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

[bitcoiner49er]

By Dec, pricing will need to be 1BTC per 100 GH/s or better.

[GandalfG]

Sorry about that, we're going to update the info very soon, also we did some last minute changes to the packaging which wasn't finalized yet but now is to achieve even more power supply pin pad area.

Tomorrow a new version of the datasheet will be released with the required information!

Btw, IOs are all 1V8 and there's a pin for VREF (but there's no info on it in the first verisone of the datasheet yet). 

Thx Giorgio for update. Waiting for more. .
Fast delivery spec and protocol detail are very important for us.

Good idea with VREF pin.

[intron]

Sorry about that, we're going to update the info very soon, also we did some last minute changes to the packaging which wasn't finalized yet but now is to achieve even more power supply pin pad area.

Tomorrow a new version of the datasheet will be released with the required information!

Btw, IOs are all 1V8 and there's a pin for VREF (but there's no info on it in the first verisone of the datasheet yet). 

Should be nice to have an IOVDD also, so the chips can
be 'stringed' like the bitfury ASIC.

intron

[zulunation]

Also add some information on IN_CLOCK pin.

[DickMS]

What's the usage of V_ref?
Could you verify that all SPI pins are signaling at 1.8V, please?
Which pin is supplying the 1.8V input?
Have you decided which rail is GND yet?
Edit-1: Or are both rails supplying the internal voltage, and the only GND is the central pad?
Edit-2: I hope both rails aren't V_internal, since that would force either a 4-layer board, or high inductance breaks in either the cooling GND plane or the V_internal plane. There is a reason that prior chips didn't use a plugged-tunnel approach to pinout...
P.S: a link to the github location of these specs would fulfill one of your previous promises....

Thanks!

[DickMS]

So, let me get this straight....

in return for bare chips, delivered the same time as the first fully operational hardware boxes, we are to pay 0.85BTC per chip (25GH). At $150/BTC, that's $127.50 per 25 GH, or $5.1/GH. No guarantee that all 32 engines are working on every chip purchased, at least so far as I can see. Mining dashboard says that difficulty would have to stay below an increase of 80% per month to reach 0-ROI, some time in APRIL, so the chip costs eat up the first 90 days income, even if power costs are ZERO.

At these prices, I think this is a very expensive hobby.

Kinda hard to see how anyone would make a successful business out of it, unless chip prices were dropped into the $3-4/GH range, and even then a 2 week slip in delivery destroys all the expected profit for the life of the product, and then some.

Ah, well - I've had more expensive hobbies, I suppose.

[DickMS]

BTW, zefir said the specs would be on github.... link please?

[Dexter770221]

https://bitmine.ch/?p=2226

[DickMS]

Thanks, but that's the one that's been out for a few days, and doesn't have much if any useful information in it (no electrical, no power pinouts, etc, etc). Giorgio & Zephir have both said that the spec will be put on github, and G said it would be updated today... that's what I was looking for.

[zefir]

Thanks, but that's the one that's been out for a few days, and doesn't have much if any useful information in it (no electrical, no power pinouts, etc, etc). Giorgio & Zephir have both said that the spec will be put on github, and G said it would be updated today... that's what I was looking for.

Yes, it will be put on github with any other support material as soon as it is available in a post pre-alpha state.

Also true: the preliminary spec is exactly that and meant mostly to present the chip front-end and resulting host interface for a broader review. Bitmine is currently working on the first revision of the draft that will be updated ASAP. Since the chip is designed externally (Innosilicon), it takes its time to communicate and settle the final numbers.

Generally, since the Coincraft A1 will be at DIY folks' desks not before late December, there is no need to be impatient. If the provided documentation does not suffice the developer's demands to work on board designs, a full refund will be granted.

Furthermore, given the prolonged availability window (valid till chips are in my hands), there is no need to rush into ordering. Take your time to study the documentation and specs when they are released in their final state, and order only after you decide to work on an own design. Also in this context, please understand that this offer is really meant for DIY folks only, i.e. not for those who want to buy chips and then send them to some 3rd party for assembly. In that case, you should talk to the developer of your choice directly, since with enough interests they can order from Bitmine and get better volume prices. Obviously I do not want to distract people from buying chips, but I want to prevent the chaos the Avalon chip distribution ended for some buyers (ordering chips here and boards there, ending up nowhere).


