Bitmain E3 Ethash Miner ASIC (Batch 1 - Shipping:16-31 July. $800 USD)

[jstefanop]

For anyone interested in how Bitmain achieved this here is a look at the specs/hardware.

There are essentially 18 RX 550's crammed into this thing, and they achieved ~102 GB/s bandwidth using DDR3 which is pretty impressive.

Looks like each ASIC is simply a 4 bank 128 bit wide memory controller with a small number of cores to take care of the hash function. Each bank is controlling the 8 16bit memory modules running at 1600 Gb/s = 8*16*1600/8 = 25.6 GB/s per bank, so 4 banks = 102.4 GB/s of total theoretical bandwidth which equals about 12.8 MH/s of theoretical eth hashrate. (note this hardware WILL be obsolete past 4GB DAG size).

Looks like each card is doing ~11 MH/s so they got within 90% of theoretical bandwidth.

This hardware just shows how hard it is to scale ETHASH even with and ASIC. Unless they beat the memory manufactures with some crazy new variant of memory chips, they will still be close to GPU speeds.

Now the interesting part gets when you evaluate this architecture with them mostly likely running these currently with GDDR5 modules. Power will remain the same or close to it, but now you have a crazy 1,024 bit wide bus running faster GDDR5 which is around 28 GB/s for EACH module, so you'd have ~900 GB/S of memory bandwidth...using the same 90% efficiency wed have about 100MH/S per ASIC...

Pretty sure they are already running this unit in their farms, probably looking at 1.8 GH/s ~ 1000 watts.

Of course the huge difference will be in price...they went with DDR3 to build the lowest cost/bandwith possible...each module of DDR3 probably cost them ~1-2 dollars per IC. Which makes sense. Each Batch 1 unit costs 800, and has about 800 dollars worth of DDR3....so they probably dumped all the units they were secretly mining for a year or two at cost, and are now building new units with a 1k profit margin.

Now GDDR5 is a bit different since the smallest module size I could find is 2Gb (but I'm sure with their volume they could contract hynix/micron to make cheap 1Gb modules for them). Either way they would probably go for 2Gb module on  a new machine to have 8 GB of RAM per ASIC and future proof it. An 8Gb module goes for about ~8 dollars, so we can assume this would cost them at LEAST $2 per module. So were looking at ~$1200 in GDDR5 cost per unit, and maybe a total of 1500 build cost for Bitmain.

If they are running these which they most likely are, they are recouping the cost within 1 month, and could probably easily sell these for 5k+ if they wanted.

[deadsix]

Impressive. RX 460/560 or GTX 1050ti's can match it in terms of electrical efficiency, Regular old RX 570's would better them in component efficiency but nothing matches it in price (atleast for the batch 1).
I honestly believed they would be using off the shelf GPU's and have a product similar to the original MXM GPU based Pandaminer ... I am surprised they designed their own chip entirely - would be interesting to know if it was made by TSMC at 14nm.

I see that there are three boards with 6 GPU-like cards on each for a total of 18 cards each having its own 4GB DDR3 bank.
Thats a staggering 72GB DDR3 just like the rumors stated - 7 RX 570's can manage the same hashrate with 28GB memory.

What I find curious is that even though there are 18 boards, the UI shows 9 Chains each doing 22-25mh - so 2 of the GPU-like cards are somehow being shows as a single unit and individually are doing ~12Mh which puts them squarely in RX 550 ballpark.

Looking forward to posts/pics/videos of teardowns from owners.

[cryptochristo]

Mine arrived today and, though it took a while, I finally got it connected to Nanopool. It was hashing on Antpool, but never showed up on my dashboard...
https://i.redd.it/a8hyph7i9ea11.png

How quiet is this thing compared to the S9?  The youtube video seems not as loud once it past the boot sequence.

[Pwnetheus]

Can someone share their configs for their E3 for antpool or nanopool (or both)?

[cryptochristo]

Can someone share their configs for their E3 for antpool or nanopool (or both)?

check this video... this dude has it setup. You'll have to pause the video where he shows his config screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6mL5BjpdI

[aga0685]

Miner arrived today.... i have BIG problem with configuration... seems working only with antpool.... the miner is alive but in my antpool configuration my worker is offline... Nicehash dead Suprnova Dead dwarfpool dead...  someone have got a good configuration? what is wrong??
Thank you very much.

