ASICMiner BE300S Samples Arrived, <0.2W/G Achieved at Board Level

[raskul]

I don't know about a sea of tiny chips, but I'd much rather see a multi-chip high-hashrate design than a single- or few-chip high-hashrate design. Increased surface area decreases cooling requirements, distributed power decreases PCB requirements, and increased modularity increases reliability and repairability. From an owner/hardware-maintainer standpoint, the most problematic machines I've run were the ones with hot single-die setups.

i had always thought it the other way around.. the larger the surface area, the more cooling required... you are not spreading that heat from the centre to the edges of a large chip, you are seeing equal heat across the chip - so a bigger chip = increased cooling requirements.

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[dogie]

I don't know about a sea of tiny chips, but I'd much rather see a multi-chip high-hashrate design than a single- or few-chip high-hashrate design. Increased surface area decreases cooling requirements, distributed power decreases PCB requirements, and increased modularity increases reliability and repairability. From an owner/hardware-maintainer standpoint, the most problematic machines I've run were the ones with hot single-die setups.

i had always thought it the other way around.. the larger the surface area, the more cooling required... you are not spreading that heat from the centre to the edges of a large chip, you are seeing equal heat across the chip - so a bigger chip = increased cooling requirements.

You're both saying the same thing, distributing hashing power over multiple smaller chips increases the surface area / GH = 'easier' to cool. That being said, its not difficult to cool large chips at all, it just means more cost and weight. [First step up is copper base, then copper heatpipes].

[raskul]

I don't know about a sea of tiny chips, but I'd much rather see a multi-chip high-hashrate design than a single- or few-chip high-hashrate design. Increased surface area decreases cooling requirements, distributed power decreases PCB requirements, and increased modularity increases reliability and repairability. From an owner/hardware-maintainer standpoint, the most problematic machines I've run were the ones with hot single-die setups.

i had always thought it the other way around.. the larger the surface area, the more cooling required... you are not spreading that heat from the centre to the edges of a large chip, you are seeing equal heat across the chip - so a bigger chip = increased cooling requirements.

You're both saying the same thing, distributing hashing power over multiple smaller chips increases the surface area / GH = 'easier' to cool. That being said, its not difficult to cool large chips at all, it just means more cost and weight. [First step up is copper base, then copper heatpipes].

i didn't say more difficult to cool, but more cooling required, which would be obvious?

[sidehack]

raskul, I didn't mean per-chip surface area so much as per-miner surface area. It's a lot easier to supply and maintain a handful of 4x4 heatsinks to cool multi-chip blades than it is to supply and maintain a waterblock and radiator for a 400W 2cmx2cm die. That's what I'm saying. When I said "increased surface area decreases cooling requirements" what I meant was increasing the board area over which you have to spread cooling - take the difference between an S1 versus a Sierra board. Similar power draw, but one's spreading it out over a square foot of PCB instead of a square inch of silicon. The AM Blade would run passively cooled with its ~5x8 inch heatsink at 85W, where a Minion requires decent heatpiped CPU coolers to draw the same power from a single postage-stamp area. Not that my opinion is particularly valuable, but I'll pretty much always endorse multi-ASIC designs with simpler heatsinking requirements over things that require complex or cumbersome cooling setups.

Having single ASICs that run about 5GH at 1.2W per chip, one could stack them about as densely as the BE100s on the old AM blades and make a decent machine. It'd run cool, but not terribly space-efficient - about the same as the BE200 chips, I think. Maybe a little better.

[raskul]

raskul, I didn't mean per-chip surface area so much as per-miner surface area. It's a lot easier to supply and maintain a handful of 4x4 heatsinks to cool multi-chip blades than it is to supply and maintain a waterblock and radiator for a 400W 2cmx2cm die. That's what I'm saying. When I said "increased surface area decreases cooling requirements" what I meant was increasing the board area over which you have to spread cooling - take the difference between an S1 versus a Sierra board. Similar power draw, but one's spreading it out over a square foot of PCB instead of a square inch of silicon. The AM Blade would run passively cooled with its ~5x8 inch heatsink at 85W, where a Minion requires decent heatpiped CPU coolers to draw the same power from a single postage-stamp area. Not that my opinion is particularly valuable, but I'll pretty much always endorse multi-ASIC designs with simpler heatsinking requirements over things that require complex or cumbersome cooling setups.

