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

[notlist3d]

So So So...Sorry guys, we just find some bugs in our contest, such as someone delete the reply and the floor number will change at once, and we cannot calculate the specific reward correctly. And our new rule haven't determine, we will publish the new rules as soon as possible. Sorry for our mistake and thank you for your participate. For the following people, @notlist3d, @philipma1957, @Zich, we will still send you our general reward 1000 dogecoins no matter you attend our new contest or not.

The link of the new rules will be updated here later.

Not a problem it's sad but in real world some might exploit that.  Best of luck with new rules.   And thank you for dodge coins.

[Sfards]

Update 11/05/15:

Welcome to join our latest contest, 1BTC TROPHY WAITING FOR YOU!     https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1057425.0

http://i61.tinypic.com/o6grxk.jpg

[notlist3d]

Thanks I like the new rules cannot be gamed .  Thanks for throwing a contest.

[Sfards]

Update 12/5/2015

We are so sorry that our contest thread has been moved to another section, hope you guys keep following our contest! Cheers!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1057425.0

Thank you so so so much for your enthusiastic participation. On the first day of our contest online, we have seen a lot of excellent product concept, some fit for family mining, some fit for big scale farm mining, and there are still some realistic proposal such as a little device of bitcoin full node(Like BITSEED); In addition, we also find some interesting conceptual products such as Tumble dryer, Lava Lamp,ocean wave create electricity miner, hashing the power wasted at your local gym and etc.

We hope more and more people comment on each other's ideas to add details of the products and even to make the ideas can be really developed.

Base on these, we decided to add an special award. You can quote an idea which you interested in and leave your comment there, we will select one critics award per day from the comments on the day, the trophy is 10LTC. Time is from today to the end of this contest, and there will be 6 Critics Awards waiting for you!


PS: Just remember, all of you guys can also join our second contest in Facebook, let your friends help you forward, and there are still a lot of rewards waiting for you!

[Sfards]

Update 13/5/2015


Sfards upload the latest programs of SF3301 chips. Welcome to download the resources on GitHub.

More details: https://github.com/sfards/ASIC-SF3301

[Dexter770221]

Documentation not revised. Still same errors.

[notlist3d]

Do i read contest right will it be a week to judge? Or is it just being safe putting it at a week?    "All the results will be published within a week after the contest ended and the rewards will be sent together."

[TaxPreparation]

Isn't the price of a single chip quite high?

Don't think I'd be paying the right price at more than a bitcoin per TH.

Also the scrypt as well.

Are you planning on wholesaling to board manufacturers?

[Searing]

This has probably been addressed...but .....was wondering on the following:

the specs of the chip in say real world terms

can you mine both scrypt and sha256 with these chips AT THE SAME TIME or do you have to pick an option either/or on the chip and go with that only?

Also on say a 1TH machine.....what would the scrypt in mh be...if anyone can trot that out for me (us?) ......irregardless of the above dual mining or not....

just curious on what kinda HOOK this combo chip  entails for the consumer...be they commercial only or even if they may make a consumer baby model someday

the above seems complicated enough to me...so will leave price for another post

thanks

[Dexter770221]

Realistic, in system heat dissipation from one chip will be ~50W. In power consumption report is written that 100GH@0.4W/GH should be possible. That leaves you 10W for scrypt, and that should be enough for ~2,5MH/s.

Although in datasheet page 4:
Dual-Mining mode: 100GH/s BTC & 1.75MH/s LTC

[dogie]

can you mine both scrypt and sha256 with these chips AT THE SAME TIME or do you have to pick an option either/or on the chip and go with that only?

While its not been super 100% explicitly stated recently, it appears so and its the same as their last chip.

[rva26]

I am ready to buy miners, i strongly expect their output. 

[jstefanop]

can you mine both scrypt and sha256 with these chips AT THE SAME TIME or do you have to pick an option either/or on the chip and go with that only?

While its not been super 100% explicitly stated recently, it appears so and its the same as their last chip.

Yes based on the schematics the chips are designed to be two completely separate systems, each BTC and LTC core are chained independent of each other on their own serial bus with their own power. Curious to see how they handle this hardware wise....they could just slap two USB ports on them and call it a day, but that would be a nightmare for setup.

To make this work efficiently each miner would have to have a controller, and simply plug in the ethernet port and just configure the BTC/scrypt pools. I never used their gridseed devices...how did the handle dual mode?

[TheRealSteve]

I never used their gridseed devices...how did the handle dual mode?

Similarly - two UARTs, one for BTC, one for LTC.  On the 5-chip gridseed all of the uart comms were handled by an STM32f103c8t6 (relatively beefy CPU with 3 UARTs), while the single-chip DualMiner used an FT2232H (two-channel usbser).  Plenty of parts that'll do the trick of presenting a single physical interface.

[J4bberwock]

Yes based on the schematics the chips are designed to be two completely separate systems, each BTC and LTC core are chained independent of each other on their own serial bus with their own power. Curious to see how they handle this hardware wise....they could just slap two USB ports on them and call it a day, but that would be a nightmare for setup.

Simple USB port with dual USB-UART bridge converter will be the easiest way for hardware.
I haven't had time to work on the design this week because of orders and a little bit of private life, but I'll resume next week.
I updated my dropbox folder with latest files and added a txt file to track updates.

[jstefanop]

I never used their gridseed devices...how did the handle dual mode?

Similarly - two UARTs, one for BTC, one for LTC.  On the 5-chip gridseed all of the uart comms were handled by an STM32f103c8t6 (relatively beefy CPU with 3 UARTs), while the single-chip DualMiner used an FT2232H (two-channel usbser).  Plenty of parts that'll do the trick of presenting a single physical interface.

So they just had a custom cgminer that took in scrypt and SHA pools? Or was it a completly custom software solution?

Just worried this will get pretty complicated for a large scale farm.

[TheRealSteve]

So they just had a custom cgminer that took in scrypt and SHA pools? Or was it a completly custom software solution?
Just worried this will get pretty complicated for a large scale farm.

You basically run two separate pieces of mining software - one for the BTC/SHA256d bit, one for the LTC/Scrypt bit.  Most users didn't really use this, though - using them for Scrypt only.

[jstefanop]

well this miner is clearly directed at bitcoin, so I doubt that would be the case this time around. Plus the scrypt side of it does around 60MH at under 200 watts so I don't see a reason why anyone would buy this and only run one side of it. Lets hope the software solution they have for this make it seamless. 

[chup]

You basically run two separate pieces of mining software - one for the BTC/SHA256d bit, one for the LTC/Scrypt bit.  Most users didn't really use this, though - using them for Scrypt only.

ScalaMiner https://github.com/colinrgodsey/scalaminer declares that can mine both simultaneosly, but never tried or heard someone running it. Anyone has experience with Scalaminer and dualminer/gridseed?

[TheRealSteve]

Yeah, there's no technical limitation that software can't do it - I just seem to recall that they never bothered because barely anybody was running dual mode, and those who wanted to.. well, fire up two instances.. doesn't really hurt anything

Can't say I've tried ScalaMiner - might give it a go if I can get to the DualMiner USB again.  Looks like it hasn't been worked on in quite a while, unfortunately; thread didn't get much love either: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=594668.0