65 nm Chips - [BFL ACCEPTED 100% ESCROW by John K.] - Group Buy #1 - Kernel32 - page 5.

Bicknellski

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Quote from: philips on June 11, 2013, 12:08:12 AM

Quote from: Bicknellski on June 10, 2013, 11:50:11 PM

They haven't done anything...

Where are the units?

Where are the chips?

Where are the documents for someone to actually design a PCB?

If you actually think these people at BFL can be trusted to put all the necessary information out and have working "grade A" chips the you are delusional. Seriously what does price have to do with anything given their track record. No one is going to design anything for these chips it would be a waste of time. They can't even design a board and they have had 11 months! Also who wants to buy from BFL at all? They pretty much slit their own throats and as a community no one especially PCB designers should come to their aid. Let em rot.

If trusting BFL is delusional, then I am delusional and that's my problem, please don't try to cure me. So far they delivered 6 units to me, so I am OK with being delusional.

Who wants to buy from BFL? I am pretty sure they will and have lots of customers (but then again, I am delusional).

Let them rot?
Grin

Man, you have issues or really love theatricals.

No theatrics...

Where are the fucking the miners?
Where are the fucking chips?
Where are the fucking design specs to make a PCB work with the chips?
Which kind of fucking chips will they ship grade D?

Dude stop being a poster boy for a lost cause. BFL is a turd that won't even float.

philips

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Activity: 700

Merit: 500

Quote from: Bicknellski on June 10, 2013, 11:50:11 PM

They haven't done anything...

Where are the units?

Where are the chips?

Where are the documents for someone to actually design a PCB?

If you actually think these people at BFL can be trusted to put all the necessary information out and have working "grade A" chips the you are delusional. Seriously what does price have to do with anything given their track record. No one is going to design anything for these chips it would be a waste of time. They can't even design a board and they have had 11 months! Also who wants to buy from BFL at all? They pretty much slit their own throats and as a community no one especially PCB designers should come to their aid. Let em rot.

If trusting BFL is delusional, then I am delusional and that's my problem, please don't try to cure me. So far they delivered 6 units to me, so I am OK with being delusional.

Who wants to buy from BFL? I am pretty sure they will and have lots of customers (but then again, I am delusional).

Let them rot?
Grin

Man, you have issues or really love theatricals.

Bicknellski

hero member

Activity: 924

Merit: 1000

They haven't done anything...

Where are the units?

Where are the chips?

Where are the documents for someone to actually design a PCB?

If you actually think these people at BFL can be trusted to put all the necessary information out and have working "grade A" chips the you are delusional. Seriously what does price have to do with anything given their track record. No one is going to design anything for these chips it would be a waste of time. They can't even design a board and they have had 11 months! Also who wants to buy from BFL at all? They pretty much slit their own throats and as a community no one especially PCB designers should come to their aid. Let em rot.

philips

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Quote from: Bicknellski on June 10, 2013, 11:43:29 PM

Quote from: philips on June 10, 2013, 11:30:38 PM

FFS man,
when they raise the price = they're evil,
when they lower the price = they're evil.

Whatever they do, is not good enough for some.

When they fail to ship and lie about many aspects with regards to their build and timelines they are not evil, they just lack morality and ethical boundaries the most of us in the community find reprehensible.

OK, I will fix it:

when they raise the price = they lack morality and ethical boundaries the most of us in the community find reprehensible,
when they lower the price = they lack morality and ethical boundaries the most of us in the community find reprehensible.

Whatever they do, is not good enough for some.

There.

Bicknellski

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Quote from: philips on June 10, 2013, 11:30:38 PM

FFS man,
when they raise the price = they're evil,
when they lower the price = they're evil.

Whatever they do, is not good enough for some.

