[The Wasp] 28nm ASIC Miner Open Hardware Development Project

[Bicknellski]

Note: With the runaway BTC / USD exchange we are going to fix membership fees (lifetime) 1 payment at $100 USD. So if you pay your membership it is 0.3BTC today based on the BitStamp prices at $340.00 USD/BTC.

Note: We now have the domain www.thewaspproject.com and will be adding content soon. We need helpers so please join us if you want to do some work on our payment gateway, store etc. and don't forget the big meeting with the EE's tomorrow it looks like a VPN could get set up so people can watch tests live as the prototypes take shape!

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[Bicknellski]

Meeting slightly delayed... will start on Teamspeak in about 1 hour and 10 minutes at 8:30 pm Utah Time. One of the EE's still on the road heading home.

[Bicknellski]

Update:

Our BitFury Wasp prototype should be testing by the end of next week. Next meeting 6pm Pacific Time Seattle on the teamspeak server. Minute notes from today's meeting will be posted later in the Zoho Project page. Members welcome anytime on the teamspeak channel to talk with the EE's. The current designs are being done in PCB123® - Free PCB Design Software from Sunstone found here: http://www.sunstone.com/pcb123.aspx

Notes on Chips Order of Prototype Development for the Wasp:

1. BitFury chips in hand will be arriving this week and will be put into prototype boards by end of the week and live development update will be available via VPN for members interested in the design process.

2. Our EE in Utah will work concurrently on the Avalon chips he hasin hand already the development of this Wasp will be over the next few weeks updates will follow at the next meeting.

3. A1 chips still from what we know will ship in December but we are still waiting on chip specifications. Designs can be modified with in a few hours of specs being dropped and we have contingencies already in place for a variety of different specs of the A1 chips.

4. BA Minion chips are still on schedule to ship in February and chip specs should drop soon.

As always we are still open to anyone willing and interested to join our group we have a $100 USD membership fee and if you want to create a new project or support the current Wasp / Hive development a 2 BTC opt in will cover the costs of the prototype development as well as chip purchases. Drop me your email and I can add you to the Zoho Page.

[Bicknellski]

Update News:


A1 "final" design specs for the chip have dropped and still looks likely December will be the ship date for the chips.

Avalon Gen I Chips looks like we have access to about 140 chips so we definitely want to push the envelope on cooling and density of the hive with these chips.

We will get some Bitfury chips to the EE in Seattle after the 19th so during that time the EE plenty of time to work on a number of items before the BF chips get mounted to the prototype.

Also as a side note one our members is keen on tracking down some ztex boards so if anyone has like 100 he is willing to take em off your hands. Contact me if you are keen to offload... they will have a great new home and be put to good use.

[Bicknellski]

Additional Project Update:


The Wasp Project Mining Pool.

As mining hardware is only a small portion of the future of our group we are looking for other ways to expand our scope. We will need our own mining pool for our hardware and potentially in BTC and Alt Coins should there be interest by our members. The pool we are planning will require a number of key components.

1. Server and hosting.
2. Pool software with excellent security.
3. Kick ass web interface.

The focus of this project will be to sell opt in shares to cover the costs of the server hardware, hosting set up and the development of the pool software, security, and web interfaces. A number of our members are currently available to provide everything we need in as little as 30 days so we have a deadline of December 30th for this project to go live.

[rimbit]

Note: With the runaway BTC / USD exchange we are going to fix membership fees (lifetime) 1 payment at $100 USD. So if you pay your membership it is 0.3BTC today based on the BitStamp prices at $340.00 USD/BTC.

Note: We now have the domain www.thewaspproject.com and will be adding content soon. We need helpers so please join us if you want to do some work on our payment gateway, store etc. and don't forget the big meeting with the EE's tomorrow it looks like a VPN could get set up so people can watch tests live as the prototypes take shape!

I can setup the website and store that can accept bitcoins

[kfruit]

Being from Indonesia this interests me. Anyway I can get involved?

[Bicknellski]

We have one member working on the website if you want to join us and work with him that would be great Rimbit.

Kfruit... if you want to join... then email me. Doesn't matter where you are members welcome from across the planet.

$100 USD lifetime membership fee to join us based on BitStamp prices for BTC/USD.

Access to the Zoho Project page is open until the 15th of December for those who have not paid their membership fees or have discussed a payment plan.

Email me darin.bicknell@gmail.com for access up to the 15th of December. We hope to have the website set up beyond that for membership payments.

