GekkoScience BM1384 Project Development Discussion

[PlanetCrypto]

Yeah, a fair bit of discussion lately has shifted away from our BM1384 designs. Should we start a new thread just for chip design ideas? I have no complaints about the thread so far, but it might be handy to keep track of things better if we're not bouncng between two or three different conversations.

I'm all in favor of an American chip supplier - one that's not going to screw everyone over and/or go bankrupt, at least. I mean we've already seen how many US manufacturers come and go in the last couple years? If we can keep the intention fairly community-based instead of single point greed like a lot of the big guys, margins might be slim but a whole lot of people would benefit. If PlanetCrypto is already figuring out how to do the heavy lifting, I'm certainly going to do what I can to help.

Your call on the thread.
I have 0 experience moderator - ing.

Simply stated, if the community (of which I'd like to think we're a part) designs the chip, then the community owns the design (all the stuff one forwards to a foundry to get a run made). Put it up on GitHub. GPL licensed open source hardware? In theory, anyone could take that design and have a foundry make'm a batch. Much like an individual D/L's source compiles it and runs it. Given H/W is a little different as most can't afford a "foundry compiler" but a group might be able to pool resources and have a run made. And this community has pulled together in the past to make things happen.

Our primary goal is to facilitate the availability to the community (big and small, whomever) a ready supply of high quality state-of-the-art raw materials regardless of whom the seller may be. Might be us, might be Gekkoscience, might be Bitmain, might be Bob & Ted's Really Cool Chip Company, might be a group buy, etc. . . . . . Because in the past and present a slim few have controlled the flow of raw materials. Kinda' like DeBeer's does with diamonds. Throttling the volume to maintain an artificially inflated price. The business rationalization is "We paid for the design, it belongs to us, we're the only game in town, and we'll charge what the market will bear." Even the playing field, and that model collapses.

With an even playing field, margins will be what margins will be. Typically, the larger the field the smaller the margins. If we expand the playing field, margins will take care of themselves.

As an example, I offer what happened to PC's. In the early 80's IBM was the only supplier. In 1981 an IBM 5150 PC with two 360K floppies was $25,000 (from IBM's Entry Level Systems Division). By the late 80's there was a plethora of brands/suppliers (I bought a Kaypro in 86 during this era) and the price had dropped to $1200 with a 20meg MFM HD (IBM PCXT clone). With a little brains one could buy the parts and assemble one themselves for less than $1000.

So as long as hash chips remain propriety they'll be priced outta' this world. Standardize the design and . . . .
I think this is an achievable goal given the industry has bumped into the 12-14nm concrete wall, SHA-256 circuitry is about as optimized as it can get, and fabricating ASIC's is common place.
Let the community set the standard not corporations.

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[PlanetCrypto]

Yeah, those three are the ones I could think off offhand and am not particularly fond of any of them. The two that went overtly bankrupt after screwing customers both also built chips in form-factor I despise, and the third that somehow avoided getting thrown in jail should be thrown in jail despite actually eventually coming up with decent gear, so not really too impressive a showing. I'm biased toward US companies because I sorta am one, and there are a whole lot of miners in the US that can only buy imported gear which sucks. That we can only import sucks, not necessarily the gear. Some of it's alright.

Heatsinks for the Compac batch are on order, and probably about that color green. PCBs are also on order. It took a bit longer to get them out because we were discussing what we wanted for panelling and stencils and such.

We're also still having trouble convincing the mother@!#$ pick-and-place manufacturer to actually solve the @!#$ problem and get us our @!#$ machine. We expected delivery actually slightly earlier than they ended up shipping it. We've asked if they'll ship us another unit so we don't get screwed while they work out how to get their returned unit back from DHL, but they'd apparently rather not actually meet customer needs. Which of course the whole thing would have been avoided if some jackass in shipping wasn't too lazy to copy-paste our phone number into the order details - which some less-lazy jackass in shipping specifically asked us for exactly to avoid what's happening now - so US Customs would have actually known who to talk to so it could be cleared. Not happy about that. So, it's entirely possible Compac delivery will be delayed because a problem whose solution was provided IN ADVANCE SEVEN WEEKS AGO happened anyway and has yet to be resolved.

Meanwhile, well, I reckon we'll continue to work on multi-chip designs and Compac driver support. I'll be honest though, the heat index right now is 105F so there's probably not much gonna get done that doesn't get done between 7AM and noon this week.

