[ANN] Sfards:SF100, the first 28nm Dual-Mode Miner is accepting pre-order now

[Meech]

Nice find!  That's more informative then these last pages of ?.  Speculative, yes, but has me a lil excited to see the prices in 1 month.

[1715114634]

1715114634

[1715114634]

1715114634

[toptekk]

That worry's me to.  why sell the a sample chip for so much the miner maybe 1000 or better without shipping . well see .

I am thinking the price of the sample chips reflects, to an extent, the final retail price of chips to future buyers. That, though, would rule out making any market-worthy miner. So sfards, is this sample chip pricing only effective until you release your own rigs, or (assuming there are no further improvements in chip tech) is this the real price we'd also have expect after you release your own rigs?

[Bicknellski]

Serious stuff for serious developers.

Nice to see hardware for people that develop.

In terms of price I don't think for a development board that is prohibitive for a serious developer.

How the pricing of this offer somehow determines miner price is hard to determine as it really depends on where you have your final unit built and the volume of your run. It is worrying that this is the only such offering currently available for the foreseeable future so they could as avalon, asicminer, hashfast, bitmine, black arrow, bitmain or bitfury or spondoolies have done before price it to what the market will bear (thanks vs3) not what is best to make ROI for a home miner a small farm.

SFARDS’ SF3301 sample chip is available on May 4th

SFARDS is now selling a few SF3301 development boards and sample chips to developers who wish to customize and build their own hardware.

Sales Information:

Sample chip:                      200 USD per pack, include two chips (exclude shipping)
Development board set:      400 USD (exclude shipping)
Shipping info:                     Within 48 hours after full payment (Payment by Bitcoin or USD)

For more questions such as place order or large scale orders, please email sales@sfards.com or add our skype:sfardsservice.

Features:

Sample chip:
More details about SF3301 chips, please kindly find the datasheet.
https://github.com/sfards

Development board set (includes one dev board, two power supply boards, radiator and fan):
Main Board
SF3301 : 1 chip
Heatsink : heatsink & 12mmx12mm fan
FBB Voltage : +/- 0~1.0V
Communication Interface : RS232 / TTL

Power Supply Board:
Output Voltage Range : 0.5~1.6V
Voltage Step:6.25mV
Max Current : 120A

[vs3]

so they could as (everyone else so far) have done before price it to what the market will bare not what it best to make ROI for a home miner a small farm.

yup - that's how pricing usually works. It's always the maximum that the market can bear (which sometimes happens to be the maximum considering the competition).

[Hunyadi]

IMO the chips might not be efficient enough compared to the most efficient miners (BTC/LTC) currently. Is there synergy benefits when mining in dual mode?

[dogie]

IMO the chips might not be efficient enough compared to the most efficient miners (BTC/LTC) currently. Is there synergy benefits when mining in dual mode?

Appears so.

[J4bberwock]

Work in progress schematics for my 2 chips board and kicad cache library have been added to my dropbox folder.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cjjkrq1fv2u7m0l/AADU4n7cCJsl5N1E6Qtai5M5a?dl=0

It's still work in progress, use it at your own risks.

[jcwhiteuk]

Does anyone have a rough idea how soon a plug n play miner might be able to hit the market? Sounds like from a month to 3 months... It all sounds great on paper, but I've been burnt big time by KNC and I'm very vary going forward mining from home.

I currently just buy coins and only mine in small amounts now. I do have free power, but the hardware ROI is big concern, I just hope it is well priced. I cannot take another big hit like I did with KNC.

[TheRealSteve]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cjjkrq1fv2u7m0l/AADU4n7cCJsl5N1E6Qtai5M5a?dl=0

For those without KiCad:
A. Download+install KiCad
B. https://i.imgur.com/BokyAXT.jpg

[Sfards]

hmm added you guys on skype, but havent heard a word yet.

Sorry for my delay as we work in Chinese time, I will reply you ASAP.

[Sfards]

The power boards are  probably based on something like tps40140 or ltc3829.
They could have been ordered separately. worst case, they can be used to work on other chips later.
But I expected the power supply to be built in the dev board, and price for the dev board is almost twice what I expected, so sample chips will be fine and more fun.

Anyway, my 2 chips design only needs routing to be finished.
I've been away today and will be driving back home tomorrow (9hours trip at least), so I probably won't update until Wednesday.

Sample chips price is a little bit high too, I expected something closer to 50$ each, but if price for "small batches" is right, it doesn't really matters.
Before I buy 2 or 4 of them, I'll need some more technical informations than what can be found in the partial data sheet.
I'll check tomorrow or Wednesday for what's missing.
Can I assume the chips will be sent express (dhl/FedEx) within 1 or 2 days after payment will be made?

Yes, we will ship (DHL/FedEx) within 48 hours after full payment.

