The Habanero - 650GH/s - OOS

[MrTeal]

Update Sept 5: All out of stock.

Update August 14: We have a very limited quantity of boards in stock and available for shipment. This is going to be the last of the rev1 Habanero stock. The price is $600.

Update June 2 / 2014:
Sales are now open for Batch 2, which is already coming off the test line and will begin shipping at the start of next week (June 9th). The price is now dropped to $850, check it out on our website.
$850 - Batch 2 Habanero


650+ GH/s
650 GH/s nominal hashing speed, demonstrated with closed loop cooler to run over 700GH/s. Proper liquid cooling is required to reach these speeds and individual results may vary.
Power Usage
About 1 Watt per GH/s, or one Joule per GH typical at nominal speeds. Power consumption can vary with underclocking or overclocking from nominal speeds as well as with different power supply and cooling solutions.
Golden Nonce Chip
High performance 28nm ASIC mining chip. Die has built in thermal controls that allow the chip to pushed to the edge without damaging cores. Designed to be under-clocked for greater efficiency, and overclocked for greater performance
Four independent 6-phase Digital Voltage Regulators
Designed using a state-of-the-art Texas Instruments Digital voltage controller and best-in-class 60A-rated International Rectifier DrMOS outputs, the supply for each die has been designed and tested to output up to 300A. With very high efficiency in the normal operating range of 150-200A, they have plenty of over head for extreme overclocking
12 Temperature Sensors
Each of the four dies features a temperature sensor on the controller chip, one at the output mosfets, and one of the ASIC die.
Custom Backplate/Heatsink
Getting good pressure on the water cooling heat is critical to cooling performance at 500W+. The addition of a custom VRM heatsink and ASIC backplate assembly helps to cool the critical power supplies while keeping the board from flexing with extreme pressure.
Extreme PCB
Designed to support the heaviest power loads, the PCB under the ASIC has 10 heavy copper layers dedicated to running power to it.
Wide Cooling Compatibility
Using a standard 75mm Intel (lga 1366 socket b) hole spacing, a huge range of off the shelf and custom coolers are available. Flexing with extreme pressure, to ensure maximal area contract between the cooler head and the four dies. Here are some cooler suggestions, Corsair H100i/H110/H80i, Coolermaster Nepton 280L, Coolermaster Glacier 240L, Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme. Also note cooling these boards properly important to achieve maximum throughput, so some coolers that you buy the fans on the radiators are not strong enough, we have tested a San Ace 120 12v server style fan that mounts on some of these.  (Not Included)
Power Supply
We recommend a high quality 1000W+ single rail ATX power supply for one Habanero.
Each PCIe connector is independent, so multiple smaller PSUs can be used to power one board.
If using multiple supplies or multi-rail power supplies, please ensure each connector is provided with at least 20A for maximum performance. (Not Included)
Easy USB interface
Connection is as simple as plugging in a mini-B USB cable to the host of your choice, fire up the free and open source mining software, and start mining. See (Not Included)


Original Post
Well, it's that time of year again. After too many consecutive weeks of getting a full night of sleep, a hardware engineer's thoughts naturally turn to ways he could once again start pulling all-nighters with a new design. The Chili was a great project, but the BFL 65nm chips aren't available anymore and technology has moved past them. It is time to turn up the heat and introduce a new miner project.



The Habanero
The Habanero is in the development stage right now, and should be coming online soon. Utilizing the Hashfast GN ASIC, the Habanero is designed from the ground up to push the chip as far as possible. It is going to be a pretty big departure from the Chilis in terms of scale. Whereas the Chilis had a 4-phase power supply for the chips rated at 40A per phase, the Habanero will use a 6-phase power supply rated at 60A per phase. That's over twice the max current output as the Chilis, but that's per die. Each die has its own 6-phase PSU, and is individually controllable. Whatever the ultimate limits of this chip are, we plan to find them.

The chip interface will be controlled through USB and will be compatible with the existing HF communications protocol. The plan is to expand on the HF protocol and fill in the non-functional commands like output current measurement, while still maintaining compatibility with mainline cgminer/bfgminer releases. Chaining will be supported and will be compatible with existing units, so if you have a Babyjet sitting around lonely with no MPP in sight, you can connect a Habanero right up to it (or vise versa).

Cooling will be up to the user, but we will likely recommend a good closed loop water cooling solution. More details on power consumption and test results will be forthcoming as we get hardware in hand.

Sales
It will be a somewhat marked departure from how we handled the Chilis; while we will still offer assembly services to anyone who has arranged their own supply of HF chips, we will also offer finished boards with everything ready to slap on a cooler and hook up a PSU.