Cheers

[DickMS]

Thanks, zefir - I was just trying to remind Giorgio that he said he was going to update the spec today... there are a lot of unanswered questions that impact any board design.... and if you expect orders only from DIY's who will assemble chips like that to boards themselves, I suspect you will have little call for chips - hot-air/infrared assembly is not for the inexperienced or the faint of heart, and at over $100/chip, the risk is quite high. I think I will take your advice, and put a hold on the order that I sent you earlier this morning. It's mostly wasted effort, after the buck controllers and microprocessor are laid down, until the real specs arrive. The window hasn't closed on getting boards fabbed and assembled (omitting A1's) by the time the chips turn up - I was going to HARW them onto two already assembled boards, so I've got some time yet...

Here's hoping Giorgio (or rather one of his engineering minions) gets some free time soon....

[Bicknellski]

So, let me get this straight....

in return for bare chips, delivered the same time as the first fully operational hardware boxes, we are to pay 0.85BTC per chip (25GH). At $150/BTC, that's $127.50 per 25 GH, or $5.1/GH. No guarantee that all 32 engines are working on every chip purchased, at least so far as I can see. Mining dashboard says that difficulty would have to stay below an increase of 80% per month to reach 0-ROI, some time in APRIL, so the chip costs eat up the first 90 days income, even if power costs are ZERO.

At these prices, I think this is a very expensive hobby.

Kinda hard to see how anyone would make a successful business out of it, unless chip prices were dropped into the $3-4/GH range, and even then a 2 week slip in delivery destroys all the expected profit for the life of the product, and then some.

Ah, well - I've had more expensive hobbies, I suppose.

All excellent points, but in some respects this buy from Zefir allows us to get a smaller number of chips not 500 as Bitmine offers up. I think at this point Zefir's the only one trying to keep the DIY stream going and that we should be thankful for. Even if it is expensive at this point being able to develop and bring to the community something that is DIY is I think still an important aspect for Bitcoin and Altcoins. There will be a future point where the difficulty will level out and project experiences now could be very important for groups of DIYers later as long as the chips are actually shipped and specs are provided. We all learned a horrible lesson with Avalon... and we are now learning about the difficulty wall vs. the cost of production. Break even might be the only thing one can shoot for with these units but as DIYers that might be enough. Also pretty keen to have you working with us in the Wasp project DickMS... I think this DIY hobby will be a lot of fun and terrifying as well.

[fusion7]

Does the chip has internal oscillator?
There is IN_CLOCK pin. Does the chip requires an external generator?

I think the IN_CLOCK pin is for SPI only, there is a PLL inside the chip.

[fusion7]

I have a question about the RESP_BIT. It seems it's only used for the 0x08 command.

If MCU want to read the result from chip 15, MCU will send out 0x080F. The spec says the RESP bit is set to 1, so that means the return format shall be 0x18FFDATA but it also says JOB_ID is Y i.e. 0xY8NNDATA. However the Job ID can be from 1 to 4. So there is a conflict, how does it represent Job ID#2 ? If it send out 0x28NNDATA then the RESP bit is not set, if the RESP bit is set, it would be 0x38NNDATA.


Does this mean that the JOB ID occupies the upper two bits?
i.e.
Return format:
32'b aabb1000NNNNNNNNDATADATADATADATA

where aa = job ID, bb = resp bit

Please clarify  

[Dexter770221]

Does the chip has internal oscillator?
There is IN_CLOCK pin. Does the chip requires an external generator?

I think the IN_CLOCK pin is for SPI only, there is a PLL inside the chip.

IN_SCLK and OUT_SCLK are for SPI bus.

[DickMS]

So, let me get this straight....

in return for bare chips, delivered the same time as the first fully operational hardware boxes, we are to pay 0.85BTC per chip (25GH). At $150/BTC, that's $127.50 per 25 GH, or $5.1/GH. No guarantee that all 32 engines are working on every chip purchased, at least so far as I can see. Mining dashboard says that difficulty would have to stay below an increase of 80% per month to reach 0-ROI, some time in APRIL, so the chip costs eat up the first 90 days income, even if power costs are ZERO.

