Announcement: Bitmain launches AntMiner solution, 0.68 J/GH on chip

[klondike_bar]

picked mine up from UPS today (driver falt out lied about coming to my house yesterday, since i had a note on the door with simple instructions, and there wasnt even a delivery attempt sticker left behind *furious*), and havent plugged it in yet.

build quality is fantastic and shipping package excells (the metal frame tore small holes in the static bag, but thats the only 'damage'. Better than asicminer and bitfury in both regards

Glad that you finally received your gear, happy mining.

Up and running. heres my brief review:

packaging: A+
build quality: A (pci-e sockets would be nice, and the fan/heatsink setup could use some tweaks)
ease of setup: B+ (fairly simple, but it could be made easier, such as the default gateway being 192.168.1.1 like 75% of people use)
operation: A+ (stable running, 177GH average right now)
NOISE: C-

this unit is VERY loud. loud enough i am reconsidering my desire to buy another. The fan cools half the heatsink effectively, but the further half of the heatsink is simply having warm air blown across it. the exhaust air is warm-bordering-hot. I am sure that a slightly revised design with 2 fans blowing from above or both sides and being channelled outwards more effectively would allow a much quieter design.

overall: B+ Bitmain delivered a working product and did a quality job of it. however, the cooling system leaves a lot to be worked on, and i hope some forum users post hacks or mods soon such as push/pull configurations or different orientations of the device.


the mining status looks a bit odd though, am i correct to read this as a LOT of hardware errors and rejects?

Elapsed   GH/S(5s)   GH/S(avg)   FoundBlocks   Getworks   Accepted   Rejected   HW   Utility     Discarded   Stale    LocalWork   WU    DiffA        DiffR   DiffS      BestShare
35m 2s      173.76        177.54       0                        62           165              1           353      4         116       0       105,626   2,480   84,480   512     0        63,729

[goxed]

picked mine up from UPS today (driver falt out lied about coming to my house yesterday, since i had a note on the door with simple instructions, and there wasnt even a delivery attempt sticker left behind *furious*), and havent plugged it in yet.

build quality is fantastic and shipping package excells (the metal frame tore small holes in the static bag, but thats the only 'damage'. Better than asicminer and bitfury in both regards

Glad that you finally received your gear, happy mining.

Up and running. heres my brief review:

packaging: A+
build quality: A (pci-e sockets would be nice, and the fan/heatsink setup could use some tweaks)
ease of setup: B+ (fairly simple, but it could be made easier, such as the default gateway being 192.168.1.1 like 75% of people use)
operation: A+ (stable running, 177GH average right now)
NOISE: C-

this unit is VERY loud. loud enough i am reconsidering my desire to buy another. The fan cools half the heatsink effectively, but the further half of the heatsink is simply having warm air blown across it. the exhaust air is warm-bordering-hot. I am sure that a slightly revised design with 2 fans blowing from above or both sides and being channelled outwards more effectively would allow a much quieter design.

overall: B+ Bitmain delivered a working product and did a quality job of it. however, the cooling system leaves a lot to be worked on, and i hope some forum users post hacks or mods soon such as push/pull configurations or different orientations of the device.


the mining status looks a bit odd though, am i correct to read this as a LOT of hardware errors and rejects?

Elapsed   GH/S(5s)   GH/S(avg)   FoundBlocks   Getworks   Accepted   Rejected   HW   Utility     Discarded   Stale    LocalWork   WU    DiffA        DiffR   DiffS      BestShare
35m 2s      173.76        177.54       0                        62           165              1           353      4         116       0       105,626   2,480   84,480   512     0        63,729

What are your temps and fan speed? My unit starts becoming loud at >4Krpm, but everyone has different noise tolerances, and mine's a bit high due to constantly working in server rooms and in HPC system rooms.

[Puppet]

The fan cools half the heatsink effectively, but the further half of the heatsink is simply having warm air blown across it. the exhaust air is warm-bordering-hot. I am sure that a slightly revised design with 2 fans blowing from above or both sides and being channelled outwards more effectively would allow a much quieter design.

That was to be expected just by looking at it. Like I mentioned earlier, try ducting the airflow. Use some cardboard, cellophane, whatever to close the top and bottom of the unit so the air is forced over the entire length of the unit and cooler. My guess is that will significantly improve cooling, thereby likely reducing the noise level.