[Bicknellski]

Update:

From the last meetings we had on Saturday and Sunday our project EE has clarified some the issues that could have potentially caused prolonged delays in redesign of our own boards or would have caused reliability issue with our units. This is a direct result of heat and power  issues related with the chip packages of all newer 28nm chips that are soon to hit the market next month and early in 2014. We are now more confident in our prototype potential release dates.

BitFury Wasp Prototype

+  16 to 24 chips  for 300 gh/s to 440 gh/s depending on the configuration.
+  4U Server configuration
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype are a week away.
+  By December the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By December the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as January for these units should there be a market for them.

Avalon Gen I Wasp Prototype

+  16 to 24 chips for 50 gh/s to 75 gh/s depending on the configuration. (Gen II chips would be higher)
+  4U Server configuration.
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype are a week away.
+  By December the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By December the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as January for these units should there be a market for them.

A1 Wasp Prototype

+  A1 designs will be applied to the BitFury Wasp design and should take less than a week.
+  4U Server configuration
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype would occur in late December.
+  By Late December the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By Late December or Early January the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as January for these units.

Minion Wasp Prototype

+  Minion designs will be applied to the lessons learned from the A1 Wasp design and should take less than a week.
+  4U Server configuration
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype would occur in January or earlier.
+  By Late February the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By Late February or Early March the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as Late February or Early March for these units.

We are keen on working with chip manufacturers to get their chips into our modular design as well as working with group buys, diy'ers or EE's who have previously handled production of Avalon, BFL, BitFury or others boards that have made it to the marketplace. Our intention is to put out the wasp and hive as open source software and hardware and provide support for those who wish license our units for production. Given that our modular system does have a number of other uses depending on the design of the Wasp mining bitcoin will not be the only thing in the designs repertoire. There are also future plans in the near future to adapt the basic design with add ons to allow for scrypt mining but there is functionality well beyond cryptocurrencies such as a robotic controller.

Our modular miner design strengths include:

+  No requirement to change firmware for each new Wasp.
+  Firmware will be loaded during fabrication for each new Wasp.
+  Multiple varieties of Wasp chip set mining together in the same modular unit.
+  Short lead time to production of new chips with the modular design.
+  Scales easily and a rapid deployment of hash-power.
+  Protection against obsolescence.
+  Resale value of the components for other purposes beyond mining bitcoins.

If you are keen on getting a sneak peak at our designs that are up on the Zoho page before we close the pages to paid members... then drop me an email and I will add you to the Zoho Project page. Membership to the The Wasp Project Collective is always open and investment in the Wasp and Hive is ongoing and we welcome paid members to join either the design or project management team on this project. We welcome questions and we hope to provide evidence of our prototype miners hashing soon. Come join us.

[Bicknellski]

Correction:


We will have to update the firmware each time there is a new chip - as they will have different configuration patterns and so forth.

However we won't have to update the cgminer/bfgminer/waspcollectiveminer software for each new chip and that is essentially how we get all the Wasps to play nice in the same chassis. The same software runs them all.

[Bicknellski]

DESIGN TEAM MEETING

We have recently added some new EE's to the collective since our last meeting. We now have 6 EE's who are currently consulting on the his project and we hope to see them all at this meeting this Saturday. As always all 30+ registered members on the Zoho Project page are welcome to attend and engage in a Q & A with our EE's.

Agenda:

+ Review of progress made on BitFury and Avalon Wasp designs.
+ EE Requests for documentation, parts etc to help them proceed with their part of the project.
+ Delegate the development of the hive and other wasp designs to the new EE's
+ Revise milestones.
+ Q&A Session.

Location:

Our TeamSpeak3 Server
Channel: The Wasp

Time:  

1800 PST (Seattle, USA)


Days: Every Saturday

[Bicknellski]

20 days to a prototype? Possibly. I will just leave this here.

[albinosincave]

This looks like an awesome community project!

[Bicknellski]

This looks like an awesome community project!

Come join us... the more the merrier!

We are working on the firmware.


The Wasp Firmware Architecture

Summary

The Wasps are a collection of mining blades customized to individual hashing ASICs or FPGAs, all of which conform to a single architecture in firmware, communications protocols, and drivers. This document discusses the architecture and subsystems comprising the firmware on each Wasp. Any Wasp variant can be plugged into a Hive (backplane+power supply) beside other Wasps of different design, and all run simultaneously, communicating with one or more mining controller programs at the same time.

