Shouldn't this be in group buy subforum?    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=137.0 ....

Again not a group buy. Do you have a zefir problem?

[zefir]

Shouldn't this be in group buy subforum?    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=137.0 ....

Again not a group buy. Do you have a zefir problem?

That's what I assumed, i.e. group buy threads are there to collect funds, while this is already paid and offered for distribution.

[AdamKD]

Shouldn't this be in group buy subforum?   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=137.0 ....

Again not a group buy. Do you have a zefir problem?

My problem is unique to this thread and similar 'sale' threads.  Not sure where you read about a Zefir problem?  Enlighten me.  If you can make a distinction between 'group buy' and this thread I'm sure you can make a distinction between 'this thread' and Zefir?

Just a shame that this forum is not separate from a (I'd say 'the' but I guess since it's limited to only 'group buys' which probably wasn't the exact limitation in the spirit of that 'group buy' subforum) group buy / resell / sale forum (i.e., anything sales / advertising related).  Topics that seem interesting on this forum, to me, are the technical ones / vendor announcements, etc ... which is what brings, I'd assume, most people here.

This is more of a sale/advertisement and not really something that should not be on this forum.

[GandalfG]

Where I find documentation for that chip ?
Package, pinouts, voltage, thermal parameters, communication protocol etc ?

[zefir]

Where I find documentation for that chip ?
Package, pinouts, voltage, thermal parameters, communication protocol etc ?

See OP:

[...]
Chip specifications, design documents, reference software, and everything that is required to design mining development will be provided through github incrementally, with a guaranteed availability of all required support material by end of October.

[GandalfG]

Where I find documentation for that chip ?
Package, pinouts, voltage, thermal parameters, communication protocol etc ?

See OP:

[...]
Chip specifications, design documents, reference software, and everything that is required to design mining development will be provided through github incrementally, with a guaranteed availability of all required support material by end of October.

How I can miss that
End of October. In this case, we have very limited time to design.

[zefir]

How I can miss that
End of October. In this case, we have very limited time to design.

No, end of October is where the support material is guaranteed to be complete. This implies that it will be made available as open source as early as Bitmine has it - essentially DIY developers will have identical access to the relevant documents.

Since chip sales are part of their business, Bitmine has a vital interest to provide all available support to developers. That's why I am confident in this commitment enough to include the guarantee as part of the offer.

[Bicknellski]

Following.

Looks like a good chip might be worth a DIY open source hardware project.

[giorgiomassa]

Thanks Zefir for being our official distributor for the CoinCraft A1 ASICs!

This project is fully supported by Bitmine AG, soon the first documentation about the A1 will be uploaded on our github account so that specs will be available for everybody.

Good luck!

[giorgiomassa]

Where I find documentation for that chip ?
Package, pinouts, voltage, thermal parameters, communication protocol etc ?

See OP:

[...]
Chip specifications, design documents, reference software, and everything that is required to design mining development will be provided through github incrementally, with a guaranteed availability of all required support material by end of October.

How I can miss that
End of October. In this case, we have very limited time to design.

We know that we're tight with the time but we will publish every document as soon as it will be available. The coming week we'll work on the FPGA chain prototype that will have exactly the same frontend code as the ASIC, that would be enough to start to work on the drivers. The IC packaging house is also finishing the drawings of the custom IC package that we'll use on the A1. This will make things a bit more challenging than a simple QFN, but we wanted a custom design built from scratch to withstand the specific characteristics of a bitcoin mining chip while still being cheaper than QFN.

[burnin]

Interesting alternative in the 28nm league.
I will be watching.

We know that we're tight with the time but we will publish every document as soon as it will be available. The coming week we'll work on the FPGA chain prototype that will have exactly the same frontend code as the ASIC, that would be enough to start to work on the drivers. The IC packaging house is also finishing the drawings of the custom IC package that we'll use on the A1. This will make things a bit more challenging than a simple QFN, but we wanted a custom design built from scratch to withstand the specific characteristics of a bitcoin mining chip while still being cheaper than QFN.

will the package be flip-chip or qfn like dissipating into the board?

[giorgiomassa]

will the package be flip-chip or qfn like dissipating into the board?

It's an hybrid package using both for maximum thermal performances. The bottom will have the GND pad along much like the QFN for PCB dissipation while the top will be used to mount an heatsink much like BGA (flip-chip) style.

[cwfabc]

 good news

[GandalfG]

will the package be flip-chip or qfn like dissipating into the board?

It's an hybrid package using both for maximum thermal performances. The bottom will have the GND pad along much like the QFN for PCB dissipation while the top will be used to mount an heatsink much like BGA (flip-chip) style.

Estimated chip  size ? Or standard QFN xxx ?
Clock - internal ext.  ?