[Open Source Hardware Project] Hive & Wasp Prototype Development

[Bicknellski]

Depends on how you look at ROI.
FIAT vs BTC

Look at Some of those DZ Co-OP buys on Jupiters. Sure they didn't make the BTC back yet they invested. But the BTC they did make back if they sold it made +ROI

Im sure MOST people end up BUYING BTC from coinbase etc... so its all relevant.

So true... I wonder myself how people with larger mining operations are going to handle more and more hash rate and how to keep operations on par... do they simply let the units they currently have go dark and stop mining?

What we hope to provide is a way to help larger operators compensate somewhat for that need to replace the whole unit every time something new hits the mining market.

Anyhow. Not sure how soft the mining market will get there still doesn't seem to be any slowing down of miners being sold. I can't understand why that is, given the hard facts of the difficulty increases.

[Bicknellski]

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


http://www.onlinecountdowns.com/countdown-clock/show/Prototype%20Wasp%20Drops%7C52ab3d10%7C3

[Dabs]

Mr. Bicknellski, no one mentioned it yet, but when the time comes that someone makes either a FPGA or ASIC for scrypt, those could possibly work in the WASPs / Hives ? Interesting for those scrypt based alt-coins.

[Bicknellski]

Mr. Bicknellski, no one mentioned it yet, but when the time comes that someone makes either a FPGA or ASIC for scrypt, those could possibly work in the WASPs / Hives ? Interesting for those scrypt based alt-coins.

We have our own solution with the wasp and hive with an add on that will supplement existing GPU miners but that is a few months away and yes easily any FPGA / ASIC scrypt hasher chip can be designed into a Wasp and easily slot into our system if we have the chip specs. I suspect as well we will not need to change software so you can literally run both Scrypt and SHa on the same unit. Of course that is just my layperson perspective I will ask the EE's for clarification on Saturday.

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[edit]

Yes Dabs according to the EE it would be no problem. In fact we will likely develop a Wasp next year that mines scrypt coins. So keep watching.

[Bicknellski]

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.

[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.

[Bicknellski]

Adding the CLAM ASIC to the mix.  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=343856.0

We have requested some sample chips to work on as a Wasp. We are still waiting on chip specs on those. If anyone has an interest in developing the Clam Wasp then drop me an email or pm.

[bobsag3]

Adding the CLAM ASIC to the mix.

We have requested some sample chips to work on as a Wasp. We are still waiting on chip specs on those. If anyone has an interest in developing the Clam Wasp then drop me an email or pm.

You know IM in board.

[Bicknellski]

Just finished a short formative meeting about a new project for the collective.

The Wasp Project Collective Mining Pool

WPC Mining Pool Development Team Meets this Friday the 29th November
Jakarta, Indonesia 1200 WIB (+7 GMT)

We should have an operational pool ready by December 7th, 2013.

The meeting will provide an overview for the shares and costs involved and key members involved in the oversight of the pool hardware and software.

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Interested in working on our collective mining pool? Drop me a PM or Email to be added to the Zoho Project page.

[geofflosophy]

Watching.

[Bicknellski]

Hoping to do more than entertain... we want to provide you with disruptive innovation. Sit back and enjoy.

[Bicknellski]

Management Team Meets Fridays
Canberra, Australia 2000 ACT (GMT +11)

Design Team Meets Saturdays
Seattle, USA 1800 PST (-8 GMT)

WPC Mining Pool Development Team Meets Fridays
Jakarta, Indonesia 1200 WIB (+7 GMT)


If you have the time and are interested in our project feel free to email me or drop me a PM with your email and I will add you to the Zoho Project page where you can find out more on where we meet and the agendas for the meetings.

[Bicknellski]

Join the swarm before it is too late!

[Bicknellski]

We are swarming in 30 minutes.

Got questions about the project? Keen on supporting the DIY community? Just want to LURK in a corner?

PM me your email or email me and I can add you to the project and the meeting.

[Bicknellski]

Update:

Membership has increased to 19 lifetime members our goal is to reach 30 before the 15th of December. 35 people are currently lurking and learning about the inter workings of the Wasp & Hive as well as other projects. We have started selling shares internally for the Wasp and Hive project, our Mining Pool, and will open up shares on a short run miner project to get out some hashing units before December.

