Avalon A10 series announced

[philipma1957]

... Its almost like an AI problem. just kidding. But I do foresee customers who will now have fine grain control of the frequency that is tied to the actual operating conditions of their farm.

Making this work well = key and very important to a lot of us.

yeah you will always have a guy with 10 + megawatts of 2 cent power that just runs the gear cranked.

But lots of us have multiple locations that need more efficient gear that is quiet. So having a unit that does both will be nice. I can't wait to get one to test out.

[1714709109]

1714709109

[HagssFIN]

Thanks for sharing these details with us Steve!

[StevenMosher]

Thanks for sharing these details with us Steve!

I will email you some other stuff  that the mod deleted.

[kano]

I will email you some other stuff  that the mod deleted.

The mod here goes OCD on posts and edits and combines them all the time.
He gets paid by the forum for each change he does
You have no choice but to put up with it.

The info you posted is probably all combined in your last post.

[philipma1957]

The mod here goes OCD on posts and edits and combines them all the time.
He gets paid by the forum for each change he does      << this is funny
You have no choice but to put up with it.

The info you posted is probably all combined in your last post.

At mods  I just had to say I smiled a bit at the bolded line.

feel free to delete me

[HagssFIN]

"The stuff" Steve mentioned sending earlier is video material from the A10 lab testing.

These videos are public at his YouTube channel,
so I'm comfortable sharing these here at the forum.

Really cool to see this process, and project going forward.

Enviromental test lab
https://youtu.be/17Yhi87A37k

A10 test lab
https://youtu.be/j74U08QD36Y

[StevenMosher]

It was just a link to a youtube vid of the test at the enviromental lab. I emailed it to Matti.
its on my youtube channel.

Finalizing pricing now. It's rather difficult because most of the pricing is done on a  RMB per TH  basis in china. Irrespective of efficiency.

In short, the domestic market doesnt care about efficiency that much.

Lets  compare:

38  TH   @  2500  watts    .065J/GH    @ 3 cent power   =   $5.79  per day     2 years = 4226
31  TH   @  1800  watts    .058J/GH    @ 3 cent power   =    $4.89  per day.   2  years = 3569

Same machine:  same cost.  and everyone sells on RMB per TH.. well which   performance do you pick to price it?

Now compare M10

33  TH  @  1850 Watts    .056 J/GH    @ 3 cent power   = $5.26  Per day          2 years  = 3839

Now compare

33  TH  @  1850 Watts    .056 J/GH    @ 6 cent power   = $3.93  Per day          2 years  = 2868
38  TH   @  2500  watts    .065J/GH    @ 6 cent power   =   $3.99  per day       2 years =  2912

Of course guys here know how to do this math. The math on having a reliable system is harder. The math on how many machines actually deliver the promised spec ( or higher) is also harder to estimate. The math on reducing your number of network connections  because of daisy changing is probably easier.

So, its trivally true that the lower your power price the  more likely you are to trade efficiecny for hash rate. The vast major of huge customers are below  6 cents, all in. So they have to look at all the various modes the machine can run in. After seeing what Phillip was doing, I kinda pressed on engineering to make on the fly frequency changes a lot easier.  There is STILL a long way to go on what I would call proper specifications for systems: in particular I would like to see independent lab testing of machines and like to finally publish some hard data on how performance changes as a function of temperature. Who knows with a built in neural net asic maybe somebody will discover that the machine can learn to control itself. The clock cores already adaptively adjust  their clock rate as a function of DH.

Any way,   a few other updates.  machines will probably be built in a mix of with PSU  and W/O PSU. You can run the machine  with an integrated PSU ( it has voltage control over I2C)  or just attach your own PSU. And if you get it with the integrated PSU  you can always switch it.

Price on the website is  just a stand in price.  It will be below that once we start taking orders. While we have a bunch of machines in test, Lily and I want to get test results from the first  Trial run. You should see those system hit the pool any day now.

[Steamtyme]

Nice to see the miner up and running.

I kept waiting for them to update the miner status page, or for cut to an hour or later. Either way definitely promising, a big plus with summer coming is seeing them actually push the miner to 40C.

Nope its 16nm  because the wafer cost per TH on yeilded die is lower on 16nm than 7nm.
No controller required in the RJ45  version, cgminer runs on the AI chip,  dual core  risc V.
I think the option with the non integrated PSU will probably rule the day, especially when folks figure out that if you have the right PSU, you can run it   above 31TH.. (31 TH is running about 1/2 the max clock) you'll take an effciiency hit that more than pays for itself at lower power prices.  
The purchasing decision and operating decisions become a bit more complex when you look at running the machine in max effciency mode ( say 24TH ) versus running it in max hash rate mode ( 38+ today) And how do I just put one number on the spec sheet? and then you have to factor in how efficiency changes with ambient temp.
Its almost like an AI problem. just kidding. But I do foresee customers who will now have fine grain control of the frequency that is tied to the actual operating conditions of their farm.

Thanks for clearing that up. Reading this it's hard to tell what the anticipation is for the miner or the fun/interest of being able to tweak and adjust for your needs. Note to self don't dump the PSU's yet.

[kano]

After seeing what Phillip was doing, I kinda pressed on engineering to make on the fly frequency changes a lot easier.  There is STILL a long way to go on what I would call proper specifications for systems: in particular I would like to see independent lab testing of machines and like to finally publish some hard data on how performance changes as a function of temperature. Who knows with a built in neural net asic maybe somebody will discover that the machine can learn to control itself. The clock cores already adaptively adjust  their clock rate as a function of DH.