When they fail to ship and lie about many aspects with regards to their build and timelines they are not evil, they just lack morality and ethical boundaries the most of us in the community find reprehensible. No one in their right mind is going to waste their time producing a design that won't have chips available. Given the fact that Avalon is going to 55nm undercuts everything BFL is doing and pretty much closes the door on them especially if Avalon gets those chips to market in 4 months time. If some of the work already done on the Klondike can be morphed into the Bonanza... well I would say people doing a new BFL PCB design are going to have a dead end road as no one is going to buy it.

philips

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FFS man,
when they raise the price = they're evil,
when they lower the price = they're evil.

Whatever they do, is not good enough for some.

Phinnaeus Gage

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Quote from: philips on June 10, 2013, 10:00:17 PM

Small update from Josh (shoutbox):

Quote

We will be dropping the price for the chips to ~75 bucks each or so. Not guaranteed on that price, but it'll likely be close to there.

Sales are so brisk, outta the kindness of their hearts they're offering a discount. Now why didn't they do that for their actual miners?

k9quaint

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Quote from: hax0red on June 10, 2013, 10:14:22 PM

Quote from: k9quaint on June 08, 2013, 12:36:20 PM

Quote from: erschiessen on June 08, 2013, 12:18:14 PM

Encased in a mineral oil bath?

To move the heat away from the chip,:
One should use copper. Copper has far higher thermal conductivity than mineral oil (like 50x). So, more chips will need more copper sinks in contact with them.
To move the heat away from the copper:
If you go with water blocks (or mineral oil blocks), then you can use less copper and move the heat away from the copper faster with water (or oil). I don't think you will save money or power consumption that way since the plumbing adds cost and complexity. A bit more copper with some fans for each cluster of 2 chips should be sufficient.

I would simply buy a Corsair H60 or H110 and use thermal adhesive to mount the block once I was satisfied it could do the job. I mounted a H55 to my 7870 using zip ties and it never went above 57C at 1225mhz core (tahiti chipped version) so I already have experience with conditions that aren't exactly ideal and it worked out just like my custom water loops have and honestly took far less time but once the adhesive is used and sets there is no going back.

An H110 would almost certainly do the job, but that is an extra $130 per chip cluster. That cooling expense drops BFL's price/performance below Avalon's.
Plus, scaling chip clusters would be hard with all the extra plumbing required.

hax0red

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Quote from: k9quaint on June 08, 2013, 12:36:20 PM

Quote from: erschiessen on June 08, 2013, 12:18:14 PM

Encased in a mineral oil bath?

To move the heat away from the chip,:
One should use copper. Copper has far higher thermal conductivity than mineral oil (like 50x). So, more chips will need more copper sinks in contact with them.
To move the heat away from the copper:
If you go with water blocks (or mineral oil blocks), then you can use less copper and move the heat away from the copper faster with water (or oil). I don't think you will save money or power consumption that way since the plumbing adds cost and complexity. A bit more copper with some fans for each cluster of 2 chips should be sufficient.

I would simply buy a Corsair H60 or H110 and use thermal adhesive to mount the block once I was satisfied it could do the job. I mounted a H55 to my 7870 using zip ties and it never went above 57C at 1225mhz core (tahiti chipped version) so I already have experience with conditions that aren't exactly ideal and it worked out just like my custom water loops have and honestly took far less time but once the adhesive is used and sets there is no going back.

philips

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Small update from Josh (shoutbox):

Quote

We will be dropping the price for the chips to ~75 bucks each or so. Not guaranteed on that price, but it'll likely be close to there.

wrenchmonkey

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Quote from: k9quaint on June 08, 2013, 12:15:18 PM

Quote from: wrenchmonkey on June 08, 2013, 11:36:29 AM

To those who are so concerned with heat dissipation, why not just go water-cooled. I don't really care about having a small cute little case that sits on my desk. I think we'd probably be fine using standard heatsinks on each pair of chips. This would require a slightly larger board area, but we're all going to be doing custom cases. If it turns out that we need more heat dissipation than we can get with heatsinks, throw a water block or two on there, and call it a day.

