Innosilicon releases A9 Zmaster 50ksol/s Equihash miner at 620W

[basilp]

yours is a lot more stable than mine.  have you done any changes to the PLL?  are you running performance/balanced?


hmmm i am realizing right now i did switch out the powersupply to use an atx evga 850bq...maybe that has something to do with it.  i will try to switch back to the bitmain psu tonight to see if it helps stability.

I am running in performance mode and using Bitmain PSU.

What coin do you mine? How much you get per day? Is it more profitable then nicehash?
Thanks

I am mining ZEC. Not sure about the payout since I have 160 kSol pointed to the same address. NH is good also but you get what others are willing to pay minus NH fees.

This is what I get
https://ibb.co/iXqu3o


I also found a file I cannot touch called 99 environment which looks to be something valuable.

I dug deeper into the PHP and found there is an access or Profile called AutoTuneMode

But after editing the cgminer.config it never wants to start up or hash

You have an error in your /etc/cgminer.conf  you're not closing the { } properly, if you paste the contents of that file can help find the exact error.

[OrionX]

Congrats on deciphering the root password...

Has anyone been successful in disabling or changing the timed, auto-logoff feature from the html interface?  Frustrating to say the least.

[wKiV7378U]

I reconnected my bitmain PSU and will report back to see if my hashrates have stabilized more.

In the meantime, can anyone else report that they see extremely high hashrates when turning the ASIC on, eventually dropping back to the 50ksol range?

https://i.imgur.com/UqpUCRG.png

[wKiV7378U]

I also found a file I cannot touch called 99 environment which looks to be something valuable.

I dug deeper into the PHP and found there is an access or Profile called AutoTuneMode

yes there is an autotune mode (factory, balanced, performance, economy or whatever its called)....and if you look at the miner logs when the system is booting, everytime you reconnect to a pool or reboot your asic, it goes through that auto-retuning process.
im not exactly sure what it is doing, but it looks as though its trying to calibrate the clocks of each of the 3 ASIC cards.  It seems to sweep through low frequencies to high frequencies and comes up with a table of speeds that each card is possible of doing, for example set PLL to 1250 might set card A to 1249.89, card B to 1250.01, card C to 1249.88.  

however, once this is completed, i have never seen it touch pll clocks again during run time. the only thing i see it tune is the fan speed automatically.

im wondering if we are actually doing anything when we manually set the PLL clocks because it hasnt actually calibrated the system for that speed in the tuning process i just tried to describe.

[basilp]

I reconnected my bitmain PSU and will report back to see if my hashrates have stabilized more.

In the meantime, can anyone else report that they see extremely high hashrates when turning the ASIC on, eventually dropping back to the 50ksol range?

Yes I do see high hash rates in the first couple minutes. Might it be an artifact of it submitting successful hashes at a lower difficulty?
I also get the feeling that adjusting PLL speeds in cgminer.conf isn't properly taking effect or is somehow reverted.

It's puzzling. With gpu mining and Equihash increasing core clock speed didn't make nearly as much difference in memory clock speed.
At the same time the Bitmain Z9 seems easily amenable to overclock.

[wKiV7378U]

I reconnected my bitmain PSU and will report back to see if my hashrates have stabilized more.

In the meantime, can anyone else report that they see extremely high hashrates when turning the ASIC on, eventually dropping back to the 50ksol range?

https://i.imgur.com/UqpUCRG.png

Yes I do see high hash rates in the first couple minutes. Might it be an artifact of it submitting successful hashes at a lower difficulty?
I also get the feeling that adjusting PLL speeds in cgminer.conf isn't properly taking effect or is somehow reverted.

It's puzzling. With gpu mining and Equihash increasing core clock speed didn't make nearly as much difference in memory clock speed.
At the same time the Bitmain Z9 seems easily amenable to overclock.

However, one thing that points to the PLL clock settings working is the experience I had this weekend when trying 1450....Miner logs said error communicating with ASIC chips, so I went back down in speed.

I swapped out the bitmain power supply and it didnt seem to make a difference in my widely fluctuating hash rates.  So, I just tried reverting back to the original settings (auto tuned performance) but with fan set to 30%.  Seems like my A9 is back to "normal" fluctuation rates.  So I think the PLL and VID settings I had were actually causing some instability.  Whether or not the fluctuating hashrates averaged out to a faster hash rate is very questionable because, as we can all see...there seems to be no solid hash measurement.  Pools report something different than the A9, the A9 is widely varies itself.  With the Z9 mini it seems people get a solid stable 16ksol when overclocking, and its repeatable.

[basilp]

From their website "the A9 Zmaster has operation modes from low power to over clock high performance through adjustment of PLL output clock frequency and/or in combination with voltage adjustment - See more at: http://www.innosilicon.com/a9asic/index.html"

Also if you google "innosilicon a9 clock speed" there's a pdf that goes into more detail.

[basilp]

This is from the pdf show PLL output clock frequencies and core voltages.

https://imgur.com/a/PGWiMhi

[TrueCryptoMiner]

yours is a lot more stable than mine.  have you done any changes to the PLL?  are you running performance/balanced?


hmmm i am realizing right now i did switch out the powersupply to use an atx evga 850bq...maybe that has something to do with


I am running in performance mode and using Bitmain PSU.