Yeah I worked out with the A741 a couple of years ago how to do the frequency via the "More Options" field - since you can put any cgminer settings in there (rather than having to login and change the init script)
I started doing the A741 heater back in 2017 since it was less power than my home heater
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.msg19893916#msg19893916

As long as the options are in cgminer, it's not a problem to be able to change the settings, but of course a specific web page option to set it is more help for the less technical.
(and I failed dismally to get the A851 or A921 to do it last year when I got them from Canaan, since the stepping changed - so I didn't know til you released the code in Nov what the values where and by then it was summer again - winter coming up again soon, I'll get them out of the cupboard and try to get them to work as heaters also)

While we have a bunch of machines in test, Lily and I want to get test results from the first  Trial run. You should see those system hit the pool any day now.

The time I posted about it was to say "These really exist and they match the specs shown on the web sites"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125803.msg50509226#msg50509226

If you have time, you can get one of the devs to message me per the usual channel, or send me a PM, to let me know when you do a faster test and I'll check out the individual miners and post the numbers.
(takes me a few minutes effort, I find a miner that was on before and after the hour, then do the calc on the shares it submitted for that hour, since their not individually reported on the pool, they all use the same worker name, which is ok of course)

[StevenMosher]

Ok,  we only had an hour or two in the lab and the customer wanted to point the machines at their pool after we did our initial tests. We were in such a rush across beijing in traffic to get to the lab that I totally forgot about alerting you.

We were also surprised by getting 38TH as we predicted 37 based on the voltage setting of the PSU. There is even more headroom in frequency, ( say at least 33%) but we may hit cooling limits and we  hit the limits of the power strip when we pushed it beyond 2500.

I need to do some more structured tests and longer times at temperature, Needs some prep time and we will give you a heads up  when we head to the lab again.

[kano]

Ok,  we only had an hour or two in the lab and the customer wanted to point the machines at their pool after we did our initial tests. We were in such a rush across beijing in traffic to get to the lab that I totally forgot about alerting you.

We were also surprised by getting 38TH as we predicted 37 based on the voltage setting of the PSU. There is even more headroom in frequency, ( say at least 33%) but we may hit cooling limits and we  hit the limits of the power strip when we pushed it beyond 2500.

I need to do some more structured tests and longer times at temperature, Needs some prep time and we will give you a heads up  when we head to the lab again.

I can probably find them (in the logs) via the diff they were mining at and hopefully a full hour ... will reply once I've done that.

Edit: didn't find any single a10's with 30-40k work diff - so I guess they were chained miners?
Next time just tell me the time (+timezone) you ran them and how you chained them (1, 2, 3 etc) and I should be able to find the stats
(the share logs are eternal)
If you give one a different worker name than the default (e.g. canaan.38) then I'll be able to find it even easier

[minefarmbuy]

Steve if you want me to "test" heat limits in my garage just let me know.

Looks like canaan.io/shop updated.

[philipma1957]

Looks like canaan.io/shop updated.

So a 31th more efficient model
and a 33.5th less efficient model

[ccgllc]

Still... 56J/TH vs. BItmain's claim of ~40J/Th (29% less power).

Can't competitively buy anything compliments of the Trump Tax, and refuse to buy anything from Bitmain ever again, so guess I'll just have to wait for a power competitive product.  *sigh*

[Artemis3]

Still... 56J/TH vs. BItmain's claim of ~40J/Th (29% less power).

Can't competitively buy anything compliments of the Trump Tax, and refuse to buy anything from Bitmain ever again, so guess I'll just have to wait for a power competitive product.  *sigh*

There is also MicroBT, and we have yet to see how much tweaking can the newer Canaan units take by downclocking. Price has always been a weakness for Canaan, but at least they are trying... I though Canaan was readying 7nm parts but their latest "A10" is still 16nm, hope is if they are brewing something new at 12nm or less like MicroBT is.

[philipma1957]

Right now  price works against them.  USA buyers get hit hard with trump tax  27.6%  and  the efficiency is only okay.

Paying 1500+  after trump tax and shipping is difficult.  

I hope to get one soon  to test.

[ccgllc]

I guess the other way to think about this is relative to the previous generation S9s...

e.g.  An S9 running Bitmain firmware in Low Power Enhanced Mode pulls about 9.8TH at, oh, ~85J/TH...

That means your getting about 3X the performance at 56J/TH for about a 1/3rd less power.  At $1500, that is like paying $500 for an improved efficiency S9.  Relative to the ~$2K/S9 we were paying a year ago (ok, maybe plus a few months), that is quite the deal.  Looks like e-bay is selling S9s w/PSUs for ballpark $250.

Wonder what that works out to in power ROI?  Lets see, very rough math... assume $0.10/kwh, 850W/S9, so 2550 for 3 of them... x 24 x 30 = $183.50/month in power.  The avalon will save about a third, so call it $60/month vs (3) S9s, so a bit over a year to break even. 

Seems rather risky...  Of course, mining Bitcoin always has been.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

... I though Canaan was readying 7nm parts but their latest "A10" is still 16nm, hope is if they are brewing something new at 12nm or less like MicroBT is.

The A921 painfully proved to them that the 7nm node process is just not ready for prime time yet. Too expensive with results that are too variable and I expect it to remain so for at least another 6 months. With Microbt nailing it on the 16nm node Canaan made a wise choice taking a step back to 16nm for their A10.

[sarcheer]

Have any of these shipped/appeared in the wild yet?

[Artemis3]

Have any of these shipped/appeared in the wild yet?

I'm also waiting for a full review, complete with: unboxing, web ui settings, power consumption, noise levels, tweaks for maximum efficiency and its respective parts disassembly

This is Cannan's first asicboost chip eh? My first immediate negatives would be: price, and the 30°C max ambient temperature. Its a good positive that they would (finally) allow simple LAN cables to be used, greatly simplifying setup (but is this still controlled from elsewhere as usual?)