Build around Bitfury ASIC Chip?

[mikenekro]

I was just wondering if anybody here has started from scratch and built their own USB miner around the Bitfury ASIC Chip? They go for around $25.00 for 1 test chip. I have access to engineers, CAD designers etc. at my job. They could design the circuit board. If need be I can have them etch the circuit board for me as well. I was just wondering though, what components would need to be attached for completing a 5 Gb/s (2 ASIC Chips) miner? The more information I have now, the less time it would take for me to get everything set up. I want to be able to go to the person I have designing it and tell them which parts I would need to be included in the print for the board. I think this would save him time and money on designing.

I will not be mass producing these... This is just for a little experiment to see if I can make it work. So I am not worried about buying thousands of parts or having the board designed overseas for cost cuts.

Even if you know some of the components that would be needed, that would be great.

[Walking Glitch]

I was just wondering if anybody here has started from scratch and built their own USB miner around the Bitfury ASIC Chip? They go for around $25.00 for 1 test chip. I have access to engineers, CAD designers etc. at my job. They could design the circuit board. If need be I can have them etch the circuit board for me as well. I was just wondering though, what components would need to be attached for completing a 5 Gb/s (2 ASIC Chips) miner? The more information I have now, the less time it would take for me to get everything set up. I want to be able to go to the person I have designing it and tell them which parts I would need to be included in the print for the board. I think this would save him time and money on designing.

I will not be mass producing these... This is just for a little experiment to see if I can make it work. So I am not worried about buying thousands of parts or having the board designed overseas for cost cuts.

Even if you know some of the components that would be needed, that would be great.

You'll need an oscillator for clock generation, control chip to interface between the bitfury chips and the USB bus, voltage regulators, capacitors, things like that. You're actually probably better off designing a 16 chip board and producing a few of them instead, as the cost wouldn't be 8 times a dual USB board, but the mining speed would be; it would possibly be even faster because you cold clock higher on a dedicated device.

[hendo]

I was just wondering if anybody here has started from scratch and built their own USB miner around the Bitfury ASIC Chip? They go for around $25.00 for 1 test chip. I have access to engineers, CAD designers etc. at my job. They could design the circuit board. If need be I can have them etch the circuit board for me as well. I was just wondering though, what components would need to be attached for completing a 5 Gb/s (2 ASIC Chips) miner? The more information I have now, the less time it would take for me to get everything set up. I want to be able to go to the person I have designing it and tell them which parts I would need to be included in the print for the board. I think this would save him time and money on designing.

I will not be mass producing these... This is just for a little experiment to see if I can make it work. So I am not worried about buying thousands of parts or having the board designed overseas for cost cuts.

Even if you know some of the components that would be needed, that would be great.

You should probably check out vs3's open source design (single chip).  Details at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321287.0.

[cscape]

I want to be able to go to the person I have designing it and tell them which parts I would need to be included in the print for the board. I think this would save him time and money on designing.

On the contrary. It is much better to find a competent designer, and tell him what you want to end up with. Picking the right parts is his job, and the more freedom the designer has, the better the design.

[mikenekro]

Yea it doesn't have to be a masterpiece. Thanks for the info!

[vs3]

I want to be able to go to the person I have designing it and tell them which parts I would need to be included in the print for the board. I think this would save him time and money on designing.

On the contrary. It is much better to find a competent designer, and tell him what you want to end up with. Picking the right parts is his job, and the more freedom the designer has, the better the design.

+1

It sometimes works as you said but most often the other way around - the designer will look at the specs and price and availability and pick a few good candidates. Then, eventually, if you have a preference for any of the suitable components you can say which one you want. In most cases that price list is the answer anyways

As for a starting point - take a look at my signature. The NanoFury project is as simple as it gets. And if you're a bit crafty you can make it a 2-chip, or 4-chip or as many as you want.