What coin do you mine? How much you get per day? Is it more profitable then nicehash?
Thanks

I am mining ZEC. Not sure about the payout since I have 160 kSol pointed to the same address. NH is good also but you get what others are willing to pay minus NH fees.

This is what I get
https://ibb.co/iXqu3o


I also found a file I cannot touch called 99 environment which looks to be something valuable.

I dug deeper into the PHP and found there is an access or Profile called AutoTuneMode

But after editing the cgminer.config it never wants to start up or hash

You have an error in your /etc/cgminer.conf  you're not closing the { } properly, if you paste the contents of that file can help find the exact error.

Here basilp,


{
    "pools": [
        {
            "url": "stratum+tcp://equihash.usa.nicehash.com:3357",
            "user": "36Rzs1zaAPphdPzaiUpGTYty64SNDaCNyu",
            "pass": "x"
        }
    ],
    "api-listen": true,
    "api-port": "4028",
    "api-allow": "W:0/0,W:127.0.0.1"
    "noauto": true,
    "T1Pll1": "1250",
    "T1Pll2": "1250",
    "T1Pll3": "1250",
    "T1VID1": "166",
    "T1VID2": "166",
    "T1VID3": "166",
    "A1Fanspd": "50",
    "A1Fanmode": "0
}

[wKiV7378U]

This is from the pdf show PLL output clock frequencies and core voltages.

https://imgur.com/a/PGWiMhi

Oh wow you found the chip datasheet!  I didnt realize they had this....

Soooo, I see that table.  I also see this blurb below it:

Operating voltage: A9 Zmaster core voltage can be anywhere from 0.75V to 0.90V.

This means the following:
1) if the 0.90V max is the ABSOLUTE maximum voltage, then 0.87 is probably the highest you want to go.  But, if its just maximum OPERATING voltage range, that means there is some headroom.

But, lets say we push it up to 0.9V (this chart proves we need to increase voltage in order to successfully increase PLL speed).

We can extrapolate from that chart we would only get MAYBE 50sol/s more per chip.  12 chips per card, 3 cards...or only a 1.8ksol increase.

If the chip datasheet itself doesnt specify absolute maximum voltage, again there may be some headroom here....but its expensive equipment and I dont know if a 1.8ksol boost is worth it.  Its definitly not the 50%+ boost that the z9s can get. Maybe someone is brave enough to open up the A9 and try to find a capacitor to probe the actual core voltage...because the board design might be bad and it might not actually be delivering 0.87V.

Im going to assume that the 166 setting means 0.87V since the miner logs says PLL is tuned for 1250MHz.

[wKiV7378U]

Another really interesting blurb in the datasheet

 Configurable in SPI daisy chain for up to 128 ASICs under one MCU control

This means, technically, they could build an equihash miner with 1 controller board and 128*1375=176Ksol/s.  That would be 16 asics per card, and 8 inputs to their controller boards....which...oh look...there are 8 inputs into their controller board!

That would be a 2048W miner.....cooling that would be a nightmare...unless you spaced them out a bit and water cooled them all with custom water cooling blocks........

[wKiV7378U]

A little further down it says this...

In the high performance hashing mode,
our recommended operation range is centered around 0.90V (+-10%)

I take this to mean that there is headroom on the 0.9V max voltage spec.
10% gives us lets say 1.0V maximum.

So since the hashing table shows core voltage jumps in steps of 30mV, we MIGHT have 4 more steps from 0.87V to 1V . (0.9, 0.93, 0.96, 0.99)

The increase in hashing is probably not linear seeing as how 0.82V gives you 1210sol/s, 0.85 gives you 1320so/s (110sol difference), but 0.87 only gives you 1375sol/s (only 50sol difference).

So lets be optimistic and say we get 40 sol, then 25, then 15, then 5 more sol at 0.99....thats maybe 85sol/s per chip.  So (1375+85)*12*3 = 52560....  So about 2.56ksol/s extra per miner...and your reeeealy pushing the upper bounds.  This would probably reduce lifetime of the miner.

In my opinion, as I can see it right now, it doesnt seem like its worth it to try to overclock the A9....BUT, SOMEONE PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG!!!!!!  IM JUST SOME STUPID GUY ON THE INTERNET

[minefarmbuy]

Overclocking asics isn't the best idea on a good day. These are nothing like GPUs. I hope some of the less experienced miners are careful with $9k equipment.

Wish Inno would send us units to experiment on, so real buyers can protect their investments with at least some documentation. Nothing like seeing an aisc shoot flames at 200+CFMs, unless of course it's in the middle of you farm not a fireproofed room. 

[basilp]

yours is a lot more stable than mine.  have you done any changes to the PLL?  are you running performance/balanced?


hmmm i am realizing right now i did switch out the powersupply to use an atx evga 850bq...maybe that has something to do with


I am running in performance mode and using Bitmain PSU.

What coin do you mine? How much you get per day? Is it more profitable then nicehash?
Thanks

I am mining ZEC. Not sure about the payout since I have 160 kSol pointed to the same address. NH is good also but you get what others are willing to pay minus NH fees.