Pricing has yet to be determined, but it will be very competitive.
Like with the Chili, we are not taking payment at this point. Sales won't open until the prototypes are built and tested, and the final design is signed off on and ready to go.

The Vision
When we started the Chili project, chip vendors were limited to Avalon and BFL; both companies with dismal records for delivery and customer service for their miners. We set out to do things differently and build hardware for people while still communicating with them after we had their money and delivering on time. While there are always problems that come up during a project, we gave a date we expected to start board assembly, kept people up to date on any issues, and shipped all of the first batch less than two weeks of the start of assembly.

We seem to have a similar situation today, were HF seems to have an incredible fast chip but that has almost completely shut down from interfacing with customers. Hopefully they can turn it around but in the meantime we plan to take advantage and step into that void. Our goal is to provide access to some amazing mining technology, but still be approachable enough that you can ask questions and get answers to them.

The Team
Me - I am doing the hardware design, bringup and testing, as well as my general role from the Chili project of being the community point person.

Chip Geek - Currently on vacation, when he arrives back rested and relaxed he'll be immediately thrown into the role of software development.

Gateway - Website design and help with technical support.


This thread is primarily intended to keep people up to date on development progress, I'll probably make a new one once sales start up. I don't intend to moderate anything unless things get really out of hand, but just try to remember that we are not HF and this really isn't the venue to discuss how HF is screwing over their early customers.

Also, check out our new website peppermining.com, and sign up for the newsletter if you want to receive updates.

[Reckman]

I think this sounds like a great project.

I had a couple of chilis and have some thoughts on improvements;

I'd like to see thicker PCBs and better heatsink mounting options, it was a bitch getting a CPU heatsink to fit the old boards. I would also like to see a full package option like techno-bit sells maybe excluding the boxed watercooler, finding heatsinks for mosfets and what not is very hard if you only have a couple, but bulk from china is rather easy.

[HashFast_CL]

Habaneros are among the fiercest of of peppers and not easily tamed.  But when properly handled/roasted, the reward is sheer bliss.

LMK if I can do anything to help.  Best of luck in your ambitious yet timely project!

[CanaryInTheMine]

future versions:

- Ghost
- Naga Viper
- Trinidad Moruga Scorpion
- Carolina Reaper

 

[edgie13]

future versions:

- Ghost
- Naga Viper
- Trinidad Moruga Scorpion
- Carolina Reaper

 

This project seems very interesting. I hope it goes well for you. Unfortunately, Hashfast has left a really bad taste in my mouth.

You really know your super hots.  I'd love to show you my gallery some time.
'

[gateway]

I think this project will be pretty successful and we realize that HF has put a bad taste in everyone's mouth, however Mr. Teal, Chip Geek and I decided a while back to move on this project and build a better and faster board using their chips. We are excited to see what can be done with The Habanero and will continue to update everyone here and on our site with our progress.

[CoinChex]

What type of confidence you do have that HashFast will deliver their GN chips? Additionally, where is that confidence coming from? Have you spoken with members of their team or do you have access to their chips/boards already?

I ask for several reasons, most being to clean up the bad taste in my mouth!

[QuiveringGibbage]

very interested, following.. just had a few off the top of my head queries...

Cooling design:
So as the end user we can buy standard PC water cooling parts to fit onto this board to cool chips?? I've never used water cooling in my PC so this should be fun.

Chip supply:
Confused with this line "while we will still offer assembly services to anyone who has arranged their own supply of HF boards," Supply of our own HF boards? Do you mean chips? How will you guarantee chip  supply from HF?

Board design:
How will your board differ from HF's own yolievo mining board which you can pick up 10 for $19,000?

Capital:
Sounds like you will still be taking pre-orders to raise capital once you have a working prototype. is this true? How can you grantee delivery dates?

Cheers,
QG

[MrTeal]

What type of confidence you do have that HashFast will deliver their GN chips? Additionally, where is that confidence coming from? Have you spoken with members of their team or do you have access to their chips/boards already?

I ask for several reasons, most being to clean up the bad taste in my mouth!

We've spoken with HashFast already and they have assured us that they have sufficient quantity of the chips available immediately for what we need. We do have a couple chips ready now (that you can see in the picture) that are just waiting for the boards to be built so they can be tested.

[gateway]

What type of confidence you do have that HashFast will deliver their GN chips? Additionally, where is that confidence coming from? Have you spoken with members of their team or do you have access to their chips/boards already?

I ask for several reasons, most being to clean up the bad taste in my mouth!