[philipma1957]

Does anyone have a rough idea how soon a plug n play miner might be able to hit the market? Sounds like from a month to 3 months... It all sounds great on paper, but I've been burnt big time by KNC and I'm very vary going forward mining from home.

I currently just buy coins and only mine in small amounts now. I do have free power, but the hardware ROI is big concern, I just hope it is well priced. I cannot take another big hit like I did with KNC.

With free power you do not have to be the first one to purchase . Ie wait and see how well they ship.

 When they sold gridseed gear they sold a lot of it.  For the most part people got the gear  quickly.

[Sfards]

My simplistic read of the Power/Freq/Voltage table suggests that they filled in values for some "reference" points. I am not sure we should interpret that to mean that ONLY .6V and .8V are allowed. The example of the SP20 suggests that it has a "variable" range DC to DC converter, within limits. The same goes for frequencies.

I am surprised also by the comment about the cost of such a DC2DC gadget. It seems like that, and an adjustable frequency gadget are pretty common these days, on a whole range of mining devices. Obviously there are variety of "non functional" combinations (e.g. Min volts and Max Frequency), as well as "poor efficiency" (e.g. Max Volts and Min Frequency). Beyond that it tends to be a limit of software on the extent folks are allowed to twist the Freq/Volt "knobs".

Not surprisingly, the Low Volts and Low Frequency setting yields the best efficiency.

This seems like pretty standard ASIC stuff doesn't it?

Thank you for your attention, please kindly find datasheet 6.3

[Sfards]

Perhaps the whole lot of you could respect OP's thread and keep your feud to the threads that revolve around whatever grievances you have with each other?  This isn't the first thread that stuff has spilled over into, but I hope that you could decide to make it the last.

https://i.imgur.com/VB6fQzG.png

Speaking of the datasheet... @sfards: on the next revision, could you make sure that the pin names between the pin list, the ball map and the SV schematic are consistent?  Creating a component for a BGA is fun enough without the mismatches ( example: AVDD_OSC (list/schematic) vs VDDA_OSC (ball map) , ESDSUB_ANA (schematic/ball map) vs unlisted )

Thank you for your suggestion, we will update the datasheet later.

[Sfards]

To SFARDS:
DVDD_OSC    Digital VDD. 0.8V-1.10V
DVSS_OSC    Digital GND

This two are listed in section 7.2 table. But not present on schematics and ball map.

Thank you for your suggestion, we will update the datasheet later.

[wlefever]

Does anyone have a rough idea how soon a plug n play miner might be able to hit the market? Sounds like from a month to 3 months... It all sounds great on paper, but I've been burnt big time by KNC and I'm very vary going forward mining from home.

I currently just buy coins and only mine in small amounts now. I do have free power, but the hardware ROI is big concern, I just hope it is well priced. I cannot take another big hit like I did with KNC.

I have the same situation as you, and hope we find out more about a plug n play miner soon!

[jcwhiteuk]

Does anyone have a rough idea how soon a plug n play miner might be able to hit the market? Sounds like from a month to 3 months... It all sounds great on paper, but I've been burnt big time by KNC and I'm very vary going forward mining from home.

I currently just buy coins and only mine in small amounts now. I do have free power, but the hardware ROI is big concern, I just hope it is well priced. I cannot take another big hit like I did with KNC.

With free power you do not have to be the first one to purchase . Ie wait and see how well they ship.

 When they sold gridseed gear they sold a lot of it.  For the most part people got the gear  quickly.

Cheers. We will have to be patient then. Be good to be able to get back into some mining and not have to constantly worry about ROI. Hope it is priced fair.

Does anyone have a rough idea how soon a plug n play miner might be able to hit the market? Sounds like from a month to 3 months... It all sounds great on paper, but I've been burnt big time by KNC and I'm very vary going forward mining from home.

I currently just buy coins and only mine in small amounts now. I do have free power, but the hardware ROI is big concern, I just hope it is well priced. I cannot take another big hit like I did with KNC.

I have the same situation as you, and hope we find out more about a plug n play miner soon!

We will just need to be careful wait and see what the early adopters are saying and see if they are worthwhile. I am quietly optimistic. But this optimism has hurt me in the past. Tread cautiously I suppose.

[Dexter770221]

Work in progress schematics for my 2 chips board and kicad cache library have been added to my dropbox folder.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cjjkrq1fv2u7m0l/AADU4n7cCJsl5N1E6Qtai5M5a?dl=0

It's still work in progress, use it at your own risks.

Looks like most fun part is before you Choosing power inductor and mosfets...

[Swimmer63]

I don't know if I'll order one.  Depends on the price and at the wall efficiency.
But it sure is exciting to see a new and likely serious miner!

[Dexter770221]

....
as from what I have seen the sample chips are usually a lot more expensive then final products.

Only in Bitcoin world. When you look at chips manufacturers sites you will find plenty of "get free sample" buttons.