ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[Puppet]

FWIW, this is what BFL published recently:

[antirack]

RM is only one AM customer and one board designer of many. Seems his boards are using USB.

There are other board designs in progress from other board designers. With Ethernet and with a different power consumption. And a different number of chips per board.

[xhomerx10]

FWIW, this is what BFL published recently:

 Two pre-orders, many lies and delays later, I do not trust anything they have to say.
You need only look at this disinfographic to understand their ways.  It's more lies.  Everyone knows that KNCminer shipped ~ 1W/Gh at the wall for example.

BFL, your efficiencies - real or imagined - are already lost to your competition.  Mining for longer is moot since the difficulty will be so high you will be making NOTHING but heat and an infinitesimally small fraction of a Bitcoin per day.

By the way, the very day before the disinfographic was posted, Josh said that the new BFL chip was more than 2x more efficient than anything our there.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=262052.msg6449710#msg6449710

 A day later and it's already 3 to 5 times more efficient?  Imagine how efficient it will be when it finally delivers in two weeks^tm

Caveat Emptor!  Information asymmetry detected.

 

[btc6000]

Been away a while....so, when/why have we stopped receiving weekly dividends?

Cheers,

[minerpumpkin]

RM is only one AM customer and one board designer of many. Seems his boards are using USB.

There are other board designs in progress from other board designers. With Ethernet and with a different power consumption. And a different number of chips per board.

They've posted some web interface on their twitter feed so I assume they'll do standalone miners (as well)

[Puppet]

Caveat Emptor!  Information asymmetry detected.

ITs not meant as promotion for BFL, Id be the last person to suggest you order anything from there. But the chart is interesting and relevant to earlier discussions about how you can scale power efficiency of every ASIC. Even if you take those numbers with a table spoon of salt, it nicely illustrates my point.  There is about a factor 3x difference in power efficiency depending what voltage/frequency point you pick. That spread is not going to be vastly different for any other bitcoin asic.

[jimmothy]

Caveat Emptor!  Information asymmetry detected.

ITs not meant as promotion for BFL, Id be the last person to suggest you order anything from there. But the chart is interesting and relevant to earlier discussions about how you can scale power efficiency of every ASIC. Even if you take those numbers with a table spoon of salt, it nicely illustrates my point.  There is about a factor 3x difference in power efficiency depending what voltage/frequency point you pick. That spread is not going to be vastly different for any other bitcoin asic.

I think it illustrates the exact opposite. Notice the diminishing returns at around 0.3w/gh? Other manufacturers may have hit that limit at 0.6w/gh (bitfury excluded).

[Puppet]

I think it illustrates the exact opposite. Notice the diminishing returns at around 0.3w/gh? Other manufacturers may have hit that limit at 0.6w/gh (bitfury excluded).

Either you cant read a chart or you are assuming current asics run at a point to the extreme left of that chart, which would also imply those other asics can be overclocked by factor of 2-3x. Here is hint: almost none can. KnC, HF, CT, bitmain, Bitmine .. you'd be lucky to hit advertised speeds, let alone 2-3x more.

Either way, welcome to my ignore list.

[jimmothy]

Either you cant read a chart or you are assuming current asics run at a point to the extreme left of that chart

Yes this is exactly what I am assuning due to the fact that no asic manufacturer has advertised below 0.5w/gh (bitfury excluded) and nobody has been able to significantly undervolt below advertised limit.

which would also imply those other asics can be overclocked by factor of 2-3x. Here is hint: almost none can. KnC, HF, CT, bitmain, Bitmine .. you'd be lucky to hit advertised speeds, let alone 2-3x more.

Either way, welcome to my ignore list.

Heres a hint:

knc can be overclocked 1.7 times  (700gh/s vs advertised 40gh/s)
Hashfast can be overclocked 2 times (800gh/s vs 400gh advertised)
And bitmain can be overclocked 2 times (200gh vs 100gh advertised)

All of which have no problem hashing at advertised speeds.

Again, got any evidence that other manufacturers are not on the far left side of that chart?

[necro_nemesis]

Here's a real world example where three S1's are consuming a total of 500w hashing at 140gh/s each:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526060.0

[jimmothy]

Here's a real world example where three S1's are consuming a total of 500w hashing at 140gh/s each:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526060.0

What about it? bitmain always advertised up to 0.68w/gh.

[KS]

Ok - the original comment was referring to the implied connection between electricity prices and mining feasibility. This is too simplistic. This assumes that there are no infrastructural barriers between the construction site and deployment site for bitcoin hardware.

OK

However, I postulate that new hardware "migrates" from easily accessible deployment sites to energy efficient ones. As such, hardware lives along a gradient with a drift towards sites with cheap electricity, where the forces pushing are bitcoin price developments and advances in bitcoin mining IT, to name two. (Thus the analogy to steady state systems). While bitcoin price is a somewhat reversible process, bitcoin mining IT is not.