Ultimately, I see it as virtually a non-issue. The question now, of course, is whether it's worth paying the same $/hash to get these chips. I'm thinking BFL needs to come off their price by roughly $25/chip at a minimum. If they can come down to $50, they'll sell like hotcakes.

Zomg, I agree with Wrenchmonkey about something. One heatsink + fan per chip, or a waterblock per 2-4 chips should handle the heat problem. Unfortunately, that raises the price of a unit by $15 - $35 per chip used (including copper sinks/blocks, pump & plumbing). That sort of expense shreds BFL's bang for the buck.

This is true, and I considered that, but considering that each chip, running at 2.5GH-4GH, the density more than makes up for the cost difference. Each chip is the equivalent of roughly one of Burnin's boards, or a Klondike k-16 board, which each requires its own heatsink and board anyway. If we can use fewer boards, less power, and less real-estate than the equivalent in Avalon chips, there would actually probably be a small savings (board and assembly costs), even after accounting for the heat sinks. Not to mention that Burnin's and BKK's boards also require either individual heat sinks for each 4 chips, or one large heat sink. If we're buying heat sink material by the bar and cutting them down, we really are only paying for heat sink area, not the actual individual sinks, so it doesn't ultimately matter if we use one giant one, or several smaller ones.

k9quaint

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Quote from: erschiessen on June 08, 2013, 12:18:14 PM

Encased in a mineral oil bath?

To move the heat away from the chip,:
One should use copper. Copper has far higher thermal conductivity than mineral oil (like 50x). So, more chips will need more copper sinks in contact with them.
To move the heat away from the copper:
If you go with water blocks (or mineral oil blocks), then you can use less copper and move the heat away from the copper faster with water (or oil). I don't think you will save money or power consumption that way since the plumbing adds cost and complexity. A bit more copper with some fans for each cluster of 2 chips should be sufficient.

turtle83

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Supersonic

Quote from: erschiessen on June 08, 2013, 12:18:14 PM

Encased in a mineral oil bath?

then u need to figure out how to keep the oil cool...

erschiessen

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Encased in a mineral oil bath?

k9quaint

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Quote from: wrenchmonkey on June 08, 2013, 11:36:29 AM

To those who are so concerned with heat dissipation, why not just go water-cooled. I don't really care about having a small cute little case that sits on my desk. I think we'd probably be fine using standard heatsinks on each pair of chips. This would require a slightly larger board area, but we're all going to be doing custom cases. If it turns out that we need more heat dissipation than we can get with heatsinks, throw a water block or two on there, and call it a day.

Ultimately, I see it as virtually a non-issue. The question now, of course, is whether it's worth paying the same $/hash to get these chips. I'm thinking BFL needs to come off their price by roughly $25/chip at a minimum. If they can come down to $50, they'll sell like hotcakes.

Zomg, I agree with Wrenchmonkey about something. One heatsink + fan per chip, or a waterblock per 2-4 chips should handle the heat problem. Unfortunately, that raises the price of a unit by $15 - $35 per chip used (including copper sinks/blocks, pump & plumbing). That sort of expense shreds BFL's bang for the buck.

wrenchmonkey

full member

Activity: 224

Merit: 100

To those who are so concerned with heat dissipation, why not just go water-cooled. I don't really care about having a small cute little case that sits on my desk. I think we'd probably be fine using standard heatsinks on each pair of chips. This would require a slightly larger board area, but we're all going to be doing custom cases. If it turns out that we need more heat dissipation than we can get with heatsinks, throw a water block or two on there, and call it a day.

Ultimately, I see it as virtually a non-issue. The question now, of course, is whether it's worth paying the same $/hash to get these chips. I'm thinking BFL needs to come off their price by roughly $25/chip at a minimum. If they can come down to $50, they'll sell like hotcakes.

Tigggger

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Quote from: Kernel32 on June 08, 2013, 11:06:59 AM

The easy solution to make somebody else overtake board design and convert most of the pre-orders to chip sales seems probably very appealing to BFL right now.