I got burned by BFL to the tune of ~$4,000.

I hate the hassle and delays of importation. Dealing with companies that are not subject to the laws of the destination country is bogus.

Please don't blow a gasket in the heat over the P'n'P we need you too much (selfish little bastards aren't we).

[sidehack]

Don't worry, I have a pretty good stress management mechanism called "shrugging it off". I do what I can to solve the problem, but when it's out of my hands I stop worrying about it. So if we don't have a pick-and-place by the time parts arrive I'll be assembling sticks by hand to get it done, because that's what I can do, but in the meantime all I really have is complaining and that doesn't really take a toll on any of my gaskets.

I got burned by BFL to the tune of one Jalapeno, which I ended up forcing a PayPal refund after four months of non-delivery, used it to buy an AM Blade, and within three months had turned related products and services, and reinvested mining revenues, into 300GH of gear. All in all I call it a win. Given the only other time I've "preordered" hardware was a pair of X-1 from Minersource, which I last July traded off for a pair of Technobit Minion boards that have yet to appear (only $800 spent seventeen months ago with nothing to show for it), I'm more upset (on my own account) at bobsag3 and Marto than I am BFL but on the whole BFL are the bigger villains.

[sloopy]

Don't worry, I have a pretty good stress management mechanism called "shrugging it off". I do what I can to solve the problem, but when it's out of my hands I stop worrying about it. So if we don't have a pick-and-place by the time parts arrive I'll be assembling sticks by hand to get it done, because that's what I can do, but in the meantime all I really have is complaining and that doesn't really take a toll on any of my gaskets.

I got burned by BFL to the tune of one Jalapeno, which I ended up forcing a PayPal refund after four months of non-delivery, used it to buy an AM Blade, and within three months had turned related products and services, and reinvested mining revenues, into 300GH of gear. All in all I call it a win. Given the only other time I've "preordered" hardware was a pair of X-1 from Minersource, which I last July traded off for a pair of Technobit Minion boards that have yet to appear (only $800 spent seventeen months ago with nothing to show for it), I'm more upset (on my own account) at bobsag3 and Marto than I am BFL but on the whole BFL are the bigger villains.

Sidehack if you do end up with manual assembly I'm certainly up for taking a trip to help at my own cost. The only thing I'd ask is brain picking and burgers. Hell, there are probably several people in the MO, OK, KS, AR, etc surrounding areas willing to do the same.

[Mudbankkeith]

Don't worry, I have a pretty good stress management mechanism called "shrugging it off". I do what I can to solve the problem, but when it's out of my hands I stop worrying about it. So if we don't have a pick-and-place by the time parts arrive I'll be assembling sticks by hand to get it done, because that's what I can do, but in the meantime all I really have is complaining and that doesn't really take a toll on any of my gaskets.

I got burned by BFL to the tune of one Jalapeno, which I ended up forcing a PayPal refund after four months of non-delivery, used it to buy an AM Blade, and within three months had turned related products and services, and reinvested mining revenues, into 300GH of gear. All in all I call it a win. Given the only other time I've "preordered" hardware was a pair of X-1 from Minersource, which I last July traded off for a pair of Technobit Minion boards that have yet to appear (only $800 spent seventeen months ago with nothing to show for it), I'm more upset (on my own account) at bobsag3 and Marto than I am BFL but on the whole BFL are the bigger villains.

Sidehack if you do end up with manual assembly I'm certainly up for taking a trip to help at my own cost. The only thing I'd ask is brain picking and burgers. Hell, there are probably several people in the MO, OK, KS, AR, etc surrounding areas willing to do the same.

Is anyone close by, with a pick-n-place that could be "loaned" to you for a few hours when you are ready?

[stoneSolone]

Is anyone close by, with a pick-n-place that could be "loaned" to you for a few hours when you are ready?

I'm in Eastern Iowa we have a Madell fully automatic, does 200-800 cph, can place qfn and 0603 easily enough.

video when we first got it. 2 years old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONmngcGjEQk

$4500 you can pick it up today, we'd also be willing to take design work help on our own miner as part of the payment. PM me for more details.

[sidehack]

If you want design help, I can do that. But I'm not interested in spending money on a different machine, especially when it's money I don't have because I already spent it on a machine. Thanks though.

