GekkoScience BM1384 Project Development Discussion

[elrippo]

I tend to agree with you guys, but please remember that for example Android OS was driven by google.
What scares me more is the fact, that google bought boston dynamics

I like robots and machines, i learned to program and use them, but i bear in mind that google collects a f*****g lot of personal data from individuals like you, has the power to influence information and now they are building machines which can do what ever google wants them to do....
Amazon delivers parcels with drones, and for me personally, drones and the US is not a good willing combination...

My two cents from the holy EU 

How is it going with the purchase of some BM1385 from Bitmain, are they more friendly and willing to sell some?

[sidehack]

You mean Android OS, the least-secure and most spyware-ridden phone OS in the world?
Please note you're talking to someone who's been using the same flip-phone since 2008.

I've posted all the news I have about BM1385 purchases. Heard no more from them since then.

[PlanetCrypto]

... Amazon delivers parcels with drones, and for me personally, drones and the US is not a good willing combination...

Amazon delivering packages with drones is the least of my robotic worries.
Flying Hellfire armed Predators over Ferguson definitely got my attention.

How is it going with the purchase of some BM1385 from Bitmain, are they more friendly and willing to sell some?

Emailing them AGAIN tomorrow.
Asking for pricing on 1K 1385's.
Should be enough for ~50 TypeZero's.

When I know, this thread will know.

[sidehack]

Funny story. Novak used to live in Ferguson. Ain't that far from here.

I'm definitely looking forward to hearing what you find out. They're probably more likely to talk to someone that wants 1000 than someone that wants 50. Our parts order arrived today which includes everything I need to get a 4-chip BM1384 pod figured out, and about half the stuff I need for a TypeZero. I'll get back to it as soon as Compacs are caught up. We've almost sold as many as we have parts for up-front. Hopefully I can scrounge up some more bucks to get a standing stock of at least a hundred sticks or so.

[philipma1957]

You mean Android OS, the least-secure and most spyware-ridden phone OS in the world?
Please note you're talking to someone who's been using the same flip-phone since 2008.

I've posted all the news I have about BM1385 purchases. Heard no more from them since then.

I use trac fone     fuck smart phones.

[notlist3d]

You mean Android OS, the least-secure and most spyware-ridden phone OS in the world?
Please note you're talking to someone who's been using the same flip-phone since 2008.

I've posted all the news I have about BM1385 purchases. Heard no more from them since then.

I use trac fone     fuck smart phones.

The scary part is when people talk about phone bitcoin wallets.  I just don't get it.  I feel like it's asking to get it taken away at some point.   Heck some phone systems can be spoofed with a few thousand in gear.   Still scary stuff.

Anyways now that I got most of my selling of gear I wanted to get rid of before S7 release.  I got time to do some fun things I am working on using the compac as a lotto device.    I currently have on a lower watt windows PC that is almost always on.  Has SSD and onboard almost everything so nothing special.  Actually built out of my GPU mining parts from way back.

It could be improved by using a raspberry pi.  But hopefully tonight or tomorrow I get it finished as far as the windows one.     

[ManeBjorn]

That is really aggressive Phil. I look forward to seeing you do that.
The spec sheet on the chips show it can go very low indeed and the boards and controllers are much better.
This is going to be fun.

We have an incoming $3500 payment from a customer coming in.
I have ear marked this money to buy a small quantity (~1K) of chips from BM, assuming they decide to sell some.
Having said that, I'm a slut, if any other chip supplier has a suitable chip for sale prior to that they'll get the $3500 (first come first served).
Whomever's chips will be shipped to GS (with their approval ofc) for insertion onto hash boards.
We assume that a certain number of chips would be destroyed n the development process.

Once a suitable design is manufactured and field proven we'd be up for a real quantity purchase of chips (and then boards, ofc).

And regarding capex equipment purchases, I've had my eye on a CNC router for more than a year.
Something that will route polycarbonate and thin sheet AL for immersion tank construction.