This is what I get
https://ibb.co/iXqu3o


I also found a file I cannot touch called 99 environment which looks to be something valuable.

I dug deeper into the PHP and found there is an access or Profile called AutoTuneMode

But after editing the cgminer.config it never wants to start up or hash

You have an error in your /etc/cgminer.conf  you're not closing the { } properly, if you paste the contents of that file can help find the exact error.

Here basilp,


{
    "pools": [
        {
            "url": "stratum+tcp://equihash.usa.nicehash.com:3357",
            "user": "36Rzs1zaAPphdPzaiUpGTYty64SNDaCNyu",
            "pass": "x"
        }
    ],
    "api-listen": true,
    "api-port": "4028",
  
    "noauto": true,
    "T1Pll1": "1250",
    "T1Pll2": "1250",
    "T1Pll3": "1250",
    "T1VID1": "166",
    "T1VID2": "166",
    "T1VID3": "166",
    "A1Fanspd": "50",
    "A1Fanmode": "0
}

you're missing a , after   "api-allow": "W:0/0,W:127.0.0.1"

[sweeperAA]

FYI, I'm on a D9, but most of the software interface is the same. Last night I found the "stats" cgminer api to obtain the details of each chip (e.g., nVol, Temp, PLL). I think the values that come back are not in the units that we'd like (e.g., temp = 505; maybe correlates to 67C), but I think it would be worthwhile if someone did this for the A9 and measured the values in each of the different modes. I plan on doing this (maybe tonight) on the D9. Hopefully there's something that correlates so that we can figure out if altering the .conf file is having any remaining effects.

[wKiV7378U]

FYI, I'm on a D9, but most of the software interface is the same. Last night I found the "stats" cgminer api to obtain the details of each chip (e.g., nVol, Temp, PLL). I think the values that come back are not in the units that we'd like (e.g., temp = 505; maybe correlates to 67C), but I think it would be worthwhile if someone did this for the A9 and measured the values in each of the different modes. I plan on doing this (maybe tonight) on the D9. Hopefully there's something that correlates so that we can figure out if altering the .conf file is having any remaining effects.

can you please explain how you accessed the "stats" cgminer api?

[masrobots]

I've been running at 35% for the past few hours and my temps are 49, 49, 50.

My main problem is card #1 has only run at 6-7 KSols all day regardless of performance setting or overclocking (the other two cards run at a decent 16-17 KSols). I'm thinking I've got a dud card.

I'd contact inno and start troubleshooting if you can spare the down time, but get the ticket in asap.

Thanks for the suggestion, minefarmbuy. Inno support told me that one hashboard is bad and I need to send it back to get a new one. Thankfully it doesn't look like they want the whole machine - just that one board. It'll be tough to give up even the 7 KSols it's doing while waiting for a 17 KSol replacement, but it'll probably be worth it so long as they can turn something around to me within a month or so. We'll see.

[sweeperAA]

FYI, I'm on a D9, but most of the software interface is the same. Last night I found the "stats" cgminer api to obtain the details of each chip (e.g., nVol, Temp, PLL). I think the values that come back are not in the units that we'd like (e.g., temp = 505; maybe correlates to 67C), but I think it would be worthwhile if someone did this for the A9 and measured the values in each of the different modes. I plan on doing this (maybe tonight) on the D9. Hopefully there's something that correlates so that we can figure out if altering the .conf file is having any remaining effects.

can you please explain how you accessed the "stats" cgminer api?

The cgminer API is available through the use of JSON RPCs. Early on, I created a python script that I made to monitor my ASICs before I knew about AwesomeMiner. I used sources like this (https://gist.github.com/WyseNynja/1500780) as a starting point and expanded from there. Premium versions of AwesomeMiner may be able to do the same thing with sending these commands.

If you do a search for "cgminer json rpc python", lots of different projects come up that you can use to hack together a solution.

[minefarmbuy]

I've been running at 35% for the past few hours and my temps are 49, 49, 50.

My main problem is card #1 has only run at 6-7 KSols all day regardless of performance setting or overclocking (the other two cards run at a decent 16-17 KSols). I'm thinking I've got a dud card.

I'd contact inno and start troubleshooting if you can spare the down time, but get the ticket in asap.

Thanks for the suggestion, minefarmbuy. Inno support told me that one hashboard is bad and I need to send it back to get a new one. Thankfully it doesn't look like they want the whole machine - just that one board. It'll be tough to give up even the 7 KSols it's doing while waiting for a 17 KSol replacement, but it'll probably be worth it so long as they can turn something around to me within a month or so. We'll see.

Nice, quicker response than anticipated. Hopefully their turn time is quick than that and your back to speed in within a couple weeks before more units power up.

[RapBTC1]

Hello my friends,

I have some problems
I have 3 A9 Zmaster and since today 1 of them stop working.

He can't mine anymore. He search everytime...
I have reboot... Re-install firmware, check connection, reinstall equipment..

0 solution work.... Every option is same problem look :




I'm ready to listen u , if have any solution <3

Thanks