If I'm remembering the numbers right (Novak has the details) what we're supposed to have is more like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Tv2DK2v1k

[2112]

In the Synopsys world of IP things these SHA-256 cells are a proven item down to 14nm. I assume that they have taken that into account (... noise margins for each gate/transistor).

Oh, for sure not. "Proven" means "works correctly", not "works efficiently". The Intellectual Property blocks are sold as encrypted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register-transfer_level sub-circuits, that completely rely on the underlying implementation technology giving correct results.

This is the essence of digital design workflow: the assumption than the errors/faults are vanishingly small, like 10^-10 or better. This is vastly over-reliable for Bitcoin mining where which can easily tolerate some percentage points of erroneus computations, like 10^-1.

Besides, the general purpose hashing circuit will be easily outrun, even by the open source dedicated mining circuit that takes all the cheap and trivial optimizations: the nonce only changes 2 block of the inner SHA-256, the bit-lengths of both stages are fixed, last 3 rounds of the outer stage are unnecessary because we only look for zeros in the most-significant word.

https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner

This is a snippet of info I was totally unaware of. Thanks. Typically, do these clock generators "slide" the freq up and down or are they selecting a predetermined freq from a pool of freqs and then hopping amongst them?

No frequency hopping. This is continuous sliding up and down within the preselected range around the center frequency or below the upper limit frequency. Check out the manual for the example chip that I had in my browser bookmarks for couple of years now:

http://www.ti.com/product/cdce913

That sounds dreamily expensive, if for no other reason than it has the word "Intel" in it. lol

Well, it is worth dreaming sometimes, just so one won't become another bitter Bitcoin miner with perpetually pursed lips:

http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc23/HC23.17.1-tutorial1/HC23.17.121,Inductence-Gardner-Intel-DG%20081711-correct.pdf

Edit:

Simply stated, if the community (of which I'd like to think we're a part) designs the chip, then the community owns the design (all the stuff one forwards to a foundry to get a run made). Put it up on GitHub. GPL licensed open source hardware? In theory, anyone could take that design and have a foundry make'm a batch. Much like an individual D/L's source compiles it and runs it. Given H/W is a little different as most can't afford a "foundry compiler" but a group might be able to pool resources and have a run made. And this community has pulled together in the past to make things happen.

You have a nice ideology, but it is nearly completely impractical. Any foundry will require you to sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement that prohibits publication of their design kit. So you'll have two options:

1) open-source RTL design, which is really kinda trivial, on the par with student's homework at better schools.

2) open-source uncommitted pre-layout BSIM4 analog model, which is more or less useless for actual design of the masks.

The real value in the mining chip design is on the back-end, in the optimization of the layout. And for that open source is currently helpless. Without violating NDAs one could at most produce a scientific/research paper that could get published in the peer-reviewed journals.

Edit2: I'm so out of date. BSIM is now at BSIM6 and is about to split into more specialized braches:

http://www-device.eecs.berkeley.edu/bsim/

Edit3: Older, now closed, thread about:  OpenBitASIC : The Open Source Bitcoin ASIC Initiative

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76351.0

[stoneSolone]

If you want design help, I can do that. But I'm not interested in spending money on a different machine, especially when it's money I don't have because I already spent it on a machine. Thanks though.

I'd have to discuss it with the business partner some more but we maybe able loan it to you for an extended period.

We really haven't used it since we produced our last product and everything we have now is only in the prototype stage. If you'd be willing to assemble some of our small runs for us and help us get our first miner to work as far as firmware/hardware I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out. There is no reason we need to have the pick and place on site as long as you'd be able to do our small run assembly(which doesn't happen much at all), we are time poor and tool rich.

[PlanetCrypto]

In the Synopsys world of IP things these SHA-256 cells are a proven item down to 14nm. I assume that they have taken that into account (... noise margins for each gate/transistor).

Oh, for sure not. "Proven" means "works correctly", not "works efficiently". The Intellectual Property blocks are sold as encrypted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register-transfer_level sub-circuits, that completely rely on the underlying implementation technology giving correct results.

This is the essence of digital design workflow: the assumption than the errors/faults are vanishingly small, like 10^-10 or better. This is vastly over-reliable for Bitcoin mining where which can easily tolerate some percentage points of erroneus computations, like 10^-1.