A lifetime membershipin the Wasp Project Collective is $100 USD paid in BTC or via PayPal in USD. You can still be added to lurk up until the 15th December when we close the project pages to non-members.

Drop me an email or PM if you would like access.

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Teaser:

[Bicknellski]

What does the Hive & Wasp Modular Miner bring to our community?
 
 
It will deliver, for the first time to the community, some form of obsolescence protection. Our prototype Wasps are designed and will prototype with legacy chips, as well as cutting edge chips soon to be released on the market. Imagine a fully populated Hive (backplane) that accept a variety of Wasps using Bitfury, V2 Avalon or other legacy chips as well as Wasp designed with the A1, Minion or future chips planned for Q2. Not only will we be able to produce Wasps with future SHA256 ASIC chips but our own designers have plans to demonstrate the first SHA256 and Scrypt mining configuration in the same modular design. That will truly be disruptive innovation for the those doing DIY as well as established resellers looking to create a truly lasting following base of end users. Our modular design will live on for years growing with the needs of the community.
 
 
What will the Hive & Wasp Modular Miner cost?
 
We are carefully designing our system to match or provide additional savings over "retail", "pre-order" systems currently available. The one factor that holds back real saving are the costs of the ASIC chips and their availability. We avoid some of the vagaries of the marketplace as we are able on a moments notice to react and design based on chip prices and availability. We can provide some of the shortest turnaround time in designs of new miners in the market, whether it is a new or older chip and based on our ability to redesign our current PCB with minimal changes. The Hive remains the same no matter what Wasp slots in and the software doesn't change just new firmware which is ready at production time you won't be waiting for firmware or software.
 
 
When will you be ready to mass produce your Hives & Wasps?
 
We will be testing our designs in the next few weeks. A fully populated prototype Hive hashing with 8 Wasps is probably ready in late December or Early January. We will be showing the community some of our work on the prototype in a video to be released before Christmas. Ideally we would hope to see Wasps and Hives being put through production at volume sometime in January 2014.
 
 
What chips will be available?
 
Your guess is good as ours, but we have put our effort into acquiring the following ASIC chips and are working on Wasps for them: Avalon A3255, BitFury, A1 and Minion chips. If the BitFury, A1 and Minion chips are available in sufficient quantity anyone will be able to build our hardware as it is open source and license it to get its full hashing potential. Some basic numbers for the fully populated Hives we are currently working toward prototypes:
 
Hive with 8 x 24 Avalon A3255 55nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 230 Gh/s.
Hive with 8 x 24 BitFury 55nm chips  per Wasp would mine at over 440 Gh/s.
Hive with 8 x 6 A1 28nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 1.68 Th/s.
Hive with 8 x 2 Minion 28nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 1.8 Th/s.
 
Any questions with this revision?
 

[Dabs]

I'm curious about the Scrypt version. We can see maybe 1 or 2 or even 3 potential chip makers, at the same time we know we can plug in high end AMD GPU cards. Perhaps a Wasp can accept a bunch of 7950's, and the Hive has 8 of those Wasps?

It would look like this:

Hive with 8 x 4 AMD 7950 GPU per Wasp would mine at over 19.2 Mh/s for Scrypt.

But I would need 32 video cards to complete the Hive.

[Bicknellski]

I'm curious about the Scrypt version. We can see maybe 1 or 2 or even 3 potential chip makers, at the same time we know we can plug in high end AMD GPU cards. Perhaps a Wasp can accept a bunch of 7950's, and the Hive has 8 of those Wasps?

It would look like this:

Hive with 8 x 4 AMD 7950 GPU per Wasp would mine at over 19.2 Mh/s for Scrypt.

But I would need 32 video cards to complete the Hive.

Not sure at this time how our reconfigured Hive would work Dabs. So can't really comment on those numbers. If the EE has time I will ask him Saturday. The EE's right now are neck deep in the BitFury / Gen2 Avalon chip design at this time. Hoping in about a week or so to see something pseudo hashing.