Funnily enough in the very first post in this forum saying they were selling chips, I said something like "Maybe it's a cunning ploy to get BKK to design a board that actually works"

Quote

They could come up with a motivation instrument for pre-order costumers. For example chip discount. That could make the magic happen, giving the fact those costumers are still interested in mining by not getting refunded already

Please note, that most of this is only my wild speculation.

Possibly, my own speculation given their history is that they saw the huge amount of avalon chip orders and thought it was an easy to way to raise large amounts of needed cash.

Unforunately for them I don't think either of these options is going to happen, they've been telling too many lies for too long for large numbers of people to spend anything with them. BFL's window is closing.

Anyway, good luck with the group buy

Kernel32

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If you can't do something smart,do something right

Quote from: Tigggger on June 08, 2013, 10:21:37 AM

I thought it was more board design problems than getting them made, but dont want to troll so...

You are most likely right. Manufacturing should be easy while having a good design.

Quote from: Tigggger on June 08, 2013, 10:21:37 AM

Almost all of the talk in burnin and bkk's threads is over my head but they seem like very smart people, who I would have confidence in to get them working and in production fairly quickly.

That presents the problem, avalon can sell chips because they aren't making any more hardware. If BFL release all the details needed and the guys above get a board working it would surely decimate BFL's order queue.

So what is their reasoning ?

...........

I think they are sick of the design problems. I truly believe they did not picture nor intended this to happen.

The easy solution to make somebody else overtake board design and convert most of the pre-orders to chip sales seems probably very appealing to BFL right now.

They could come up with a motivation instrument for pre-order costumers. For example chip discount. That could make the magic happen, giving the fact those costumers are still interested in mining by not getting refunded already.

Butterflies would most likely also manufacture devices based on community board design. Or move to Bahamas finally. Who knows.

Please note, that most of this is only my wild speculation.

Tigggger

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Quote from: Kernel32 on June 08, 2013, 08:34:49 AM

They can't handle the board manufacturing and that's where community can take over and profit. That is a business opportunity to me.

I thought it was more board design problems than getting them made, but dont want to troll so...

Almost all of the talk in burnin and bkk's threads is over my head but they seem like very smart people, who I would have confidence in to get them working and in production fairly quickly.

That presents the problem, avalon can sell chips because they aren't making any more hardware. If BFL release all the details needed and the guys above get a board working it would surely decimate BFL's order queue.

So what is their reasoning ?

Quote from: Kernel32 on June 08, 2013, 08:34:49 AM

It seems the 65 nm chips are generating a lot more heat, than BFL expected. Where being unable to put 8pcs of 4 GH/s chips on few square inch board may discard some cute-black-box designs, for most of BTC miners the size of the board is not as crucial. (Remember GPU rigs?) They are not to keep on the desk anyways.

I concur, they seem to be spending more time and money trying to get them into cases because they already bought them instead of just saying. Look we messed up, power and heat is more than we expected so now the board is 2/3/4 times as big and it needs a new case, or comes with 2 pieces of plywood to mount it on. Whilst looking nice is good I suspect most people would sacrifice that to get it quicker

Kernel32

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If you can't do something smart,do something right

Quote from: burnin on June 07, 2013, 01:14:53 PM

I would start work on a custom BFL-chip board once i'm done with the Avalon development.
(I am sure can recycle some design aspects which should speed things up)
But It would need encouraging news from them that indicate that we can really expect them to deliver + documentation on the chips.

Thank you burnin very much for taking the time.

We have now two lead community developers - burnin and Chris (Klondike) - to consider BFL chip board. Under some conditions of course. We may have the power to make this happen. (Or not.)

Quote from: Rampion on June 07, 2013, 03:18:35 PM

...........
Seriously guys. Have a little bit of self-respect at least.

We are the first to actually negotiate with BFL. That indicates BTC community is not a bunch of idiots to throw money at them with no guarantees at all. I see a lot of self-respect in that.