Made a corporate decision a while back that we're done buying equipment that has a programmed obsolescence (S(odd) and C1).
I'm sick and tired of replacing perfectly good equipment every 6 months - a year solely due to fixed a Vcore which caps the maximum efficiency of the gear.
Screw that.
And yeah I know I could rip apart miners, mod the hash boards (at least to some extent) and get better efficiency. That's a doable option on 1-5 machines but not on 50+.

It is my belief that even the venerable S1, had it been designed with a reasonable lifespan in mind, could be profitable to operate in today's environment given an adjustable Vcore and clock. But it wasn't and neither was any of the BM follow on products. I believe this was part of a designed marketing campaign to continue to sell "new" equipment. Smart practice for miner manufacturer's but not very good for the 200Th/s and down crowd. As such, we're committed to purchasing/building equipment that will "stand the test of time" versus a throw-away mentality.

GS's designs embody this thought process and consequently we will opt to buy their product(s) over a competitor's.

Phil - I am very curious to hear, when your S7's come in, whether one can adjust Vcore and if so by how much.

I just helped a friend to build his commercial cnc machine in the brooklyn navy yard  it can do copper brass and aluminum.

They are costly even at the lower end commercial models.  We did his for 12k.  Much of the work was diy.  I built the pc for it he had the mounting table and frame welded by local people in the brooklyn navy yard.

the pc boards, gearing, motors, spindles collects. you buy as a kit form. 1 set of percison collect is over 300 usd. alone.   I was at his shop on fri.  he is cutting some speaker boxes for me. I know him from a speaker building club.

when I get the s-7 I am going to try to find the lowest freq say 150 vs 300 (a guess at what the numbers will be)

then run at freq 150 hopefully giving me 200 watts and 800gh a blade.

I will then try to get 10.8 volts in stead of 12 volts to drive machine

[tiberium]

retrofitting boards and selling direct to customers is not a viable & sustainable business model IMO.


Unless sidehack & novak are being contracted out to retrofit a massive farm where the only barrier to success is actual R&D (and not chip availability/money) i dont see a sustainable business, because you guys are way overestimating the amount of actual customers.

What sidehack & novak are insanely good at is squeezing out every last drop of efficiency on the hash/v curve. That's the specialty, and the bm stick miner is a proof of concept that people are leaving an insane amount of value/efficiency on the table by buying miners that arent custom built/tuned for efficiency.


A viable business would be starting a farm, buying up thousands of old s1, s3s wholesale from professional mining operations and being able to retrofit them with previous gen designed chips &boards  yourself.

I can see that working as a business that actually has an opportunity to scale.


you guys are insanely smart, just horrible businessmen.

[elrippo]

... Amazon delivers parcels with drones, and for me personally, drones and the US is not a good willing combination...

Amazon delivering packages with drones is the least of my robotic worries.
Flying Hellfire armed Predators over Ferguson definitely got my attention.

How is it going with the purchase of some BM1385 from Bitmain, are they more friendly and willing to sell some?

Emailing them AGAIN tomorrow.
Asking for pricing on 1K 1385's.
Should be enough for ~50 TypeZero's.

When I know, this thread will know.

That´s what i meant with not good willing....

Looking forward to your info 

You mean Android OS, the least-secure and most spyware-ridden phone OS in the world?
Please note you're talking to someone who's been using the same flip-phone since 2008.

I've posted all the news I have about BM1385 purchases. Heard no more from them since then.

Exactly, so when a PR driven company builds soft- hardware for everyone you should tend to get nervous and find some alternatives 

[sidehack]

I use trac fone     fuck smart phones.

That is really aggressive Phil. I look forward to seeing you do that.

Ew.



Also,

retrofitting boards and selling direct to customers is not a viable & sustainable business model IMO.

Well you're in luck, because that's not actually what our business is about. We're not doing any retrofitting of boards, but building new boards which can be retrofit onto existing machinery. A strict parsing of your sentence leads me to believe you misunderstood that point, but I could be wrong. Additionally, the boards are one of several ongoing projects within and without Bitcoin. It's mostly my focus, really, and Novak's working on nifty stuff for completely different markets.

