ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[Franktank]

It's almost worth the effort to quote all the "AM had the lead but lost it" & "It's over for AM!" posts...

Quote away. I have so far seen zero indication this is going to outcompete.

Specifically, can this deliver $3/GH or better? Or is everybody getting unnecessarily excited about an expensive cooling solution?

The cooling mechanism deliver $3/GH (w/ gen1)? Of course not, the nuggets that I've gathered are the mentions of "reduced die size (40 nm, 28 nm)" in the document. Obviously they are only mentions and until the product is delivered, it is what you say: "an expensive cooling solution"

[jimmothy]

It's almost worth the effort to quote all the "AM had the lead but lost it" & "It's over for AM!" posts...

Quote away. I have so far seen zero indication this is going to outcompete.

Specifically, can this deliver $3/GH or better? Or is everybody getting unnecessarily excited about an expensive cooling solution?

Probably not with gen1 chips but its not impossible. The cube (which does not have immersion cooling) is pretty competitive at like $15/gh (don't remember exactly). So if we assume AM Immersion cooling is "97%" more efficient and AM can make ASICs for cheaper than they sell them for than it is not unreasonable to think that they might achieve such high efficiency with even old gen chips.

[stripykitteh]

One nice thing about this is that I imagine you can just replace boards over time with newer tech. You have a high upfront cost investing in the container, but it pays itself back in lower operating costs over generations of tech.

When mining is a low-margin business it also lets you keep your gear running for longer.

It is interesting that AM are trying to simultaneously dominate the low-end (USB erupters) and the very high-end (immersion cooling). I wouldn't be surprised if their next step might be to ally with another ASIC design house with greater expertise in bleeding-edge chip design. It's hard to be good at everything and it might let them concentrate on what they do best (volume manufacturing and distribution).

Whether this is the thing that will send AM back to primary position in mining or not, only time will tell.

[JimiQ84]

attached few cube photos
https://i.imgur.com/PuYvYQWl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/UgoUerNl.jpg

price show around as 1.68/1.78

so, I guess cube will be gen1 chips underclocked to gain better efficiency (IIRC it was presented as 120W per 38GH/s cube?, so better efficiency than BFL 65nm stuff) and better hash density, hence smaller machine than equivalent hashrate from blades

[dvdrewritable]

attached few cube photos
https://i.imgur.com/PuYvYQWl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/UgoUerNl.jpg

price show around as 1.68/1.78

so, I guess cube will be gen1 chips underclocked to gain better efficiency (IIRC it was presented as 120W per 38GH/s cube?, so better efficiency than BFL 65nm stuff) and better hash density, hence smaller machine than equivalent hashrate from blades

prototypes had arrived yesterday, yes 130nm gen1, from what I saw it was 300-360W for power consumption
old customers get 10G blade for extra 0.1BTC

[JimiQ84]

attached few cube photos
https://i.imgur.com/PuYvYQWl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/UgoUerNl.jpg

price show around as 1.68/1.78

so, I guess cube will be gen1 chips underclocked to gain better efficiency (IIRC it was presented as 120W per 38GH/s cube?, so better efficiency than BFL 65nm stuff) and better hash density, hence smaller machine than equivalent hashrate from blades

prototypes had arrived yesterday, yes 130nm gen1, from what I saw it was 300-360W for power consumption
old customers get 10G blade for extra 0.1BTC

oh, so no optimization, just nicer package 

[Vycid]

When mining is a low-margin business it also lets you keep your gear running for longer.

This is very true. It seems to me FC is still committed to the long-term, and I believe that does set him apart.

"too poor to afford cheap"

[Puppet]

Probably not with gen1 chips but its not impossible. The cube (which does not have immersion cooling) is pretty competitive at like $15/gh (don't remember exactly). So if we assume AM Immersion cooling is "97%" more efficient and AM can make ASICs for cheaper than they sell them for than it is not unreasonable to think that they might achieve such high efficiency with even old gen chips.

How does efficient cooling help reduce chip prices? To match one KnC asic, AM needs >1500 gen 1 asics and almsot 10x as much electricity. Even if the cooling is 100% free and 100% efficient,  there is no way they can become competitive without new chip.

