GekkoScience BM1384 Project Development Discussion

[Driveon]

Like the idea of the 30 chip board option.  Don't have a Prisma but can always hack something together for the boards.  

I like how your team is thinking big and small.  Like they say "if you build it they will come"  and sounds like you're getting there.  

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[fullzero]

I am eagerly waiting.   

Count me in on every variation.  In my opinion; its been a while since there has been a project the whole community can support.

[sidehack]

Also, for folks keeping track of sandwiches, we went by a delightful local establishment today for some of the best cheeseburgers in the county. I've been wanting to eat dem burgers for about a year now and hadn't found the time or timeliness (they close at 2PM) to do so. I've got a lot of network work to do in the next few days but by early next week I hope to have a stickminer buck ironed out and get a good lead on PCB design at least for the Compac. We're still working on figuring out what to do about more chips, but there's probably time.

[Ecnad]

very interested

[Finksy]

Maybe I missed it, but any particular reason you would go boards for the Prisma over Tubes? I thought Tube sales were considerably larger than Prisma only because the Prisma purchases were considerably shorter and had many quality issues.

And clearly I'm biased, owning a handful of extra Tubes.

[sidehack]

I've got some of both. We considered Tubes, but figured folks would have a lot of Prismas already stripped down from refunding boards.

[sjenja]

Okay, guess I should clarify (by repeating a few oft-repeated points). We will be selling complete and fully functional stick miners, and also miner boards which will require cooling and power. The initial board will be designed to run standalone if you have a heatsink and fan for it (we might look into sourcing some of those if there's enough interest) or strapped four at a time onto an S1/S3 chassis. I don't care what fans you use.
A stretch goal would be making boards designed to fit on a Prisma chassis. These could also be dropped in a 3U case with appropriate heatsinking and make a 5TH 2KW miner adjustable down to 2TH 600W or so, if someone was into that sort of thing. I still don't really care what fans you use for it. Initially we're only really worried about making the boards functional.

I was thinking you could do a Antminer S4 type design with BM1384 instead. Could make for a nice fast compact miner, you would need the same back and front cooling design as on the S4 boards of course, that will make for optimal cooling with air. Next step I think will be 2-phase evaporative cooling setup. Could be nice if one could get a relatively small kit from somewhere.

[Bicknellski]

Also, for folks keeping track of sandwiches, we went by a delightful local establishment today for some of the best cheeseburgers in the county. I've been wanting to eat dem burgers for about a year now and hadn't found the time or timeliness (they close at 2PM) to do so. I've got a lot of network work to do in the next few days but by early next week I hope to have a stickminer buck ironed out and get a good lead on PCB design at least for the Compac. We're still working on figuring out what to do about more chips, but there's probably time.

Sandwiches?

Roast beef?

[sidehack]

The next step is not 2-phase evaporative cooling, unless someone else wants to build it. Exotic cooling setups add unnecessary expense and complexity, both of which are stupid "counter to the spirit of the project and our general design philosophy, as noted repeatedly in the discussion thus far".

[sjenja]

The next step is not 2-phase evaporative cooling, unless someone else wants to build it. Exotic cooling setups add unnecessary expense and complexity, both of which are stupid "counter to the spirit of the project and our general design philosophy, as noted repeatedly in the discussion thus far".

What about a S4 design ?

[sidehack]

Would the thing I already mentioned about putting 5TH worth of Prisma-refit boards in a 3U case count? It would have forced-air cooling over conventional heatsinks. Or do you mean how the innards of the S4 are designed? Because we probably won't do that. We've got one hardware guy and one software guy and zero time to go designing a jillion different boards. If, however, we design two boards and they're both good they both can be used for any number of different form factors. Like a small board which can be run one or two at a time for a quiet desk miner or four strapped on an S1 chassis, and a larger board which can be mounted on a Prisma chassis or put several in a rack case to satisfy larger-scale people. There's no reason to bust our butts even further to make a jillion really application-specific designs when we can make one or two really good flexible designs and then let people do whatever the heck they want with 'em.

I will make a one-chip stick miner. I might make a two-chip stick miner. I will make a board sized at one half an S1 board. I might make a board sized at a Prisma board. I very likely will not make any other boards for any specific use cases. Those should be good enough to do just almost everything anyone actually wants.

[Finksy]

But...But... We bought you sandwiches, you OWE us 1 jillion designs.

 

Keep up the great work, it's a lot easier to re-drill a heatsink than it is re-designing an entire PCB around a heatsink. I'm pretty sure the AM Tube is close in length to an S1 heatsink that re-drilling would be possible.