[BITMAIN]

We start a new fixed price auction, total 12 S1s, please refer to bellow link:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=351905.new#new

[gmaxwell]

Any chance of posting the source code for the firmware images on the devices?

The current firmware is based off an old copy of cgminer which has poor performance for large blocks or large coinbase transactions. As a result I'm seeing 100% cpu usage and a stale rate several times higher than my avalons.  This could easily be fixed by porting the driver to bfgminer or a current cgminer (or backporting some of the work generation improvements from newer cgminer), and I'm willing to give it a shot at doing it myself— but I need the source.

[Luke-Jr]

Any chance of posting the source code for the firmware images on the devices?

The current firmware is based off an old copy of cgminer which has poor performance for large blocks or large coinbase transactions. As a result I'm seeing 100% cpu usage and a stale rate several times higher than my avalons.  This could easily be fixed by porting the driver to bfgminer or a current cgminer (or backporting some of the work generation improvements from newer cgminer), and I'm willing to give it a shot at doing it myself— but I need the source.

Bitmain promised me a sample unit about 3 months ago.
Haven't heard from them since then, but hopefully they'll catch up soon so I can work with you on the port.

Luke

[turtle83]

Any chance of posting the source code for the firmware images on the devices?

The current firmware is based off an old copy of cgminer which has poor performance for large blocks or large coinbase transactions. As a result I'm seeing 100% cpu usage and a stale rate several times higher than my avalons.  This could easily be fixed by porting the driver to bfgminer or a current cgminer (or backporting some of the work generation improvements from newer cgminer), and I'm willing to give it a shot at doing it myself— but I need the source.

https://github.com/bitmaintech/cgminer

That appears to be bitmains fork of cgminer. I think you dont need full firmware source to modify cgminer... just simple cross compile and replacing the binary should be sufficient.... Just guessing no past experience with openwrt/mips

[gmaxwell]

NOISE: C-

Weird that you say that, I wrote glowing comments about the noise level about my single blade s1 in my yet-unpublished-review.

[Aexcu]

The noise level is 'excellent' if you're running the AntMiner in an environment (room) which stays at around +22'C, as the miner's fan doesn't need to spin up so much airflow. If/when the fan needs to produce significant airflow, it starts to become rather noisy at top speeds.

One option for you guys not being able to run the AntMiner in an environment with cooling to keep the room temp from rising, you could look into getting a replacement fan that doesn't make so many dB in noise. Haven't looked into this myself, other than that, BITMAIN could also consider developing the AntMiner to have a fan-model that makes less noise..

[Aexcu]

I would at least appreciate some optimizations to the AntMiner port of cgminer, see below statistics of 2 Bitmain AntMiners running in a pool for 36 hours+:

[gmaxwell]

I would at least appreciate some optimizations to the AntMiner port of cgminer, see below statistics of 2 Bitmain AntMiners running in a pool for 36 hours+:

Yea, its a real problem and personally the only negative thing I can say about the product. Unfortunately it's not just a cosmetic limitation... (Even noise, I mostly consider that a cosmetic limitation, at least for a >$1000 miner— we're not talking about a coffee warmer here ) but fortunately it should be easy to fix.

[klondike_bar]

I would at least appreciate some optimizations to the AntMiner port of cgminer, see below statistics of 2 Bitmain AntMiners running in a pool for 36 hours+:

Yea, its a real problem and personally the only negative thing I can say about the product. Unfortunately it's not just a cosmetic limitation... (Even noise, I mostly consider that a cosmetic limitation, at least for a >$1000 miner— we're not talking about a coffee warmer here ) but fortunately it should be easy to fix.

do you have a loud unit? I found an almost silent 70CFM replacement, but it isnt quite as powerful as the one that came with the unit. (but a whisper compared to a roar)

[kmtan]

i got 4 Antminer from 2 round auction, tested for the total 4 units power draw from the wall. here is the result -1489w.

[yxt]

NOISE: C-

Weird that you say that, I wrote glowing comments about the noise level about my single blade s1 in my yet-unpublished-review.

what fan speed and temps?

[turtle83]

One of my units perform lower than expected.



Onboarded my last unit today, and it underperformes significantly.