In addition, any Wasp can be the target of a remote debugger, or a maintenance program without affecting any other resident of the Hive.
Wasps are compound USB devices, with multiple endpoints in support of mining, configuration/management, In-System-Programming, field maintenance, diagnostics, and firmware debugging.

Firmware Objectives:

1. Safely start up the Wasp, controlling bus voltage sequencing, on-board configuration, power-controllers, hashing engines, monitoring subsystems, and USB (full speed, 12 Mb/s) communications with the mining controller.

2. Safely shut down the Wasp in the event of various continuously monitored problems being detected, including temperature excursions or bus voltage failures, or as a result of commands from the mining controller or the hot-plug button.

3. Interact with the mining controller's USB system to identify the Wasp type and capabilities.

4. Interact over USB with the mining controller to characterize the on-board hashers with regards to functionality, range of clocking, and total output, and collect that configuration data into a block of information passed to the mining controller as an opaque data block, as well as storing the parameters in resident non-volatile memory. On startup, we must be able to detect a valid configuration, or its lack, and adjust the various on-board resources accordingly.

5. Interact over USB with a program on the mining controller to provide diagnostic, logging, and maintenance operations.

6. Download and install firmware updates and hot-patches, and firmware "overlays" - temporary programs sent to the Wasp for specific, non-mining purposes.

7. Configure, command, and monitor the power-controllers on the Wasp.

8. Configure, command, and monitor the hashers on the Wasp.

9. Configure and monitor the environmental sensors on the Wasp.

10. Maintain a non-volatile log of actions and events, which can be requested by the mining controller or maintenance program, or which can be reported on a regular basis to those programs.

11. Perform comprehensive diagnostics and Built-In-Self-Test, displaying the summary results on LEDs and communicating those results through the USB connection.

12. Interact with the mining controller to generate staged local work items for the hashers, and present them over the SPI ports to the hashers. Queueing the local work items for those hashers able to maintain an internal queue must be supported.

13. Regularly poll the hashers for nonces found to meet the presentation criteria, re-construct the local work that resulted in those hashes, and present the resulting share submissions to the mining controller.

14 Interact with the mining controller to shift to new work items, once the controller has commanded a shift in the local work configuration. Introduce these new work items to the hashers with as little latency as possible.

15. Manage a cryptographically signed device certificate, for use in compatibility checking on firmware updates, as well as for licensing protection.


Firmware Subsystems:

... to see the rest on the document become a member on the Zoho Project Page.

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Do you want to help work out the Firmware with us? PM or email me to join The Wasp Project Collective today.

[kr105]

This looks incredible awesome, I want to join for sure. I will be PM'ing you soon

[Bicknellski]

This looks incredible awesome, I want to join for sure. I will be PM'ing you soon

 

Check it out... waiting for your PM.

Tell all your buds!

[kr105]

This looks incredible awesome, I want to join for sure. I will be PM'ing you soon

 

Check it out... waiting for your PM.

Tell all your buds!

PM'd 

[Bicknellski]

What is a HIVE?

The Hive - A Home for Wasps

Summary

The Hive is a collection of small and large circuit boards whose purpose is to provide power, as well as command, control, and testing signals to one or more Wasps.

Objectives:

+ Develop a line of products that span the realm of installations ranging from the home-user's single blade to oil-immersed racks of industrial hashing systems, making trade offs of cost versus features to fully address both ends of this range.

+ Provide power and communication between one or more Wasp blades and the linux-based controller which runs the mining program.

+ Allow for hot-plugging of Wasps of any type into the same backplane, providing automatic overload prevention - new Wasps will not be enabled unless the Hive can provide sufficient power.

+ Provide a range of backplanes, from a simple, single-Wasp connector to a rackable backplane for multiple (8-10) Wasps.

+ Provide connectors for multiple, redundant, and hot-pluggable power supplies to supply power to a multi-blade stack, or to a rack, self-adjusting as the blades are plugged in.

+ Provide manual controls for system power-on/off, audible and visual feedback for individual blade readiness/status, and control of individual blade power feed.

Features:
 
Single board Hive

+ Has sockets for a standard ATX power supply - 24-pin motherboard connector plus two, 6-pin PCIe 12V connectors.

+ Has push-on/push-off button for power control.

+ Has power-on indicator LED for each of 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and 5Vsb.

+ Has standard USB B-receptacle for cabling to controlling computer.

 
Stacked-board Hive

+ Accepts any mixture of Wasp implementations, in any number of arbitrarily provisioned slots with no manual configuration required.

