The Chili – 30+GH/s BFL based Bitcoin Miner Assembly

[Bargraphics]

Two out of them is harder to get them start mining, at the very first beginning. and it become harder and harder with each reboot. These two eventually cease to operate yesterday, until now (but still viewable in cgminer console)

I got 2 boards that won't boot up (2nd led keep blinking) but once I turn on the AC to cool the room they boot up in about 1 minute. After that they will hash just fine even with AC off.

When a board first starts up, the firmware makes sure the board and chips are cooled down before it starts the self test.  This helps ensure the maximum number of engines (cores) will pass self test.

LED decoder ring

The LEDs are numbered 1 to 8 with #1 closest to the USB connector and #8 closest to the power and fan connectors.  During first power up, LEDs 5, 6, 7, and 8 will light up and LEDs 1, 2, 3,  and 4 will indicate a failure code if anything is wrong with the hardware.  This happens VERY quickly - in less than a second.

If the initial hardware checks are good, #7 will blink indicating it is waiting for the board to cool down.  This will always blink for a few seconds even if the board is cold. 

Then #7 and #8 will blink indicating ASIC self test. 

After that, 1, 2, 3, 4 will indicate how many jobs from cgminer are waiting to run in the input queue.  LED 5 is just a debug output for me but it roughly indicates a job has completed - but sometimes blinks too fast for the human eye to see.  Just ignore LED 5.

I am working on some firmware updates that will fix most (or all?) of the problems the boards are having.  For example, one failure I think I have figured out is occasionally a board will jump to more than 100 GH/s but have 100% hardware errors.  I have one board that does this once per day or so and needs to be rebooted.  After chasing this for a while, I believe I have finally figured out what is going on and will have a fix in the next release.

Great!

Will you also be updating to the latest BFL Protocol?

[ChipGeek]

Great!
Will you also be updating to the latest BFL Protocol?

Probably but there are some issues in doing that.  I'll need to work out the details. 
It is planned to be working with the normal release of bfgminer.

[Bogart]

MrTeal and team, Lucko of the Cointamination project says that the production chips differ electrically from the sample chips, and that he's unable to get them to work on the boards that worked using the sample chips.

Did you also encounter this issue, and if so how did you overcome it?

Thanks in advance for any clues.

[ChipGeek]

MrTeal and team, Lucko of the Cointamination project says that the production chips differ electrically from the sample chips, and that he's unable to get them to work on the boards that worked using the sample chips.

Did you also encounter this issue, and if so how did you overcome it?

Thanks in advance for any clues.

No, nothing other that what was documented.  There is a new bit in a control register that needs to be set.  See the BFL source code for 1.2.8 or 1.2.9 and compare it to the older code.

[jelin1984]

we must downloaded the bfl labs code  1.2.9 ?
or not?
for driverS?

[ChipGeek]

we must downloaded the bfl labs code  1.2.9 ?
or not?
for driverS?

No.

[suprabitz]

if you run it without the x clamp will it mess it up?

[nexus99]

By x clamp do you mean a backplate on the back side of the board?

I have 2 cards... 1 with a backplate and 1 without. The one without runs faster... but that's probably just chip specific. I do plan to take the back plate off in about a week and try it that way for a while.

[suprabitz]

yes the backplate on the back side. on the coolermaster 212 evo it will fit using the lga standoffs without the backplate. just remove the little metal peg where the heatsink meets the front plate.

was just wondering if it could cause warpage or damage




What causes high error rates? 30-40% on minepeon

[MrTeal]

yes the backplate on the back side. on the coolermaster 212 evo it will fit using the lga standoffs without the backplate. just remove the little metal peg where the heatsink meets the front plate.

was just wondering if it could cause warpage or damage




What causes high error rates? 30-40% on minepeon

I've never seen one with 40% error rates. Can you try on a computer using cgminer? It sounds like I might have to finally pull my Pi out of the antistatic wrap to test with.

Also, can you post a picture of your Hyper 212 setup? I'd like to see that.

[MrTeal]

Just a heads up, boards are now ordered so our quantities are finalized. Despite telling myself I wouldn't, I went ahead and ordered 50 extra anyway so that anyone who still needed chips mounted could get in. If you can get your chips to Texas by Thursday and want to have them mounted, let me know.

Also, we still have 6 full Chili boards left.

[jelin1984]

Chilli so nice

36 gh and 32 gh hashing speed
And still no noice at all with twin turbo 2
The best board by far  


Come mr teal do it at 40 gh each with new firmware

[ryanb]

Just a heads up, boards are now ordered so our quantities are finalized. Despite telling myself I wouldn't, I went ahead and ordered 50 extra anyway so that anyone who still needed chips mounted could get in. If you can get your chips to Texas by Thursday and want to have them mounted, let me know.

Also, we still have 6 full Chili boards left.

when should we expect the new boards to have chips mounted and sent to us?

[Spotswood]

Anyone interested in a drop-dead simple open-air case for Chili boards?



This basic design could be expanded to accommodate more boards (in either/or width and depth) and could be stacked.

[MrTeal]

Just a heads up, boards are now ordered so our quantities are finalized. Despite telling myself I wouldn't, I went ahead and ordered 50 extra anyway so that anyone who still needed chips mounted could get in. If you can get your chips to Texas by Thursday and want to have them mounted, let me know.