Having single ASICs that run about 5GH at 1.2W per chip, one could stack them about as densely as the BE100s on the old AM blades and make a decent machine. It'd run cool, but not terribly space-efficient - about the same as the BE200 chips, I think. Maybe a little better.

ah, gotcha, in that case, i concur. 

[hdbuck]

because i'm a raskul - and FC took down this image from his OP 

AMleak

[Bicknellski]

personally, i think that larger dies are the way to go.  i think having tiny dies, thus high numbers of packages and larger boards etc.. adds more points of failure, and more board power losses.. so I'm in favour of larger dies in general.  not necessarily huge ones any longer (as they require exotic cooling, which we've all seen isn't as reliable).

Large dies are very hard to power and cool. Just compare the companies and die sizes and you'll see a very strong corelation.

Late Companies
BFL: Large die Proven Scam
HF: Large die Proven Scam
CT: Large die
KNC: Large die

On time companies
Avalon: Small die
Bitfury: Small die
Asicminer: Small die
Bitmain: Small die
Spondoolies: Medium die

It's pretty clear that the companies that tried big dies has the most delays. I do agree the Asicminer dies could grow quite a bit and still work well.

FTFY

Not only were some later with a larger die they were scamming people.

[aerobatic]

personally, i think that larger dies are the way to go.  i think having tiny dies, thus high numbers of packages and larger boards etc.. adds more points of failure, and more board power losses.. so I'm in favour of larger dies in general.  not necessarily huge ones any longer (as they require exotic cooling, which we've all seen isn't as reliable).

Large dies are very hard to power and cool. Just compare the companies and die sizes and you'll see a very strong corelation.

Late Companies
BFL: Large die
HF: Large die
CT: Large die
KNC: Large die

On time companies
Avalon: Small die
Bitfury: Small die
Asicminer: Small die
Bitmain: Small die
Spondoolies: Medium die

It's pretty clear that the companies that tried big dies has the most delays. I do agree the Asicminer dies could grow quite a bit and still work well.

when you put it in black and white i agree with you, those big chips were way too big and relied on exotic cooling, which turned out to be costly, complex, and unreliable.  in the small chips versus big chips experiment i think its now been proven that extremely big chips are too difficult to cool reliably so yes, i agree with you.  but there's still a very wide spectrum of possibilities.  asicminer has gone for a very tiny die with only 6 gh per chip.  if it runs at their claimed, lets say 0.3 watts per gh, thats less than 2 watts per chip.   thats probably much too small to be efficient.  thats quite a bit less than bitfury's old chip (2.5 watts).  i wouldn't be surprised if bitfury's next chip will be more like 20+ gh per chip.  its all about watts per package that can be cooled in a low cost way.

i think the medium sized chips are probably the most efficient way to go.. the chips are still air cooled (with heatsinks and high cfm fans).. but they pack a lot more gh per package which reduces the number of boards that you need for a given gh's, keeps cooling simple, but also keeps the system size manageable.  less board losses, etc.  spondoolies was onto something with their package size and cooling.

[arnuschky]

because i'm a raskul - and FC took down this image from his OP 

Missed that - anyone an idea why he took it down?

[Dexter770221]

because i'm a raskul - and FC took down this image from his OP  

Missed that - anyone an idea why he took it down?

It's been like 15 minutes in first post. Then replaced.

More interesting is that PMS01 chip is AM design? If so, it looks like friedcat is talented ASIC engineer...

[raskul]

because i'm a raskul - and FC took down this image from his OP  

Missed that - anyone an idea why he took it down?

It's been like 15 minutes in first post. Then replaced.

More interesting is that PMS01 chip is AM design? If so, it looks like friedcat is talented ASIC engineer...