+ Has sockets for a standard ATX power supply - 24-pin motherboard connector plus two, 6-pin PCIe 12V connectors.

+ Has push-on/push-off button for power control.

+ Has power-on indicator LED for each of 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and 5Vsb.

+ Has standard USB B-receptacle for cabling to controlling computer.

 
Rack-mounted Hive

+ Has connectors for a local control panel with buttons and display.

+ Accepts any mixture of Wasp implementations, in any number of arbitrarily provisioned slots with no manual configuration required.

+ Has sockets for a standard ATX power supply - 24-pin motherboard connector plus six, 6-pin PCIe 12V connectors.

+ Has one or more high-power edge connectors for server-style pluggable 12V-only power supplies.

+ Has buttons for system power control and reset, with operation similar to standard PC.

+ Has power-on indicator LED for each of 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and 5Vsb.

+ Has mechanical position and connectors for mounting a Raspberry-Pi (R-Pi) or Beagle Board Black (BBB) controlling computer, as well as connectors for USB and power so that those controllers can be attached from remote mountings.

+ Has a position for audible-feedback "speaker" (piezo transducer) to be plugged into.

+ Provides circuits for automatic slaving of server power supply(s) to the PC controls, providing single-point manual control of all system power.

+ Provides individual manual enable/disable controls for each slave supply.

+ Provides individual, software assisted enables for each Wasp slot's power, with visual indicators of status.

+ Provides fully automated Manufacturing Acceptance Test capability.

+ Provides significant, partially automated Operational Diagnostic Test capability.


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Interested in working on the HIVE? Come join The Wasp Project Collective today!

[Bicknellski]

From the last EE meeting potential prototype using BitFury Wasps.

*  32 chips per Wasp.
*  8 Wasps per Hive.
*  +/- 588 Gh/s. (2.3 gh/s per chip)
*  Prototype likely hashing in December.
*  Production could start early January.
*  We are currently reaching out to the community for those who might be interested in the BitFury versions as well as A1 and Minions.

Other notes.

* A1 / Minion designs for Wasps will be a very short turnaround based on rework of the BitFury / Avalon Wasp configurations.
* Remote hot patches for firmware will be available.
* Remote diagnostics on the hardware will be available.
* VPN to the prototype boards will be available for Firmware design and testing live for members of the design team.
* First 3D render on the Bitfury Wasp was released internally at the meeting and it was great to visualize the Wasps for the first time.

It was certainly an informative meeting and as always the meeting was recorded so members can listen to the full meeting in the coming days once it has been uploaded.

From our ever growing document pages on the Zoho Project you can see that this Open Source project is really trying to bring some much needed conveniences to miners.

Wasp Controller and Maintenance Software

Wasp Firmware Patching and Upgrading

PatchPanel is another snap-in based utility intended to manage Wasp firmware and hot-patch state. As such, it uses many of the snap-ins from CDMpanel, in order to identify, isolate, read status, and install overlays on the selected Wasp (no batch mode is proposed at this time, though manufacturing might need such a program). It has unique snap-ins for querying status of patches and firmware releases, and for installing new versions of each. It can also revert hot-patches and remove them from the program-FLASH image.

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Wasp Remote Debugger

Wasp's remote debugging facility is provided by Atmel's (the MCU manufacturer's) remote debugger, with the assistance of on-board ADB support through its own dedicated set of endpoints. Remote debugging is enabled by flags in the opaque data block downloaded when the Wasp is started, after it identifies itself and its capabilities.

[Bicknellski]

Wasp Controller and Maintenance Software

Summary

The Wasp Project Collective Wasps are self-contained hashing blades utilizing various hashing ASICs, and adapting each of them to a single unified power, command, and control structure. Several programs residing on the controlling PC or embedded computer interact with the Wasps through the common protocols for:

+ Mining eCoins, not limited to BTC
+ Testing and configuring the Wasps, both individually and "Collectively" (of course )
+ Performing in-place firmware patching or upgrading.
+ Purchasing and managing licenses for the Wasps
+ Debugging firmware on the Wasps, while running one of the above programs in parallel.

Come join us and help develop some truly disruptive innovations in mining hardware as well as being part of a dynamic SHIFT in the DIY / Open Hardware community. 40+ members and growing and many are software and hardware engineers. We are building a better community with this project and we need your help. To see more on our Wasp Controller and Maintenance Software drop me an email or a PM to get added to our Zoho Project page.