As usual, it "depends". If it were an efficient system where only the high cost electricity zones would deploy the new hardware generations, you could probably maintain a decent amount of asic generations operating between the high and low cost electricity zones (a new generation could push the current one to a lower cost zone). But this would assume no new generation is deployed directly in the low cost zones.

I would think everyone investing significant amounts will tend to operate in the lower/lowest costs zones, so it would skew the system dramatically (and the "steady state" could only work with few generations of asics).

But is a "semi steady state" really a "steady state"?

What this likely means for mining equipment providers is that in the intermediate term the ability to migrate and maintain beats efficiency. That's why developments by Allied Control are so interesting which focus on ease of deployment.

Here you're opening a whole new can of worms. I think that would depends on your OPEX. CAPEX is high with the tanks but if maintenance (OPEX) is low enough, it would be a decent target for countries where labor and space are expensive (but what of electricity costs, what of heat dissipation power usage?). If OTOH you have cheap labor and space, the tanks aren't looking that good anymore.

Also, unless there is a way to stack them, they won't really help you improve the density of your deployment (they have other issues with connectors, plumbing, etc) vs a regular datacenter (more on that after the end of June, I guess). I'm not really sold on the tanks, I think the idea is neat, but the numbers don't convince me so far (probably need more data).

[necro_nemesis]

Here's a real world example where three S1's are consuming a total of 500w hashing at 140gh/s each:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526060.0

What about it? bitmain always advertised up to 0.68w/gh.

Can you see past your simple arithmetic for a moment and understand it's the principle being demonstrated in the example?

Now let's go further using the principle. If you're making your own ASICs you're paying somewhere in the neighborhood of the square root of dirt. Got that math? If the relationship between power and performance is not linear then there's potentially a sweet spot somewhere below where you flex your muscles and advertise your ASICs at when you're attempting to sell each one for top dollar. If you're building say, 23p of mining facilities that you're not flogging on eBay when you think you're done with it; you're going to build it to work for you as long as possible. Who's to say 11.52 Gh/s is the sweet spot when we don't have the other numbers? It may be a good point for RM to operate his first equipment based on his profit margins at the time his equipment will hit market but it's a snapshot in a much longer time line.

[jimmothy]

Here's a real world example where three S1's are consuming a total of 500w hashing at 140gh/s each:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526060.0

What about it? bitmain always advertised up to 0.68w/gh.

Can you see past your simple arithmetic for a moment and understand it's the principle being demonstrated in the example?

Now let's go further using the principle. If you're making your own ASICs you're paying somewhere in the neighborhood of the square root of dirt. Got that math? If the relationship between power and performance is not linear then there's potentially a sweet spot somewhere below where you flex your muscles and advertise your ASICs at when you're attempting to sell each one for top dollar. If you're building say, 23p of mining facilities that you're not flogging on eBay when you think you're done with it; you're going to build it to work for you as long as possible. Who's to say 11.52 Gh/s is the sweet spot when we don't have the other numbers? It may be a good point for RM to operate his first equipment based on his profit margins at the time his equipment will hit market but it's a snapshot in a much longer time line.

What are you talking about?

What exactly does bitmain chips meeting advertised specs prove?

[necro_nemesis]

It proves that when market forces are in place to run an ASIC inefficiently it will be run inefficiently. Reduce the impact of the cost of the ASIC and your considerations as to where to optimally run it changes. The cost of building power supplies to run it,  the space required to locate it and the measures required to cool it all change. For all we know this could be a very efficient ASIC at lower power which isn't the end of the world given what's planned to go into mining and franchising but we don't know.

[jimmothy]

It proves that when market forces are in place to run an ASIC inefficiently it will be run inefficiently. Reduce the impact of the cost of the ASIC and your considerations as to where to optimally run it changes.

Your bitmain example doesn't prove that every asic is capable of significantly higher efficiency than advertised without diminishing returns. In fact it doesn't even prove that bitmain can beat 0.68w/gh.

[necro_nemesis]

You're interests in simply disagreeing for the sake of making arguments is your own undoing of having an understanding. Yes jimmothy the sky isn't blue.

[jimmothy]

You're interests in simply disagreeing for the sake of making arguments is your own undoing of having an understanding. Yes jimmothy the sky isn't blue.

You are talking nonsense. Why waste mine and everyones elses time with your lengthy overcomplicated comments.

Nobody disagreed that bitmain chips could acheive up to 0.68w/gh. So why provide us with an example of bitmain chips hashing at 0.8w/gh?

The topic for debate is: can every current gen asic be underclocked/volted to acheive significant gains in efficiency below what was advertised? (Without diminishing returns)

[necro_nemesis]

Possibly due to you're oversimplified conclusions being incorrect judging by your statements.

[jimmothy]

Possibly due to you're oversimplified conclusions being incorrect judging by your statements.

My "oversimplified" conclusion that nobody has yet to demonstrate an asic working significantly beyond advertised efficiency is why you brought up an example of bitmain not surpassing advertised efficiency? Thanks for supporting my point.

Again if I'm incorrect ease provide a single shred of evidence that suggests it is possible to undervolt every asic significantly below advertised limit without diminishing returns.