Monarch butterfly prototype

[johnyj]

Just saw this... Can't believe that they have so many VRM to power the chips, a huge heat sink is going to be mounted in the middle  

[r3wt]

gimme!

[Turbor]

"The heat is on"

[goxed]

is the hashing asic invisible?

[Paladin69]

Just remember that we seen their PCB for the 65nm stuff before October of 2012.  Not buying any more of their bullshit.

Also, thanks BFL for using customer funds from 65nm orders to secretly develop your 28nm generation instead of ordering the necessary parts needed to finish this generation out faster.  I'd rather take KnC's 550GH in November than wait for your dumb asses until Feb+

[balanghai]

It's fully transparent semiconductors with fully transparent PCB and working at a fully imaginary Hash speeds.

[testerx]

How the hell are they going to deal with the cooling needs if these are supposed to be packed next to each other in PCI-E slots?

[tom99]

you can use usb for it and let it thing out side of case.

[xstr8guy]

I have to admit, this is encouraging to me.  I have an early preorder so I have to hope for the best.

[MrTeal]

So much for "our next gen will be pin-compatible with the current one"

[greyhawk]

So much for "our next gen will be pin-compatible with the current one"

BGAs don't even have pins so.... 

[Puppet]

How the hell are they going to deal with the cooling needs if these are supposed to be packed next to each other in PCI-E slots?

As always, they will just redesign the board, then the cooler, then chip and ultimately come up with a different form factor. Dont worry, they will have it figured out by 2015.

[erk]

Pretty big chips, not as big as the KNCminer ones but still large, looks like 1,020 pins.
Interesting to see the Cyclone FPGA driving it, and the 32bit Atmel.

[vapourminer]

two 6 pin pcie plugs for 350 watts?

[kuzetsa]

How the hell are they going to deal with the cooling needs if these are supposed to be packed next to each other in PCI-E slots?

No doubt, they will likely employ some non-zero number of "heat pipes"


Heat pipe 101

Like geothermal heat pumps, air conditioners, or that neat effect where perspiration on the skin evaporates, thereby changing from liquid to gas phase, it is possible to move more heat via phase change. 100% efficiency is not the actual limit for such things. Coefficient of performance in a heat pump really does exceed 100% efficiency for things like moving heat from one place to another... "heat pipes" are basically a passive "heat pump" without any moving parts...

Thermal conductivity of a "heat pipe" (which filled with a compressed gas / liquid which changes phase from liquid to gas, and vice-versa) is better than the thermal conductivity of a similar size & shape for a solid rod made of copper or silver (the two most thermally conductive metals in existence... followed by gold, aluminium, nickel, iron, etc. etc. etc.)

There's a reason modern GPUs and CPU coolers have heat pipes.

They're magic or something, see?

[donch]

Either I'm a bit thick or Josh is an excellent strategist, but surely you have to buy a motherboard, a case and a PSU for every pair of these PCI cards? At 350W per card I can't see more than two being powered by a 850W PSU, maybe three at a stretch with a super expensive 1200W PSU. Is the community clamouring for this form factor?

Given BFL's history on predicting heat output on their previous product range I can see many issues on getting your case adequately ventilated as well. Perhaps Josh's new strategy is to delegate all real world problem solving to the customer now. Win!

[Aggrophobia]

max 300GH/s @ that size

[qwk]

Pretty big chips, not as big as the KNCminer ones but still large, looks like 1,020 pins.

1009, 1010, 1011, 1012, 1013, 1014, 1015, 1016, 1017, 1018, 1019, 1020, yes, you're right

[QuiveringGibbage]

no pic...

someone repost?

Cheers,
QG

[Flying Hellfish]

no pic...

someone repost?

Cheers,
QG