A viable business would be starting a farm

Right, but starting a farm helps literally nobody but ourselves. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but most of the things Novak and I have been doing on the forum over the last, um, slightly longer than two years has been centered around not being greedy and working to help other folks who are getting the short end of things on account of all the people running big farms. You're basically telling us that a good business to be in is the exact opposite business we're in.

you guys are insanely smart, just horrible businessmen.

True on both counts. Neither of us want to be businessmen, and neither of us really like businessmen. Right now I hold a deep respect for exactly one businessman, which is my uncle who, in partner with about five other people, quit working at a factor and started their own because upper management wouldn't let them make required changes that would get their product quality up and better serve the customer. Surprise, within two years the old place was almost out of business and his company was building an addition to double the workspace. I respect the kind of businessman whose decisions center around doing the best job possible because perfection has its own merits, not because perfection is optimal on your price/profit curves.
You might have noticed we're not giving bulk discounts on Compacs, and probably won't have bulk discounts on any miners going forward. That's because I don't want to be the kind of business that does favors to rich people. By not favoring the rich, we're respecting regular folks. In the bitcoin economy, the rich and the regular folks are in direct competition for a finitely scarce resource, except everyone from power companies to mining manufacturers are giving rich guys help and nobody's doing jack squat for the guys at the bottom. As a guy at the bottom myself, why the heck should I be in business to favor the rich, or to become the rich myself (by first incurring massive debt, of course, to build up the business you recommend - which is pretty stupid already, since the only debts my business has right now are monthly bills like rent and electric) by ignoring and, by merit of simply existing, screwing over all of my peers? That actually does sound a lot like how businesses get run in America, but another thing you might notice about Novak and I is we don't really care how things are done elsewhere or by other people. We have our standards of "right" and we operate by those standards. Terrible businessmen? Yes. Operate a farm and build machinery only for ourselves? Hell no. Never.

[PlanetCrypto]

Have owned and operated a variety of businesses during my 60 years on the planet.
I've found that if a business is operated with a good moral/ethical compass it flourishes.
Those that don't, don't.

BTW, emailed BM about initially purchasing 1K of BM1385's.
Now waiting in "hot standby" for their response.
Would REALLY like to "pull the trigger" on this ASAP.

So, BM if your reading this let's get this vehicle shifted into high gear and get this done.

[philipma1957]

Would be nice if they sent you a bill for the chips just as I type this response.

[notlist3d]

Have owned and operated a variety of businesses during my 60 years on the planet.
I've found that if a business is operated with a good moral/ethical compass it flourishes.
Those that don't, don't.

BTW, emailed BM about initially purchasing 1K of BM1385's.
Now waiting in "hot standby" for their response.
Would REALLY like to "pull the trigger" on this ASAP.

So, BM if your reading this let's get this vehicle shifted into high gear and get this done.

I hope BM gives you an anwser.  I feel they could support more.   I really love this project specifically.  Sidehack and GekkoScience is a great thing a miner made by someone who cares about miners. 

I have had a review stick and it's still working great.   I am wanting to get a Y adapter on usb to try to overclock it after seeing some of the amazing speeds it gets.   But as of now I have it set up on a lotto setup. 

I cannot say how much I enjoyed this project reminding me of the good day's of mining with my stick miners.   Truly was fun to do.   I will try to get some pictures tomorrow nothing super special just a nice little situp with fan's cooling down my usb sticks.

[brush242]

I use trac fone     fuck smart phones.

That is really aggressive Phil. I look forward to seeing you do that.

Ew.

And it's sidehack for the win!

Well played, Sir.

[QuintLeo]

The Rocks Compute Cluster is used primarily to generate 4K/8K/16K DH keys and large Mersenne primes.

 GIMPS?
 Or something else?

[PlanetCrypto]

The Rocks Compute Cluster is used primarily to generate 4K/8K/16K DH keys and large Mersenne primes.

 GIMPS?
 Or something else?

Something else, an in-house written DH Key generation routine which uses as it's seed a large Mersenne Prime.
These large primes are no where near as large as the primes GIMPS is working on, but still fall into the definition of large.