At these prices, I think this is a very expensive hobby.

Kinda hard to see how anyone would make a successful business out of it, unless chip prices were dropped into the $3-4/GH range, and even then a 2 week slip in delivery destroys all the expected profit for the life of the product, and then some.

Ah, well - I've had more expensive hobbies, I suppose.

All excellent points, but in some respects this buy from Zefir allows us to get a smaller number of chips not 500 as Bitmine offers up. I think at this point Zefir's the only one trying to keep the DIY stream going and that we should be thankful for. Even if it is expensive at this point being able to develop and bring to the community something that is DIY is I think still an important aspect for Bitcoin and Altcoins. There will be a future point where the difficulty will level out and project experiences now could be very important for groups of DIYers later as long as the chips are actually shipped and specs are provided. We all learned a horrible lesson with Avalon... and we are now learning about the difficulty wall vs. the cost of production. Break even might be the only thing one can shoot for with these units but as DIYers that might be enough. Also pretty keen to have you working with us in the Wasp project DickMS... I think this DIY hobby will be a lot of fun and terrifying as well.

Bik, I wasn't complaining about zefir's prices - I am very grateful that he's selling small batches, and think that his prices are reasonable for that - nobody expects prototypes to make money. My point was simply that - given even optimistic assumptions about difficulty, and even considering Bitmine's CPP - there's no apparent way that anyone can make 0-ROI on anything made from chips that cost $5/GH in December. And, even if Bitmine drops the price to $3/GH in December, for the first batch, 0-ROI depends on them making their delivery dates nearly perfectly. Even a 1 week slip means loss of most of the revenue expected from the entire lifetime of the miner. 2 weeks late means that every dollar put into making a miner will only return $0.80 or less, over its entire lifetime. No-one can make a successful commercial product line at those prices which will be attractive to the well-financed professional miner - those people can and do run the numbers, and don't invest in anything that won't return a profit under any circumstances (unless they are running a money laundering business, where a negative ROI is normal). No big buys and no repeat business means no chip company, and a loss to their investors.

My guess is that the A1 batch will cost about $40/chip, with the exotic new package and some reasonable development & NRE amortization. That's a little over $1.5/GH, and even a $2.5/GH sales price, in December, first batch, would give them a good return on their investment while allowing their customers to shoulder some reasonable risk with reasonable rewards possible. These are conditions for big investments, and for return business. Selling boxes at $6-7/GH that will never pay off unless all the competitors stop delivering will only sell to hobbyists who don't care about ROI. There aren't that many of them, and they probably won't absorb 50,000 chips from the first batch. Certainly not enough to give Bitmine's investors a return for their development costs.

I love designing embedded systems, building them and programming them. I've been doing it as a professional since 1982, and have built systems that will never generate any money, just for fun, as well. Those were toys, and a hobby. Bitmine needs to price its chips at a point where well-funded professionals can make money for their risk, or it's just in the toy business. Just my prediction, based on nothing more than professional experience, with no insider information - no need to do anything but wait a few short months to see how accurate it is. I'd love to be proven wrong by Giorgio dropping the chip price from $5 to $3 for the December deliveries, and then to $2.5/GH for deliveries in January. Til then, others with more money to spend on their hobbies will have to take my place in the buyers' line.

[vs3]

So, let me get this straight....

in return for bare chips, delivered the same time as the first fully operational hardware boxes, we are to pay 0.85BTC per chip (25GH). At $150/BTC, that's $127.50 per 25 GH, or $5.1/GH. No guarantee that all 32 engines are working on every chip purchased, at least so far as I can see. Mining dashboard says that difficulty would have to stay below an increase of 80% per month to reach 0-ROI, some time in APRIL, so the chip costs eat up the first 90 days income, even if power costs are ZERO.

At these prices, I think this is a very expensive hobby.

Kinda hard to see how anyone would make a successful business out of it, unless chip prices were dropped into the $3-4/GH range, and even then a 2 week slip in delivery destroys all the expected profit for the life of the product, and then some.

Ah, well - I've had more expensive hobbies, I suppose.