Also, we still have 6 full Chili boards left.

when should we expect the new boards to have chips mounted and sent to us?

The assembly run will be starting Nov 4. I think it should go smoother than Batch 1 (the second one usually does), so I am hoping they're all out the door by the end of the week.

[shmadz]

Anyone interested in a drop-dead simple open-air case for Chili boards?

[picture omitted - see above]

This basic design could be expanded to accommodate more boards (in either/or width and depth) and could be stacked.

Interesting, but I don't like the exhaust of one heatsink feeding into the next heatsink. I would expect better performance if you rotate those heatsinks 90 degrees and point one of  these bad boys at the rig to provide adequate the air circulation, lol.

[MrTeal]

Anyone interested in a drop-dead simple open-air case for Chili boards?

[picture omitted - see above]

This basic design could be expanded to accommodate more boards (in either/or width and depth) and could be stacked.

Interesting, but I don't like the exhaust of one heatsink feeding into the next heatsink. I would expect better performance if you rotate those heatsinks 90 degrees and point one of  these bad boys at the rig to provide adequate the air circulation, lol.

I got a chuckle out of the last picture on that page. In my experience with house painting, the gender roles in that photo are usually reversed.

[suprabitz]

yes the backplate on the back side. on the coolermaster 212 evo it will fit using the lga standoffs without the backplate. just remove the little metal peg where the heatsink meets the front plate.

was just wondering if it could cause warpage or damage




What causes high error rates? 30-40% on minepeon

I've never seen one with 40% error rates. Can you try on a computer using cgminer? It sounds like I might have to finally pull my Pi out of the antistatic wrap to test with.

Also, can you post a picture of your Hyper 212 setup? I'd like to see that.

From Mine Peon. It shows a high hardware error rate, but on BTC Guild shows 35GHs at first then slowly goes down to about 29.93GHs after 24 hours. Not sure if its a bug in Mine Peon 0.2.3a or what.

Devices
Name   ID   Temp   MH/s   Accept   Reject   Error   Utility   Last Share
BAL   0   70   31445.31   17340   45 [0.13%]   16759 [49.08%]   13.82   13:18:19
Totals   1      31445.31   17340   45 [0.13%]   16759 [49.08%]   13.82   


For the setup I have the Coolermaster 212 Evo with the .5mm thermal pad. Using the LGA standoffs with no back plate. Card is laying on the side so the fan is blowing one end and a usb fan is blowing on the back sides of the chips. On the bottom they are hot to the touch but not scalding. About 5-6 seconds before its uncomfortable.

[MrTeal]

From Mine Peon. It shows a high hardware error rate, but on BTC Guild shows 35GHs at first then slowly goes down to about 29.93GHs after 24 hours. Not sure if its a bug in Mine Peon 0.2.3a or what.

Devices
Name   ID   Temp   MH/s   Accept   Reject   Error   Utility   Last Share
BAL   0   70   31445.31   17340   45 [0.13%]   16759 [49.08%]   13.82   13:18:19
Totals   1      31445.31   17340   45 [0.13%]   16759 [49.08%]   13.82   


For the setup I have the Coolermaster 212 Evo with the .5mm thermal pad. Using the LGA standoffs with no back plate. Card is laying on the side so the fan is blowing one end and a usb fan is blowing on the back sides of the chips. On the bottom they are hot to the touch but not scalding. About 5-6 seconds before its uncomfortable.

What version of cgminer does MinePeon use, and what's your share difficulty? Old versions of cgminer counted one accepted share regardless of difficulty, while newer ones count shares as diff1 shares. That can make a huge difference in error rates.

[suprabitz]

From Mine Peon. It shows a high hardware error rate, but on BTC Guild shows 35GHs at first then slowly goes down to about 29.93GHs after 24 hours. Not sure if its a bug in Mine Peon 0.2.3a or what.

Devices
Name   ID   Temp   MH/s   Accept   Reject   Error   Utility   Last Share
BAL   0   70   31445.31   17340   45 [0.13%]   16759 [49.08%]   13.82   13:18:19
Totals   1      31445.31   17340   45 [0.13%]   16759 [49.08%]   13.82   


For the setup I have the Coolermaster 212 Evo with the .5mm thermal pad. Using the LGA standoffs with no back plate. Card is laying on the side so the fan is blowing one end and a usb fan is blowing on the back sides of the chips. On the bottom they are hot to the touch but not scalding. About 5-6 seconds before its uncomfortable.

What version of cgminer does MinePeon use, and what's your share difficulty? Old versions of cgminer counted one accepted share regardless of difficulty, while newer ones count shares as diff1 shares. That can make a huge difference in error rates.

CGminer 3.3.4

BTCGuild is on worker diff 32

sorry for the chopped up tables
From Mine Peon Pools data
URL   User   Status   Pr   GW   Acc   Rej   Disc   Last   Diff1   DAcc   DRej   DLast   Best
stratum.btcguild.com   suprabitz_asicusb3   Alive   0   2912   17998   45   5655   14:08:14   573907   552542 [96.28%]   1214 [0.21%]   32   818151