PMSL 

[Dexter770221]

because i'm a raskul - and FC took down this image from his OP  

Missed that - anyone an idea why he took it down?

It's been like 15 minutes in first post. Then replaced.

More interesting is that PMS01 chip is AM design? If so, it looks like friedcat is talented ASIC engineer...

PMSL  

On pictures it's clearly visible PMS01...

[raskul]

because i'm a raskul - and FC took down this image from his OP  

Missed that - anyone an idea why he took it down?

It's been like 15 minutes in first post. Then replaced.

More interesting is that PMS01 chip is AM design? If so, it looks like friedcat is talented ASIC engineer...

PMSL  

On pictures it's clearly visible PMS01...

PMS. indeedy.

[sidehack]

You mean like AM is scamming people, by telling them they will honor the garbage they produced. NOT 1 email/PM has been answered, NO compensation sent, and RMA process is a JOKE!

Anyone who is in here talking up AM is a SHILL/Shareholder trying to lure more IDIOTS, like me into buying their CRAP!

DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM ASICMiner NOR friedcunt.

I think what he meant was, BFL and HashFast (as indicated) were revealed not only as "late" but also as "confirmed scams". I'm no shill for AM, heck novak and I spent a week and some out-of-pocket coin assembling Tubes for hosting and trying to find fixes for their epically-broken stratum implementation, and then rebuilding shelves to fireproof for Prismas (we haven't had any blow out yet). Not impressed. But I do like these chips, it might be a win.

Please recall, however, that this is a thread for discussing BE300. I think what you want is the other thread - the one about compensation and RMAs for existing hardware. Also please note that AM has pretty much always been bad at communication, and that there are likely a few thousand people trying to sell back their Prismas so a bit of patience will probably be necessary.

[philipma1957]

...

And to be SURE I am not confused between AM the scammers and BFL. BFL Delivered ALL my equipment, albeit late AND when their crappy PSUs failed the mailed me "NEW" ones NO CHARGE, NO PAYBACK, NO BS. BFL handled EVERY failure I had professionally and in a timely manner. FC and ASICMiner are WORTHLESS SHIT-Baggers!

And I will visit EVERY thread these SCAMMERS start and tell my story.

I was on your side and you lost me with this post.  
BTW BFL fully refunded my money after 16 months, but to say BFL is good or okay and AM is bad or terrible will lose most of us.

Just say AM fucked you and you want a refund and I will be back on your side.

Now to this chip I will most likely buy a piece of gear made from it. I will use CrazyGuy or CanaryInTheMine.  I will wait for others to buy it I won't be a Guiana-pig or lab-rat.

But I like new gear.

[Swimmer63]

Prisma's have been a pain in the ass. But mine have been working steadily for two weeks now so I'm over it.
Can't wait for these chips to hit the market. Time is money FC. Make it happen!

[raskul]

-snip-
FINALLY GOT MY RESPONSE AFTER 2 MNTHS....



Hello,
Sorry for the so long delayed reply.

Our Buy-back Plan just aims to Prisma, not inlcuding Tube. Sorry for any inconvenience.


AM FUCKED ME!!!

that's very harsh mate, if they are providing customer service of that level for one product, they really should make it across the board and honour it to your own product.
it's like a bike shop offer a repair on a flat tyre - but only if it's the back wheel, front wheels don't get fixed.

[Mabsark]

If this was a Spondoolies thread, these completely off-topic posts would have been deleted by the mods by now. I guess FC needs to donate a miner. 

[raskul]

If this was a Spondoolies thread, these completely off-topic posts would have been deleted by the mods by now. I guess FC needs to donate a miner. 

if this was Spondoolies thread, that unit would have been RMA'd by now.

[Zich]

What is worse raskul is they posted their "compensation" offer in the TURD(TUBE) thread, morons led by idiots I suppose. I for one am DONE with AM.

ASICMiner is NO BETTER THAN BFL or TechnoBit

ALL scumbag half-ass engineers with NO business experience.

Off Topic
We all know about BFL, i am also BFL victim.
But what with technobit? My order with technobit is fine until now.