That said, it does look cool. Im just not yet convinced it makes financial sense, nor do I quite see how AM is going to monetize this.

[jimmothy]

Probably not with gen1 chips but its not impossible. The cube (which does not have immersion cooling) is pretty competitive at like $15/gh (don't remember exactly). So if we assume AM Immersion cooling is "97%" more efficient and AM can make ASICs for cheaper than they sell them for than it is not unreasonable to think that they might achieve such high efficiency with even old gen chips.

How does efficient cooling help reduce chip prices? To match one KnC asic, AM needs >1500 gen 1 asics. Even if the cooling is 100% free and 100% efficient,  there is no way they can become competitive without new chip.

That said, it does look cool. Im just not yet convinced it makes financial sense, nor do I quite see how AM is going to monetize this.

It doesn't reduce the chip prices at all but what it does do is make them much more efficient in the long run. This means that if the difficulty skyrockets many asics will cost more in electricity to run than the amount of btc they produce. Since AM uses less electricity it can operate at a higher difficulty and still churn out a profit.

Also AM has said they are working on gen2(65/55nm) and even gen3(28nm) chips which they might be able to produce at competitive prices and when combined with their unrivaled efficiency they should have no problem I think in the long run.

I don't know what you mean by 1500 gen1 asics do you mean the usb asics? The AM cube is nearly as efficient as a Knc Jupiter and that is with 144nm vs 28nm.

[Puppet]

It doesn't reduce the chip prices at all but what it does do is make them much more efficient in the long run. This means that if the difficulty skyrockets many asics will cost more in electricity to run than the amount of btc they produce. Since AM uses less electricity it can operate at a higher difficulty and still churn out a profit.

You are misreading. Submersion cooling doesnt magically make the chips more efficient, it makes the cooling potentially much more efficient. If you dont need AC, cooling is just the fans and maybe 2% of the total power consumption, reducing that by "97%" means you drop overall power consumption by, well almost 2%.

If you compare it to AC, it all depends on what AC system you compare to. Savings there can be substantial, easily 50% if you assume inefficient domestic AC systems (a lot less for typical heatpump cooling in a datacenter), but thats still nowhere near enough to make a chip that uses 1000% more W per GH suddenly competitive.

Not too mention the fact anyone can buy submersion cooling, its not like AM invented and patented it. For instance:
http://www.grcooling.com/

I don't know what you mean by 1500 gen1 asics do you mean the usb asics? The AM cube is nearly as efficient as a Knc Jupiter and that is with 144nm vs 28nm.

Efficient? Now you confuse the market price with efficiency and cost. AM cant charge more per GH than KnC. Thats not good for AM, thats BAD.  Because the fact is their current chip produces 0.3GH where the competition provides 100+GH and soon 400+GH per chip. You really think AM can produce their chips 1200x times cheaper than their competitors? Of course not, so soon they can no longer sell anything based on that chip at a positive margin.

[ex-trader]

Great looking product, fascinating concept, but as stated by others I really fail to see any huge application or sales for it.

No-one other than Bitcoin miners needs such a product, so there's no outside market. It clearly isn't viable for most home miners, so it's limited to a small number of large-scale miners and AM themselves. So whats the market globally for these - half a dozen?

It also only helps cool mining operations more effectively, so won't sell anymore chips or change ROI, since ROI on most chips doesn't happen even if electricity was free.

It's only tangible benefit will be to AM's own mining operations to reduce electricity costs, which in the long-term become more of a relative issue, but this could still be better solved and beaten by mining operations that simply exist in areas of cheaper electricity or where less cooling is required eg data-centres in cold areas.

[muyuu]

Difficulty growth seems to be faltering finally.

[dexX7]

Just FYI:

Immerson cooling is awesome! DeathAndTaxes's thread is great, to get some background knowledge: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=313087

The technology is already there, but as far as I know it's rarely used. www.allied-control.com and www.grcooling.com and are leading suppliers - if AM really partnered with Allied Control, it's even greater!