Sorry peeps, if you don't feel apt enough to modify your cooling hardware, move along...

[sidehack]

It is close to the same length, but I don't think the Spec1 (S1-style) boards would fit on it in tube form. S1 boards come up above the heatsink with through-hole power jacks, which are on the end for the Tube. You couldn't quite overlap them on the Tube because every corner has a raised lip, unless you want to cut that down but then you might run into clearance issues with the handles and such. It's probably possible with some modification, but certainly won't be a fairly straightforward drop-in. Even the Prisma boards won't approximately drop in, because I believe all the screw holes on Prisma are in different places than Tube even though the heatsink profile is (pretty sure) the same. We hoped to be able to make a one-board solution for both S1 and Tube but it's geometrically not really possible.

[ADutchGamer]

Also something you could keep an eye on:

SFARDS is planning our debut miner's imminent release, we have finished tapeout of our SF3301 chip: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=985400.0

By mid-April we'll start opening up to outsourced development by providing details on:

- Chips (datasheets, programming guide etc)
- Hardware (design documents)
- Software

This will include the purchase of sample chips to design your own miners.

If interested please contact us at sales@sfards.com.

I know the miners don't exist/they are not selling anything yet. But it could be interesting.

[sidehack]

RTFT

Might be worth looking into, but when I saw their tapeout announcement I wondered how likely it was they'd have chips in April, let alone a deliverable product. Also, we don't really care about scrypt at all.

[ADutchGamer]

RTFT

Might be worth looking into, but when I saw their tapeout announcement I wondered how likely it was they'd have chips in April, let alone a deliverable product. Also, we don't really care about scrypt at all.

I did.

The main thing that caught my eye, and the main reason I posted this, is that they appear to be actively trying to work with third parties who want to design miners with their chips. They were not when you posted that.

Also: the fact that they publicly state that they are planning to release chips to third party hardware manufacturers in the second half of april shows me that they are probably ready to start selling miners right now. It would make no sense to me to start selling chips to third parties before you start selling your own miners.

In any case: I will take my leave again and resume lurking in the shadows.

[Biodom]

But...But... We bought you sandwiches, you OWE us 1 jillion designs.

 

Keep up the great work, it's a lot easier to re-drill a heatsink than it is re-designing an entire PCB around a heatsink. I'm pretty sure the AM Tube is close in length to an S1 heatsink that re-drilling would be possible.

Sorry peeps, if you don't feel apt enough to modify your cooling hardware, move along...

^^^^are you the designer here? or are you the one who will take orders?

[sidehack]

I think he's awkwardly accepting that we're not making a Tube-sized miner and hoping the S1-sized boards can be fit on a reworked Tube heatsink. So, neither.

Also, regarding SFards, maybe we'll look into them once we're done with what we're doing now. Since we officially don't care about scrypt, working with a dual-algo chip is not a high priority and running them sha-only would probably not be cost-effective, since they'll want to sell a dual-algo chip at dual-algo prices.

[Finksy]

^^^^are you the designer here? or are you the one who will take orders?

Neither. I just re-iterated what he was getting at with his statement    "There's no reason to bust our butts even further to make a jillion really application-specific designs when we can make one or two really good flexible designs and then let people do whatever the heck they want with 'em."

It sounds like he is getting many requests for different configurations. I'm helping clarify that he doesn't owe us anything in terms of design in my typical dry, sarcastic humorous kind of way (though I should have included a meme).

I'm quite confident if I'm stepping on any toes, he will gladly tell me.

[quakefiend420]

Would the thing I already mentioned about putting 5TH worth of Prisma-refit boards in a 3U case count? It would have forced-air cooling over conventional heatsinks. Or do you mean how the innards of the S4 are designed? Because we probably won't do that. We've got one hardware guy and one software guy and zero time to go designing a jillion different boards. If, however, we design two boards and they're both good they both can be used for any number of different form factors. Like a small board which can be run one or two at a time for a quiet desk miner or four strapped on an S1 chassis, and a larger board which can be mounted on a Prisma chassis or put several in a rack case to satisfy larger-scale people. There's no reason to bust our butts even further to make a jillion really application-specific designs when we can make one or two really good flexible designs and then let people do whatever the heck they want with 'em.

I will make a one-chip stick miner. I might make a two-chip stick miner. I will make a board sized at one half an S1 board. I might make a board sized at a Prisma board. I very likely will not make any other boards for any specific use cases. Those should be good enough to do just almost everything anyone actually wants.

That sounds good to me.  I actually like the idea of getting bare boards that I have to build into a useful form factor myself more than a totally out of the box ready miner.  Gives me something to play with...