Besides, the general purpose hashing circuit will be easily outrun, even by the open source dedicated mining circuit that takes all the cheap and trivial optimizations: the nonce only changes 2 block of the inner SHA-256, the bit-lengths of both stages are fixed, last 3 rounds of the outer stage are unnecessary because we only look for zeros in the most-significant word.

https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner

This is a snippet of info I was totally unaware of. Thanks. Typically, do these clock generators "slide" the freq up and down or are they selecting a predetermined freq from a pool of freqs and then hopping amongst them?

No frequency hopping. This is continuous sliding up and down within the preselected range around the center frequency or below the upper limit frequency. Check out the manual for the example chip that I had in my browser bookmarks for couple of years now:

http://www.ti.com/product/cdce913

That sounds dreamily expensive, if for no other reason than it has the word "Intel" in it. lol

Well, it is worth dreaming sometimes, just so one won't become another bitter Bitcoin miner with perpetually pursed lips:

http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc23/HC23.17.1-tutorial1/HC23.17.121,Inductence-Gardner-Intel-DG%20081711-correct.pdf

Edit:

Simply stated, if the community (of which I'd like to think we're a part) designs the chip, then the community owns the design (all the stuff one forwards to a foundry to get a run made). Put it up on GitHub. GPL licensed open source hardware? In theory, anyone could take that design and have a foundry make'm a batch. Much like an individual D/L's source compiles it and runs it. Given H/W is a little different as most can't afford a "foundry compiler" but a group might be able to pool resources and have a run made. And this community has pulled together in the past to make things happen.

You have a nice ideology, but it is nearly completely impractical. Any foundry will require you to sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement that prohibits publication of their design kit. So you'll have two options:

1) open-source RTL design, which is really kinda trivial, on the par with student's homework at better schools.

2) open-source uncommitted pre-layout BSIM4 analog model, which is more or less useless for actual design of the masks.

The real value in the mining chip design is on the back-end, in the optimization of the layout. And for that open source is currently helpless. Without violating NDAs one could at most produce a scientific/research paper that could get published in the peer-reviewed journals.

Edit2: I'm so out of date. BSIM is now at BSIM6 and is about to split into more specialized braches:

http://www-device.eecs.berkeley.edu/bsim/

Edit3: Older, now closed, thread about:  OpenBitASIC : The Open Source Bitcoin ASIC Initiative

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76351.0

Wow, that's a lot to digest. It'll take me a few days to chew on all the references. But REALLY appreciate your taking the time to weed through stuff.
Obviously there are some road blocks. The real question looming in my mind is 1) Can this get done in time and 2) in the process of doing it will the entity be forced or coerced into falling into the big 4's business model by economic realities.

If it were easy to do, everybody would be doing it.

[2112]

Wow, that's a lot to digest. It'll take me a few days to chew on all the references. But REALLY appreciate your taking the time to weed through stuff.
Obviously there are some road blocks. The real question looming in my mind is 1) Can this get done in time and 2) in the process of doing it will the entity be forced or coerced into falling into the big 4's business model by economic realities.

If it were easy to do, everybody would be doing it.

One thing that seriously hampers the big Bitcoin mining ASIC vendors is that all of them (thus far) are "pure plays," meaning they do Bitcoin mining ASICs and nothing else. The better strategy seems to be a "conglomerate" approach, where an organization that has other ASIC development program dedicates a fraction of available silicon real estate on their chips to the research/experimental versions of their hashing cores. This can allow them to have a couple of serious test runs for essentially free, provided that the design is intelligent.

The forum user helveticoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=82676) did try doing the above "compound" chip over 2 years ago, but it had a fatal flaw: it was a full ARM SoC with Bitcoin hashers as additional peripherals. This is a very wrong way to do it, as the optimal operating points for the hashers are outside of the reliable operation zone for the SoC, therefore their design was seriously underperforming.

The intelligent way of doing a "compound" ASIC would be where the primary ASIC function of the chip has only common ground with the mining ASIC function of the chip. Therefore the chip is still commercially useable in their primary function with mining I/O pads declared as no-connect. At the same time it can serve as a mining ASIC testbed by doing the opposite: declaring the primary I/O pads as no-connects.