One advantage is a very high power density as shown in the picture above. To quote DAT:

What types of power densities are possible?
3M has conducted experiments cooling 4KW heat loads using 1L of working fluid so in theory heat densities approaching 4,000 W/L are possible.  The constraint on commercialization is that existing servers have relatively low energy densities (well low relative to the limits of immersion cooling).  Even a high end 3U server (4 CPU, multiple GPUs, 4+ 1200W PSU) may only have an energy density of 100W per Liter.    However SHA-256 ASICs have very high energy densities although current systems have server like energy densities due to the limits of air or water cooling.  Take a look inside the case of any 2nd gen ASIC design what takes up the most space?  Air.  The actual ASIC boards are very energy dense however there are surrounded by a significant amount of empty space.   Remember these are using boards designed for air/water cooling.  It may be possible to improve energy density by making custom compact boards.

[bitcoin.newsfeed]

Meanwhile no block found in last 40hours.

https://blockchain.info/blocks/ASICMiner

[SmiGueL]

100TH ASiCMiNER ChainForker[/center]

Looks like AM took you seriously

Whaha I was just gonna quote that!

If this is real, that's awesome news. _{*The blades look pretty real though.}

[Zubilica]

It seem FC is looking too far into the future

[JimiQ84]

Meanwhile no block found in last 40hours.

https://blockchain.info/blocks/ASICMiner

Now is probably good time to switch back to pool mining

[mutex]

You are misreading. Submersion cooling doesnt magically make the chips more efficient

Actually, it does. All else equal a cooler chip can work at lower voltage due to lower current leakage.

But I don't know what the actual increase in efficiency would be in the case of BEs.

[jimmothy]

It doesn't reduce the chip prices at all but what it does do is make them much more efficient in the long run. This means that if the difficulty skyrockets many asics will cost more in electricity to run than the amount of btc they produce. Since AM uses less electricity it can operate at a higher difficulty and still churn out a profit.

You are misreading. Submersion cooling doesnt magically make the chips more efficient, it makes the cooling potentially much more efficient. If you dont need AC, cooling is just the fans and maybe 2% of the total power consumption, reducing that by "97%" means you drop overall power consumption by, well almost 2%.

If you compare it to AC, it all depends on what AC system you compare to. Savings there can be substantial, easily 50% if you assume inefficient domestic AC systems (a lot less for typical heatpump cooling in a datacenter), but thats still nowhere near enough to make a chip that uses 1000% more W per GH suddenly competitive.

Not too mention the fact anyone can buy submersion cooling, its not like AM invented and patented it. For instance:
http://www.grcooling.com/

I don't know what you mean by 1500 gen1 asics do you mean the usb asics? The AM cube is nearly as efficient as a Knc Jupiter and that is with 144nm vs 28nm.

Efficient? Now you confuse the market price with efficiency and cost. AM cant charge more per GH than KnC. Thats not good for AM, thats BAD.  Because the fact is their current chip produces 0.3GH where the competition provides 100+GH and soon 400+GH per chip. You really think AM can produce their chips 1200x times cheaper than their competitors? Of course not, so soon they can no longer sell anything based on that chip at a positive margin.

First of all it does "magically" make the chips more efficient because they don't need a massive fan hogging up all the electricity. When you consider how much energy is spent keeping the chips cool, a 97% reduction would have an enormous effect on efficiency and power density.

Secondly, I think you are confusing knc rigs with chips. There is no such thing as a 400gh chip. Also by 0.3gh I assume you mean the usb which is by far the least efficient asic by asicminer.

Thirdly both asicminers new cube and kncs fastest miner have nearly the same ROI. This means when asicminer does get 28nm chips like knc they will be much more efficient due to manufacturing costs being lower and immersion cooling.

[Puppet]

Actually, it does. All else equal a cooler chip can work at lower voltage due to lower current leakage.

But I don't know what the actual increase in efficiency would be in the case of BEs.

You are correct, but that effect is so marginal, particularly for bitcoin asics running at 100% load, so dynamic power is so much more important than leakage, it can be safely ignored in this context.