It was doing ~140 GH/s . Chain 1 having some x , chain 2 many x after several hours of running. I forgot to take a screenshot then. Thinking this could be a PSU issue, i swapped PSU from a fully functional unit, and still see some x. not as low as earlier, but im sure after couple of hours it will get the many x in chain 2... Will update with fresh screenshot if i spot it again...

My ambient : 20 to 30C (may get higher during mid-day and if AC is off).

Any ideas? Anything I can do to see some debug logs? Is cgminer logs saved anywhere? Im very comfortable with linux, ssh and command line...

Is this unit broked?

[merv77]

i got 4 Antminer from 2 round auction, tested for the total 4 units power draw from the wall. here is the result -1489w.

wow, they are some seriously power hungry machines.
have you worked out your power bill for a month.
depending what part of the world you're in it's not going to look good as difficulty rises especially in the next 3-4 months these things will probably be as profitable as GPU mining is now.

eg. in AU or EU some are paying $0.30 per kilowatt and here in AU prices of electricity keep getting higher every year.

[Syke]

wow, they are some seriously power hungry machines.

Yes they are.

have you worked out your power bill for a month.
depending what part of the world you're in it's not going to look good as difficulty rises especially in the next 3-4 months these things will probably be as profitable as GPU mining is now.

eg. in AU or EU some are paying $0.30 per kilowatt and here in AU prices of electricity keep getting higher every year.

Daily income @ 180 GH/s = $145
Daily power @ .30/kwh = $3

Power consumption = 2%. Even if difficulty doubles every month for the next 6 months, these are still profitable.

Lesson of the day: People in high power cost areas should not be miners.

[merv77]

wow, they are some seriously power hungry machines.

Yes they are.

have you worked out your power bill for a month.
depending what part of the world you're in it's not going to look good as difficulty rises especially in the next 3-4 months these things will probably be as profitable as GPU mining is now.

eg. in AU or EU some are paying $0.30 per kilowatt and here in AU prices of electricity keep getting higher every year.

Daily income @ 180 GH/s = $145
Daily power @ .30/kwh = $3

Power consumption = 2%. Even if difficulty doubles every month for the next 6 months, these are still profitable.

Lesson of the day: People in high power cost areas should not be miners.

thanks for the lesson,
I feel a lot better that my KNC jupiter @ 560 GH/s drawing only 580W should run much longer than that.
and not to mention my Neptune coming in the future should be good for even longer.
Cheers

[klondike_bar]

NOISE: C-

Weird that you say that, I wrote glowing comments about the noise level about my single blade s1 in my yet-unpublished-review.

what fan speed and temps?

my temps were around 43-48 and the fan was consistently around 4920RPM (listed) and at some points would rev over 5200 for a minute or so. Noise at 4900RPM is about equivalent to what id hear from a rack server, rather then a home PC. I run 2x230mm and 1*80mm fans for my bitfury at full 12V, and they are practically silent in comparison.

I replaced the fan with a 120MM PWM 17.3dB 70.5CFM fan to compare, and the fan (listed max speed 1500rpm) was showing around 2200rpm and very quiet operation. however, the airflow was a little low so i was forced to attach the original fan on the far end with it pulling from the heatsink, and used a 7V adapter to force it to run at a lower speed. it is still as loud as a gaming computer if not louder, and i plan to exchange it with a second 120MM identical to the one i bought, as this should ensure full but silent airflow.

I personally think it is simply a loud fan. whether theres something mechanically wrong with it or dust inside the bearings, it runs much louder than i feel it should or typically would for a fan its size. I am getting a second one from the groupbuy, and am interested to see whether the issue is the individual fan, or if im just being sensitive to the load whirr in the corner of the room


Has anyone (including bitmain) creaated an enclosure for this system? I assume it would be quite simply to put one on the stable frame and improve the continuation of airflow across the unit - right now i have some paper CD wallets balanced on top to keep the airflow from escaping halfway and it does make an improvement

[xstr8guy]

Who is Bitmain and what is AntMiner?

I haven't really been following Bitmain.  Maybe someone can explain how it is that they can spend a fortune to develop their own chips and then only sell a few units at a time.  Certainly they should be flooding the market with their devices, no?

I don't know what it is but even though they are actually selling real devices, they still seem scammy to me.  Are these really their own chips or just Bitfurys in disguise?