Bitcoin mining ASIC is not that difficult to do. The reason why hardly anyone is doing it is because of the personality issues and general instability of Bitcoin mining entrepreneurs. It is a subject for separate discussion, but many people in the Bitcoin milieu were seriously hampered by their peculiar outlook that is a MLM-like salesmanship mixed with religious-like fervor, kinda like a mixture of AmWay & Scientology. This was very repelling to many skilled professionals. Thus far only Spondoolies seem to be capable of not pigeonholing themselves into that niche.

[Mudbankkeith]

So that is a prototype production test run for "free"

Then first batch run being "dual purpose" chip.   So a "reject" RAM chip could be a "good" ASIC.  The end result is a very low "dead" chip count.    Win/Win for the foundry.

[PlanetCrypto]

Wow, that's a lot to digest. It'll take me a few days to chew on all the references. But REALLY appreciate your taking the time to weed through stuff.
Obviously there are some road blocks. The real question looming in my mind is 1) Can this get done in time and 2) in the process of doing it will the entity be forced or coerced into falling into the big 4's business model by economic realities.

If it were easy to do, everybody would be doing it.

One thing that seriously hampers the big Bitcoin mining ASIC vendors is that all of them (thus far) are "pure plays," meaning they do Bitcoin mining ASICs and nothing else. The better strategy seems to be a "conglomerate" approach, where an organization that has other ASIC development program dedicates a fraction of available silicon real estate on their chips to the research/experimental versions of their hashing cores. This can allow them to have a couple of serious test runs for essentially free, provided that the design is intelligent.

The forum user helveticoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=82676) did try doing the above "compound" chip over 2 years ago, but it had a fatal flaw: it was a full ARM SoC with Bitcoin hashers as additional peripherals. This is a very wrong way to do it, as the optimal operating points for the hashers are outside of the reliable operation zone for the SoC, therefore their design was seriously underperforming.

The intelligent way of doing a "compound" ASIC would be where the primary ASIC function of the chip has only common ground with the mining ASIC function of the chip. Therefore the chip is still commercially useable in their primary function with mining I/O pads declared as no-connect. At the same time it can serve as a mining ASIC testbed by doing the opposite: declaring the primary I/O pads as no-connects.

Bitcoin mining ASIC is not that difficult to do. The reason why hardly anyone is doing it is because of the personality issues and general instability of Bitcoin mining entrepreneurs. It is a subject for separate discussion, but many people in the Bitcoin milieu were seriously hampered by their peculiar outlook that is a MLM-like salesmanship mixed with religious-like fervor, kinda like a mixture of AmWay & Scientology. This was very repelling to many skilled professionals. Thus far only Spondoolies seem to be capable of not pigeonholing themselves into that niche.

Holy crap, are you sneaking around in my brain? Just kidding.

We actually were planning pretty much exactly what you're describing. Multiple circuit designs on the same die, so if one or more designs is FUBAR the run is not for naught. 2 of the designs I can talk about. The third is sooooooo patentable, sooooo simple, and will appeal to such a broad market that this simple concept will make everyone display the "wow I coulda' had a V8" look (in addition to being an interesting method of nonce selection).

So the 2 circuits I am willing to identify are the hash circuit and a simple (read inexpensive) USB 3.0 -> SPI/I2C version of the popular CP2102.

"The reason why hardly anyone is doing it is because of the personality issues and general instability of Bitcoin mining entrepreneurs."
Is an issue I noticed here years ago, "creative differences" or motivations. The technologically creative fight amongst themselves and all the techies fight with the business types (bean counters). Been there, done that, on both sides of the aisle. Additionally what I noticed was that the entities that have managed to survive (the current "big 4") have stable, albeit classic, business models (my second degree was in business admin). Over the last week I've been brain working on a model of an entity that "plays more fairly" with the creative geniuses, allows the "every man" to participate to their respective pain threshold, presents an attractive investment to VC's, can "shift gears" quickly, is totally transparent, and has the administrative and cash controls in place to protect all vested interests (be that IP or $$$).

Your input of the NDA's required by a foundry threw me for a loop, but I think I ironed that one out and the solution will be satisfactory to all concerned.

Currently am working on a document/Power Point Presentation that I'll make public for perusal and comment (which is solicited and desired). Should have it done sometime by the end of the first week in August. Undoubtedly, there'll be some tweaking (maybe major tweaking), but the current plan is to start the entity creation process end of the 2nd week of Aug and be formalized/created by the end of the third week. Sometime during August I'll quit cluttering up sidhack's thread, thanks bro', and if acceptable launch a new thread.