All excellent points, but in some respects this buy from Zefir allows us to get a smaller number of chips not 500 as Bitmine offers up. I think at this point Zefir's the only one trying to keep the DIY stream going and that we should be thankful for. Even if it is expensive at this point being able to develop and bring to the community something that is DIY is I think still an important aspect for Bitcoin and Altcoins. There will be a future point where the difficulty will level out and project experiences now could be very important for groups of DIYers later as long as the chips are actually shipped and specs are provided. We all learned a horrible lesson with Avalon... and we are now learning about the difficulty wall vs. the cost of production. Break even might be the only thing one can shoot for with these units but as DIYers that might be enough. Also pretty keen to have you working with us in the Wasp project DickMS... I think this DIY hobby will be a lot of fun and terrifying as well.

Bik, I wasn't complaining about zefir's prices - I am very grateful that he's selling small batches, and think that his prices are reasonable for that - nobody expects prototypes to make money. My point was simply that - given even optimistic assumptions about difficulty, and even considering Bitmine's CPP - there's no apparent way that anyone can make 0-ROI on anything made from chips that cost $5/GH in December. And, even if Bitmine drops the price to $3/GH in December, for the first batch, 0-ROI depends on them making their delivery dates nearly perfectly. Even a 1 week slip means loss of most of the revenue expected from the entire lifetime of the miner. 2 weeks late means that every dollar put into making a miner will only return $0.80 or less, over its entire lifetime. No-one can make a successful commercial product line at those prices which will be attractive to the well-financed professional miner - those people can and do run the numbers, and don't invest in anything that won't return a profit under any circumstances (unless they are running a money laundering business, where a negative ROI is normal). No big buys and no repeat business means no chip company, and a loss to their investors.

My guess is that the A1 batch will cost about $40/chip, with the exotic new package and some reasonable development & NRE amortization. That's a little over $1.5/GH, and even a $2.5/GH sales price, in December, first batch, would give them a good return on their investment while allowing their customers to shoulder some reasonable risk with reasonable rewards possible. These are conditions for big investments, and for return business. Selling boxes at $6-7/GH that will never pay off unless all the competitors stop delivering will only sell to hobbyists who don't care about ROI. There aren't that many of them, and they probably won't absorb 50,000 chips from the first batch. Certainly not enough to give Bitmine's investors a return for their development costs.

I love designing embedded systems, building them and programming them. I've been doing it as a professional since 1982, and have built systems that will never generate any money, just for fun, as well. Those were toys, and a hobby. Bitmine needs to price its chips at a point where well-funded professionals can make money for their risk, or it's just in the toy business. Just my prediction, based on nothing more than professional experience, with no insider information - no need to do anything but wait a few short months to see how accurate it is. I'd love to be proven wrong by Giorgio dropping the chip price from $5 to $3 for the December deliveries, and then to $2.5/GH for deliveries in January. Til then, others with more money to spend on their hobbies will have to take my place in the buyers' line.

Amen!

+1!

I've been trying to say the same on the other thread, and actually running some totally optimistic utopia numbers I came to even scarier conclusions -

Given all that - the December delivery for those chips would make them not worth even a try at prices above $10/chip.

If we presume the $10/chip price + $15 manufacturing cost and that it takes only 3 weeks from chips delivery to finished devices - that gives you $25/chip devices in mid-January. By the time you ship it to the customers and they start running it it will be Feb/1. In the utopia scenario customers will reach a peak of $28-44 income in 4-6 months.

Did I miss anything?

Please - someone explain and show me how this chip will ever make profit or at least achieve ROI?

Oh and the best part was the reply:

You're missing that $160/BTC was hit today, and that fact invalidated all of your just mentioned theory and calculations.

That's the amazing part of the Bitcoin world, it's just soooooo much unpredictable! 

So - there you have it - keep hoping that Bitcoin stays unpredictable and you end up on the winning side.
I think we may as well just play Lotto - at least the chances of winning are known in advance.

I invested several thousand dollars in just parts and materials developing the (bitfury-based) NanoFury board and I'm not even mentioning the hundreds of man-hours work here. And all of that just to find out that I had gotten into the classic bait-and-switch scheme - when I started October chips were promised at $20/chip, but in mid-September all of a sudden they became $30/chip. That minor change made any NanoFury devices nearly unsellable.