We have chips and boards from them.  See in the picture above next to the Habanero those are 2 GN chips in the hands of Mr Teal

Edit: opps didnt see Mr Teals reply when I was doing mine

[MrTeal]

very interested, following.. just had a few off the top of my head queries...

Cooling design:
So as the end user we can buy standard PC water cooling parts to fit onto this board to cool chips?? I've never used water cooling in my PC so this should be fun.

Chip supply:
Confused with this line "while we will still offer assembly services to anyone who has arranged their own supply of HF boards," Supply of our own HF boards? Do you mean chips? How will you guarantee chip  supply from HF?

Board design:
How will your board differ from HF's own yolievo mining board which you can pick up 10 for $19,000?

Capital:
Sounds like you will still be taking pre-orders to raise capital once you have a working prototype. is this true? How can you grantee delivery dates?

Cheers,
QG

Yes, as the end user you can either use a standard all-in-one closed loop cooler similar to the Corsair H80 or H100, or you could use a full custom water system that can push more water for the best performance. I do plan to test with a good air cooler (I have an NH-D14 sitting around to try) just to see how far you can get on air, as well.

Re: Chip supply, yes, that was a typo. Thanks.

Board design: I think our board actually ended up being quite similar to the Evo board, now that I've learned a little more about it. There are some differences, and it remains to be seen who can get the most out of the chip. I can say that should it be necessary (not that I think it will be) it would be rather trivial for us to add another two phases to bring it up to a full 8 phase design for each die. Another difference is that HF is sold out in April and is selling May delivery now. Baring complications on our end during testing before we even open orders, I expect Habaneros to be shipping in April. Pricing is likely to be different as well.

Capital: I prefer to think of it as built to order rather than preorder given how much of a pejorative "preorder" is Bitcoin due to people selling hardware that isn't designed yet. But yes, we will very likely take orders to pay for the parts and assembly prior to having the boards in stock ready to ship. Now, if no one orders one beforehand that doesn't mean we won't scramble and go ahead with production anyway, but it would probably just shrink the size of the first batch. For guaranteed delivery dates, I won't give one because I can't guarantee a specific date and everyone who has done this before knows that as well. What I will say if the we're booked into a spot for assembly on such and such a day, the PCBs are on order and due to arrive a couple days for that, all the parts are ready, etc. We expect to ship the first units on day XX, it could be XX-2 if there's no issues or XX+Y if this crops up. That being said, while we've had a few days of scheduling SNAFUs before, we haven't seen anything that would cause the kinds of delays some other manufacturers seem to have. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that the delays aren't manufacturing based, they're design based. Many people seem to roll prototype testing, bringup and full production into one nasty step. That is the big cause for concern and a huge potential source of delays, which is why I have no plans to do it.

[nexus99]

For those that follow hashfast... how fast are the chips?

[paxtoncamaro91]

Looks great and best of luck! I cant wait to hear what you guys get for results in testing.

[hephaist0s]

I could not be more excited -- I love my chilis, and I loved following the process of having them made. You folks do great work! In the universe of great mining gear, right now I think my pantheon is Bitmain on top, and just under that, MrTeal. Go get 'em!!

[Xian01]

Good luck with the project ! Looking forward to picking one up when they become available !

[seriouscoin]

Any estimate on the power consumption and hashrate yet?

[daemonfox]

I'm in.

[gateway]

Just added a FAQ section to the site http://peppermining.com/frequently-asked-questions/ .  I'll try to collect any q&a stuff located here or send to us via email and try to keep the faq page updated.

cheers!

[daemonfox]

Just added a FAQ section to the site http://peppermining.com/frequently-asked-questions/ .  I'll try to collect any q&a stuff located here or send to us via email and try to keep the faq page updated.

cheers!

Are you guys at liberty to post here what the per chip price is... since the HF site only states to email them asking for bulk prices?

I went to look in Hashfast's BCT posts... but that seems to be a massive undertaking to find a single piece of info in all that has been posted.

[MrTeal]

For those that follow hashfast... how fast are the chips?

Any estimate on the power consumption and hashrate yet?

We are still waiting to get prototype PCBs in, so we don't have any numbers on our hardware yet. We believe we should however be in the same ballpark as the Evo products. Their baseline is 700GH/s per board, with 770W at the wall based on the numbers posted for the Evo Sierra. I'm hoping to be a little better than 1.1J/GH at the wall, but we'll know more in the next couple weeks.

Are you guys at liberty to post here what the per chip price is... since the HF site only states to email them asking for bulk prices?

I went to look in Hashfast's BCT posts... but that seems to be a massive undertaking to find a single piece of info in all that has been posted.

Hmm.. I don't believe we would be, but I'd have to double check the agreement we signed with them.