At this juncture I'd like to give a shout out to the sponsor of bitcointalk, PIA and thank them for allowing us to be here and participate.

sidehack - that tabletop PnP you ordered is SWEET!, now if the pricks would just get it to ya' . . . . . Might be worth it next time to take a brief vacation to China, bring it back as carry on luggage, and walk it through customs as a demo unit.

Gotta' run, more l8r.

[sidehack]

The problem with carry-on is it's usually limited in both weight and dimensions. We ordered a pick-and-place and a decent SMD oven; the shipped dimensions we were given are about a cubic meter and 300lb. Another problem is paying for round-trip airfare and other transportation costs. I think you overestimate the funding we have available.

As for everything else you said... count me in.

[hacko86]

Why not crowfunding?

i mean.. why are "we" part of a community full of brilliant minds, a LOT of experience and strong will but "we" keep garage speaking?

i am pretty convinced that quite few lads could find interest into financing a proper project, with a defined target.
Honestly i am browsing a lot of pages lately looking for a product (or brand...) that could change the game, not being the most powerful or the cheapest to run only, but something that doesn't obey to the market laws imposed from the big 3 or 4 companies.

Remember guys that you are buying used miners because nothing else is available, and falling into SCAMS because of wrong beliefs and misgiven TRUST.

If this project could count on 100000$ what could it become? and a million?
Can there be a virtual table where everyone has the possibility to sit and contribute if he wants?

I know that this post seems a bit like dreaming, but i whould like to invite the big names on this thread to read the last 10/20 pages and ask themselves if this is the usual product launch thread or something different.

IN MY OPINION everyone could contribute with something, having something in return.
There are business specialists... able to redact a serious business plan, economic plan...there are Sidehack and Novak (well.. we know what they are able of), there is people that can host machines, others able to ship them and other able to manage the economics.. or even print a 3D case......

Me?
I sent a Pm to Novak months ago, when the project was launched but still no hardware appeared, offering myself to help.
I am a construction site manager, so i don't pretend to be able to help with chip soldering or frequency testing, but I'D PREFER 1000 TIMES TO PARTECIPATE INTO A PROJECT WITH MONEY.
100$? 1000$? is it really important?
I'd rather prefer to put 1000$ in this project rathe then in a miner itself, or in your burger address.
Why? because IMO the burger address doesnt lead to what YOU forum members are posting in the last pages.. it leads to the GekkoScience USB miner, which is only the demonstration of what i said about "US".

Whould i expect a return from my investment? of course! like any other thing in this world. Maybe a miner, maybe a profit share, maybe nothing....

I whould like to add many other things, but i'll finish here.
I hope that some of you will agree even partially with what i wrote in my still poor migrant's english.

I'll sit here, with my saturday's beer, waiting to order my GekkoScience USB miner.
Cheers

[vapourminer]

a word about backup for you alpha testers..

my old folding at home box threw a disk hardware error today.  PCPower and Cooling Red 750 PSU, two nvidia GTX 285's with Artic Cooling Acelerro Xreme aftermarket coolers , ASUS 5QE Pro mobo, intel Q9550 with Evo 212 HSF, OC'd and prime95 48 hour verified, XP OS just for a legal cheap license <- posted just to show I am serious.

anyway, long story short blown drive. right now I restoring from an image backup with Macrium Reflect Free Edition bootable rescue  CD that I have verified in the past that works. it will be online in 26 more minutes serving as my Music Appreciation Room computer as its no longer a decent F@H box.


PROTIP: make sure your backups for your miner controller actually works, dont take your programs word for it. seriously

TLDR:  make sure your backup solution works.. verify it.

[PlanetCrypto]

Why not crowfunding?

We are designing a version of crowd funding that encompasses not only the financial side of it but also the control, ownership, and contribution components as well.

i mean.. why are "we" part of a community full of brilliant minds, a LOT of experience and strong will but "we" keep garage speaking?

i am pretty convinced that quite few lads could find interest into financing a proper project, with a defined target.
Honestly i am browsing a lot of pages lately looking for a product (or brand...) that could change the game, not being the most powerful or the cheapest to run only, but something that doesn't obey to the market laws imposed from the big 3 or 4 companies.

My observation as well.

Remember guys that you are buying used miners because nothing else is available, and falling into SCAMS because of wrong beliefs and misgiven TRUST.