Currently, we would like to but are not participating in GIMPS.
Primarily because the cluster sucks a BUTTLOAD of power to run (~50KW) when the nodes are loaded to ~100%.
Consequently, we only "turn it on" when we have jobs for it.

A 16K (actually 16,384) key can take up to 21 days to generate.
So @ 50KW * 24 = 1,200 KWH ($144 @ $0.12/KwH), 1,200 KwH * 21 = 25,200 KwH ($3,024 @ $0.12).

Participating in GIMPS for 30 days (one month) would cost us $4320.
But to be blunt, we just don't have that kind of spare $$$ laying around looking for a home.
As a footnote, the cost and time of generating these rather large DH keys is typically why most VPN providers stick with 2048 and 4196 bit keys (or smaller in some cases).
We have in the past sold computing power for rendering, oil & gas prospecting, and other cryptographic work @ $15-$20 per hour.
Call me a geek but it's really cool to see a couple of hundred cores loaded to ~100% and the power meter spinning like a top.

[novak@gekkoscience]

The Rocks Compute Cluster is used primarily to generate 4K/8K/16K DH keys and large Mersenne primes.

 GIMPS?
 Or something else?

Something else, an in-house written DH Key generation routine which uses as it's seed a large Mersenne Prime.
These large primes are no where near as large as the primes GIMPS is working on, but still fall into the definition of large.

Currently, we would like to but are not participating in GIMPS.
Primarily because the cluster sucks a BUTTLOAD of power to run (~50KW) when the nodes are loaded to ~100%.
Consequently, we only "turn it on" when we have jobs for it.

A 16K (actually 16,384) key can take up to 21 days to generate.
So @ 50KW * 24 = 1,200 KWH ($144 @ $0.12/KwH), 1,200 KwH * 21 = 25,200 KwH ($3,024 @ $0.12).

Participating in GIMPS for 30 days (one month) would cost us $4320.
But to be blunt, we just don't have that kind of spare $$$ laying around looking for a home.
As a footnote, the cost and time of generating these rather large DH keys is typically why most VPN providers stick with 2048 and 4196 bit keys (or smaller in some cases).
We have in the past sold computing power for rendering, oil & gas prospecting, and other cryptographic work @ $15-$20 per hour.
Call me a geek but it's really cool to see a couple of hundred cores loaded to ~100% and the power meter spinning like a top.

I've used ROCKS before, although I've more often used redhat on compute clusters.  A couple of years ago I worked at a place writing code and doing CFD, so we had a couple of our own little clusters.  I wrote a genetic optimization program and that thing would run hundreds or thousands of gas turbine engine fluid dynamics simulations over a weekend.  It's pretty cool stuff.

--
novak

[armedmilitia]

Huh, have you considered using your cluster to mine altcoins that are cpu-friendly? CryptoNight comes to mind as an algorithm with little to no gpu advantage (and no FPGA or ASIC implementations).

Since you've already got the hardware, it's free money--provided the revenue is greater than your power bills.

[QuintLeo]

The Rocks Compute Cluster is used primarily to generate 4K/8K/16K DH keys and large Mersenne primes.

 GIMPS?
 Or something else?

Something else, an in-house written DH Key generation routine which uses as it's seed a large Mersenne Prime.
These large primes are no where near as large as the primes GIMPS is working on, but still fall into the definition of large.

 I'm guessing it's the DH key that's soaking all the computation power, as all Mersenne primes up to the 44'th one have been calculated and verified, along with 4 more Mersenne primes past that but not all of the "inbetween" candidates after the 44'th prime have been verified.

 I can only think of one person/group that is likely to be putting $4k/month into the GIMPS effort - Dr. Cooper of one of the Missouri universities - and that's WITH the backing of the university administration to run GIMPS on most of the computers at that university.

 At the kind of power level you use, why aren't you in a "cheap power" area? Seems like dropping your power costs from 12/kwh to under 5/kwh would save you a TON of money.

[sidehack]

I hear tell he's working on negotiating lower power rates.