896 mh/s firmware release - Butterfly Labs

[rjk]

I've been getting a U of 12.2 to 12.3 with the 880 firmware. Go GPUMAX.

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[JWU42]

Amen to that brother - go GPUMAX 

[Beaflag VonRathburg]

896 seems to be beyond the limit for most chips already.

TWO chips.
Quite likely, with TWO completely unrolled, pipelined miners on each of them.
Or a "sea of miners" on them, as brilliantly demonstrated by Bitfury on the Spartan6 platform.

Huh?  It was beyond the limit for 3 of mine already.

I was just trying to point out that the 896 MH/s are spread out over TWO FPGAs, not just one.
Maybe you meant to say "beyond the limit for most Singles".

Is it the limit of the chips, hardware to keep it cool, outside temperature or some combination of the previously mentioned?

Hard to say, probably a combination of things.
Does anyone have a walk-in freezer where he could test whether freezing temperatures help?

In any case, there is a thermal resistance Tr1 from the die to the heat spreader and a thermal resistance Tr2 from the heat spreader to the heat sink and finally there is a thermal resistance Tr3 from the heat sink to the room air.
Tr1 cannot be modified, but we have already established that Tr2 is not at its optimal level, because the heat sink does not contact the whole heat spreader, only part of it. Also, I suspect that co-planarity of the FPGAs, or rather the lack of it, may contribute to a higher-than-desired Tr2 value.

I live in Florida and honestly today is the first day that I consider to be a true indicator of summer approaching. I came down around 10am and my garage was 97.2* F. My house has no AC so I plan on sticking my singles in an extra mini fridge that I have and sealing it up the best I can. Hopefully, it will be able to keep them from throttling and shouldn't consume too much extra electricity.

[P_Shep]

I live in Florida and honestly today is the first day that I consider to be a true indicator of summer approaching. I came down around 10am and my garage was 97.2* F. My house has no AC so I plan on sticking my singles in an extra mini fridge that I have and sealing it up the best I can. Hopefully, it will be able to keep them from throttling and shouldn't consume too much extra electricity.

I think you're going to end up with a very warm mini-fridge and a burnt out motor.

[crazyates]

I live in Florida and honestly today is the first day that I consider to be a true indicator of summer approaching. I came down around 10am and my garage was 97.2* F. My house has no AC so I plan on sticking my singles in an extra mini fridge that I have and sealing it up the best I can. Hopefully, it will be able to keep them from throttling and shouldn't consume too much extra electricity.

I think you're going to end up with a very warm mini-fridge and a burnt out motor.

And a jacked up electric bill.

[P_Shep]

I think you're going to end up with a very warm mini-fridge and a burnt out motor.

And a jacked up electric bill.

And an even WARMER garage.

[SgtSpike]

I think you're going to end up with a very warm mini-fridge and a burnt out motor.

And a jacked up electric bill.

And an even WARMER garage.

And condensation-killed Singles.

[crazyates]

I think you're going to end up with a very warm mini-fridge and a burnt out motor.

And a jacked up electric bill.

And an even WARMER garage.

And condensation-killed Singles.

And warts on his...actually, never mind. Lets just leave the poor dude alone...

[WhitePhantom]

I think you're going to end up with a very warm mini-fridge and a burnt out motor.

And a jacked up electric bill.

And an even WARMER garage.

And condensation-killed Singles.

And warts on his...actually, never mind. Lets just leave the poor dude alone...

All the responses made me laugh.  However, I agree.  A mini fridge may be good at cooling food/beverages and keeping them cool, but it's not designed to cool items that continuously produce heat.  I'd even be slightly nervous about putting the Single in a large chest-style freezer, although that might actually pan out...Never tried such a thing.

[cuz0882]

I prefer to keep mine on ice in the cooler. In a pinch I can settle for a mini fridge.

[dave3]

I've got the 800 mh/s firmware loaded on my 2 new Singles with the stock power bricks, and the total power use according to my power meter is 145 watts (or about 72.5 watts each).

So it looks like the slower firmware uses a bit less power.

[rjk]

I've got the 800 mh/s firmware loaded on my 2 new Singles with the stock power bricks, and the total power use according to my power meter is 145 watts (or about 72.5 watts each).