[TheRealCashen]

Same issues. Mine is not even working with AntPool. Showing not hash speed.

[adaseb]

Can someone share their configs for their E3 for antpool or nanopool (or both)?

check this video... this dude has it setup. You'll have to pause the video where he shows his config screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6mL5BjpdI

Thanks for the video. This miner actually reminds me of the old Antminer S4 that they released a few years ago. Nice compact size.

Honestly its a killer deal at $800 and would be nice to have it instead of a bunch of GPU rigs which take up much more space.

Like the above poster has said. Most likely they got one with DDR5 memory and are hashing secretly with those units. So I wonder how the GPU mining profitability will look into the near future, since most GPUs will leave ZEC mining and probably ETH in the near future. Only coin left would be XMR but the mining profitability for that coin is very small.

[aga0685]

I find this setting and working with my E3

https://eth.nanopool.org/

I'm in Europe and first i use europe server... depending where do you live... ops.. where live your E3.....

URL : eth-eu2.nanopool.org:9999
User: your ethereum address
password x

second URL : eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999
User: Your ethereum address
Password : x

There are other setting that is possibile to use in field password... but now my miner is working with this setting.. and i don't change....
about 15 minutes to see statistic of your miner.....

[TheRealCashen]

My machine is showing 0. Is this normal? It appears odd to me.

https://i.imgur.com/98JkBW6.png

http://

[aga0685]

My machine is showing 0. Is this normal? It appears odd to me.

You have to wait more time... ... 1 minute is too short....  min 6 max 15 minutes to see something....

[9600]

My machine is showing 0. Is this normal? It appears odd to me.

You have to wait more time... ... 1 minute is too short....  min 6 max 15 minutes to see something....

Mine is doing the same.
The ASIC status keeps going from "CC" to "BB".

Interestingly, I've got it "Alive" on a local solo pool, as well as Antpool.
The miner appears to append a random string if you try to use a <dot> to delineate a worker in the username.
This breaks a lot of stratum implementations.

[cryptochristo]

My machine is showing 0. Is this normal? It appears odd to me.

https://i.imgur.com/98JkBW6.png

http://

You have to wait more time... ... 1 minute is too short....  min 6 max 15 minutes to see something....

Mine is doing the same.
The ASIC status keeps going from "CC" to "BB".

Interestingly, I've got it "Alive" on a local solo pool, as well as Antpool.
The miner appears to append a random string if you try to use a <dot> to delineate a worker in the username.
This breaks a lot of stratum implementations.

+ 1 on having to wait more time before it shows up... I'm trying mine with ETC... after 15 minutes it showed up, 200MH miner side but only hashing 72MH pool side... hmmmmmmmm

[TheRealCashen]

So it shows hashing now but now it does not show pool side.

[FloppyPurpleGherkin]

Diff is climbing hard!

[9600]

Diff is climbing hard!

Not at all? 

https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

[cryptochristo]

Guys, you have to wait a few minutes for the stats to show pool side... rebooting it will only cause it to be delayed.  That's what happened to me, I waited up to 15 minutes before it showed.  Also, the instructions say... 'Power the control board first, and then the hash board. This is because the fans are driven by the control board...'

[TheRealCashen]

Guys, you have to wait a few minutes for the stats to show pool side... rebooting it will only cause it to be delayed.  That's what happened to me, I waited up to 15 minutes before it showed.  Also, the instructions say... 'Power the control board first, and then the hash board. This is because the fans are driven by the control board...'

29 minutes is ridiculous.

[FloppyPurpleGherkin]

Diff is climbing hard!

Not at all? 

https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

Approaching 3600

[9600]

Diff is climbing hard!

Not at all? 

https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

Approaching 3600

Yes, but we've been here for a while now, right?

https://www.coinwarz.com/difficulty-charts/ethereum-difficulty-chart

Attributing this 11% increase over 90 days to E3s shipping this week would be a stretch.