The corporate design I will propose will eliminate the trust component/requirement and steer/guide the company in the communities desired direction.

If this project could count on 100000$ what could it become? and a million?

My estimates are to bring a chip to tapeout will cost a bargain basement 1-2 million.

Can there be a virtual table where everyone has the possibility to sit and contribute if he wants?

Yes, am working on that now.

IN MY OPINION everyone could contribute with something, having something in return.
There are business specialists... able to redact a serious business plan, economic plan...there are Sidehack and Novak (well.. we know what they are able of), there is people that can host machines, others able to ship them and other able to manage the economics.. or even print a 3D case......

My belief as well. This endeavor will require administration, finance, development, production, and PR teams/departments/divisions at the least.

Me?
I sent a Pm to Novak months ago, when the project was launched but still no hardware appeared, offering myself to help.
I am a construction site manager, so i don't pretend to be able to help with chip soldering or frequency testing, but I'D PREFER 1000 TIMES TO PARTECIPATE INTO A PROJECT WITH MONEY.
100$? 1000$? is it really important?
I'd rather prefer to put 1000$ in this project rathe then in a miner itself, or in your burger address.
Why? because IMO the burger address doesnt lead to what YOU forum members are posting in the last pages.. it leads to the GekkoScience USB miner, which is only the demonstration of what i said about "US".

All of the aforementioned teams/departments/divisions will need project management skills to stay on track. Much like the skill set a construction site manager uses only not with 2x4's, concrete, steel, etc. The things one is/are managing are different but the concepts are the same. And both subsets manage human capitol (probably the most important project asset).

Whould i expect a return from my investment? of course! like any other thing in this world. Maybe a miner, maybe a profit share, maybe nothing....

Nothing is an unacceptable compensation amount. As it relegates an individual's effort into the classification of hobby. Can't speak for everyone but my hobbies change, sometimes abruptly. My business and business interests span the test of time. If for no other reason than my obligations to others. Hobbies are self centered, obligations to communities (like companies, BTC community, etc.) are externally oriented.

I envision the compensation to manifest itself in the form of dividends, paid in fiat or BTC, with timing and in amounts determined by voting stakeholders. This timing and amounts may be proposed by any stakeholder at any time to be voted on by all stakeholders regardless of the quantity of ownership. i.e. every dollar contributed gets one vote.

If successful, I can envision a time where, for lack of better words, capital non-voting stock might be offered.

Now if I'm going to get this concept/proposal out in the next couple of days I need to get back to it. But thanks for the distraction, I needed it.

[PlanetCrypto]

The problem with carry-on is it's usually limited in both weight and dimensions. We ordered a pick-and-place and a decent SMD oven; the shipped dimensions we were given are about a cubic meter and 300lb. Another problem is paying for round-trip airfare and other transportation costs. I think you overestimate the funding we have available.

IMHO, shipping, delivery costs, delivery delays, etc. are component costs of ownership and can be quantified. Just sayin', not criticizing, If I was ordering an expensive piece of mission critical equipment I would include a guaranteed delivery method in the total cost of ownership or elect a different avenue.

A long while back we ordered a butt load of miners from Bitmain and they got stuck in American customs cuz' the total declared value on the one business (versus personal) waybill exceeded $2500. It cost us extra money, days, duty, and numerous phone calls to get UPS to interface with customs to get them released. The combined dollar value of payments to UPS, lost mining revenue, duty, and phone expense would have easily covered me hopping on a plane to China and couriering them back on the same flight, potentially as checked luggage. Since I have no desire to "tour" China we now ensure that each waybill exhibits a declared value of less than $2500. It was an expensive lesson regarding the various shipping options available and customs wrangling.

Am really sorry you're stuck learning this lesson, but imagine (as smart as you are) it won't bite ya' in the butt going forward.

[AJRGale]

All this talk here about fab'ing some GPL'ed Bitcoin calculation cores onto silicon, is it wrong to think maybe making a new post about making a Bitcoin calculation core from scratch?

Basically what I want to know is how a core works, what is required to make a core do its job, then go from there, making a prototype core (discrete logic), making a software version of it (programmable logic) etc, etc.  I'm probably using the wrong words for this, but I know what I mean

[hacko86]

Really Thanks @PlanetCrypto
@AJRGale i think you are right, but i also think that PlanetCrypto's post answers to your questione too