So it looks like the slower firmware uses a bit less power.

That's expected, same as a video card. Generally speaking, the power draw versus clock speed is linear.

[crazyates]

I've got the 800 mh/s firmware loaded on my 2 new Singles with the stock power bricks, and the total power use according to my power meter is 145 watts (or about 72.5 watts each).

So it looks like the slower firmware uses a bit less power.

That's expected, same as a video card. Generally speaking, the power draw versus clock speed is linear.

In that case, are the faster bitstreams more likely to burn out the power bricks faster? More heat?

[rjk]

I've got the 800 mh/s firmware loaded on my 2 new Singles with the stock power bricks, and the total power use according to my power meter is 145 watts (or about 72.5 watts each).

So it looks like the slower firmware uses a bit less power.

That's expected, same as a video card. Generally speaking, the power draw versus clock speed is linear.

In that case, are the faster bitstreams more likely to burn out the power bricks faster? More heat?

Hard to say, the bricks are rated for something like 120 watts, but they do get a bit hot. Usually for more than 2 or 3 singles, it's a good idea to use a standard power supply with converted connectors.

[SgtSpike]

I've got the 800 mh/s firmware loaded on my 2 new Singles with the stock power bricks, and the total power use according to my power meter is 145 watts (or about 72.5 watts each).

So it looks like the slower firmware uses a bit less power.

That's expected, same as a video card. Generally speaking, the power draw versus clock speed is linear.

In that case, are the faster bitstreams more likely to burn out the power bricks faster? More heat?

I have a 6" wally-world fan blowing on all 4 of my singles + power bricks.  It's kept them nicely cool, but they were getting super hot before I made that change.

[Epoch]

Just a note - cannot seem to get the 792 firmware to work.  Has anyone else reported issues?

After flashing, it says it is OK but under No processors where it should say [ 2 ]  it shows [ 0 ].

Tried this on 2 singles and have re-downloaded the file - same result.

Would be nice to have this as 2 units won't run 800 reliably and having to drop to 768, well, is no fun  

I have had the same result, after flashing with the 792 firmware, units do not work.  Haven't contacted BFL yet, but wanted to confirm your result.

All rev2 singles.

No problems with 768, 800, 808, 816, 824, 832.  Extremely poor performance with 864, 872. Haven't tried 880, 896, since I didn't think there would be any point.

@BFL-Engineer - see above.  The 792 f/w needs to be re-examined.

Will investigate.

Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Yes I can also confirm that the 792 is not working.

@BFL-Engineer: any word on a fix for the 792 firmware? I can also confirm that it is not working for me.

[kano]

Give it 4-6 weeks

OK that is a troll comment but ... I made it coz ...

I discussed with luke-jr about adding a simple change to cgminer to reduce the stale share count (when you use --no-submit-stale) by 0.425% i.e. an extra 3.5MH/s on a 832MH/s core hashing at 816MH/s
(he still has veto over what goes in)
and his reply was that he wouldn't do it coz it wasn't possible without messing up his code and he was awaiting the updated details about the BFL commands and that would resolve it ... apparently soon.
i.e. this relates to what I have already asked for from BFL 3 weeks ago and they said no.
So ... I also wonder how long that will be ...

[BTC-engineer]

@BFL-Engineer - see above.  The 792 f/w needs to be re-examined.

Will investigate.

Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

@BFL:
 1. Any update regarding the 792 firmware issue?
 2. Any update regarding faster firmware versions? It's now ~1 week after the announcement here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84174.msg928022#msg928022

If the generating process of a new firmware is a very time consuming process, it would help us all to communicate it this way to us and give us raw release dates.
Up to now, I understood BFL like the difference in the firmwares is trivial and you already have faster firmwares (at least up to 1050) but it's getting more and more unlikely that they will run with a specific customer unit. However, I've waited ~3 month for my singles (with full prepayment) and if there is faster firmware I would like to have it asap to run it now.

[lorenzfx]

Hi,
is it generally possibly to write and run my own firmware on the bitforce single?

[rjk]

Hi,
is it generally possibly to write and run my own firmware on the bitforce single?

Nope.