It appears that the CoinCraft chip is going to get into the same if not even worse scenario - it makes me want to look away from it and not even bother looking at the specs as I know that even if manufactured at zero cost it won't make ROI ... which situation ironically is actually better as at least we know all that in advance.

I don't see any option in which I can design something with those chips and sell it at profit.

The sad reality is that this chip should've been on the market 3-6 months earlier. With so many competitors (Avalon/bitfury/BFL/KNC/etc) looking to get a piece of the cake I don't see the difficulty rise slowing down any time soon. The half-life of any chips and devices on the market is currently one-two months the most.
With that said - even one week slippage in the delivery can be a disaster.

[zefir]

Folks, those of your considerations on chip price and their ROI potential are all valid points, but really: aren't they better placed in the mining speculation sub-forum? Let us please focus on the technical aspects here. If you don't see a potential for profitable mining rig based on this chip, by all means do not spent time or resources bothering and move on.

I am forwarding the feedback collected here to Bitmine and hope we will have an updated preliminary spec document available soon. I will also ask to put it on github, which at this state is only to keep the word given, since in its sole binary form it is not of much use being put into an SCM.

I have a question about the RESP_BIT. It seems it's only used for the 0x08 command.
[...]
Please clarify 

This is also some leftover from moving from a queue based work processing to the now proposed descriptor based with 4 individual work items per chip. Before, the idea was to signal the availability of results from chips within a chain by setting the RESP_BIT as long as there are results available in the output queue. With that, we would have to provide the winning nonce and some reliable ID to assign the nonce to the work items queued at host. This typically would be some hash of at least 32bit length to reduce risk of collisions. With that, we would need to provide 2x 32bit data with each READ_RESULT command.

The new approach is meant to reduce the data by those 32 bits required for the ID and with that communication delay. The JOB_ID fits into the command's spare bits, which moves the correct assignment of the winning nonce to cached jobs to the host.

So, to clarify: there is no RESP_BIT anymore, but 3 bits holding the JOB_ID for the returned result. If it is 0, there are no results available in this chain, otherwise the response provides winning nonce, JOB_ID and chip address.

A pseudo code sequence to process work and results would roughly look like this:

Code:

reset_chip_chain();
for (int chip = 0; chip < chip_chain_length; chip++) {
	for (int job = 0; job < 4; job++)
		set_work(chip, job);
}

while (1) {
	sleep_time = 2^32 / (chip_speed_in_hashes_per_second * chip_chain_length);
	sleep(sleep_time);
	while (1) {
		result = get_result_broadcast();
		if (result.job_id == 0)
			break;
		send_result(result);
		set_work(result.chip_address, result.job_id)
	}
}

[DickMS]

Z, the point of the ROI comments is to show that Bitminer has an unworkable pricing schedule, and to try to convince them that it is in their best interests to modify it. So, since they aren't looking in the speculation threads, and since Giorgio is deliberately ignoring that the advance and retreat of BTC to USD conversions does not affect our estimates at all, much less invalidate them, I thought that this was the place to change his mind... it didn't work. Oh, well.

His ignoring the numbers doesn't really affect the numbers: he prices his chips in BTC, regardless of the exchange rate. So, we can calculate the expected return for any given difficulty, in BTC, and compare it to the cost of the chips. The numbers say that for every BTC spent on a chip that is sold at 0.85BTC, and put into operation in January, it will return only about 0.3BTC over its entire lifetime - ignoring the cost of the boards, power supply, and power.
Edit: According to Mining Dashboard, assuming current difficulty increases continue without the rate increasing, the lifetime return for 1BTC is 0.33 BTC (0.6617 loss), regardless of whether you price the BTC at $100 or at $200. No shipping, no power, no boards, no case... only chip costs considered. Check for yourself.

Like I said - a very expensive hobby, and Bitminer is making things that can't be considered anything but toys for rich men.

I thank you heartily - you have been extremely polite in your responses, and I appreciate the civil discussion. Since I can't, evidently, be convincing, I won't push the point any further.

[Subw]

I'm too interested in future price policy, because without profit there is no point in buying chips and developing anything. Don't repeat bitfury errors guys....