In business world, you don't make deals according to your feelings. You take advantage of the best available on the market and take maximal possible precautions. I'm not responsible for their previous costumers that took lesser precautions.

The truth is BFL may have the best chip technology - they invested a lot of money in their chip (maybe too much), no doubt at all.

They can't handle the board manufacturing and that's where community can take over and profit. That is a business opportunity to me.

Quote from: Rampion on June 07, 2013, 03:18:35 PM

........ and now we accept we will never get our Singles, Mini Singles and Mini Rigs.

Don't accept it and get your money and self-respect back. You kind of support what BFL does by not making so.

Quote from: Operatr on June 07, 2013, 11:13:50 AM

Quote from: Kernel32 on June 07, 2013, 08:17:24 AM

Quote from: 67152398 on June 07, 2013, 08:09:15 AM

Another scam
Angry

Seriously man, did you read any part of this thread? Can you explain why do you think this is a scam 67152398 ?

It's a good thing to be careful, but c'mon we have John (not the same person as Josh Wink

) .

BFL itself is the scam, get real.

Zero products shipped from the revised BitForce line (Jalepenos are older and no longer offered, Little SC was supposed to replace it, none have shipped at all in over one year)

Now offering chips that are just as much vaporware as their ghost machines

And they are apparently wasting time on their own charity thing?

BFL and all of their cronies earned a scammer tag here, that should be enough to kill this thread right here and now.

C'mon man. BFL does not manufacture the chip. You really think they are producing 65 nm chips by themselves? They have only licence to resell it. With 100% escrow I don't see any problem in that.

I'm not willing to (group)buy any boards/devices made at BFL.

Quote from: nave on June 07, 2013, 05:38:27 PM

Quote from: k9quaint on June 07, 2013, 03:11:29 PM

Quote from: nave on June 07, 2013, 03:04:27 PM

So I haven't been following all of the BFL drama over the past however long, but I have another concern that might be of note to this group buy.

We know that they have actual chips that work, they've shipped (a few) Jalapenos. But from what I've seen of the tear down of these devices they have 2 working chips on a board designed to house 8 chips, with a pretty beefy heatsink and fan on those two chips. They've stated they missed their power numbers, and thereby the chips run hotter than they intended. Is it possible (me not being much more than a hardware layman) that these chips run too hot for any reasonable cluster size on a PCB?

If so, then BFL could ship the chips, fully complying with the terms of the group buy, and have the money released from escrow, only to have the buyers holding chips that overheat constantly and have to be throttled or have fewer chips placed per board than intended. I think it was a surprise to a lot of people (myself included) that Josh agreed to the full escrow deal. Maybe this is why? They have a ton of chips and can only use a few per board? It would only make sense to sell them and get all the money they could out of their (our) investment at that point.

That would certainly explain why they have not released the Singles or Mini-rig prototypes. Those are supposed to be densely populated boards. Perhaps the chips cannot be kept cool. Very hard to say until they release specs and samples.

Exactly. I might suggest to the group buy that previous to the escrow being released they are able to test a fully populated board with sample chips that are running at full speed and on all cores in order to be able to see how much heat they're putting out and work out a suitable cooling solution if one exists.

Fisrt of all, love your avatar nave. Secondly, this is a fruitful discussion I was hoping for to see here. Thank you guys (and also to others discussing and expressing support).

It seems the 65 nm chips are generating a lot more heat, than BFL expected. Where being unable to put 8pcs of 4 GH/s chips on few square inch board may discard some cute-black-box designs, for most of BTC miners the size of the board is not as crucial. (Remember GPU rigs?) They are not to keep on the desk anyways. Community developers need to reestablish what "fully populated board" means. I'm pretty sure the hash/board-square-inch ratio would be still noticeably better than 110 nm Avalon's. My best guess is twice (as 65 nm chip consumes twice less power).

Is anyone here able to measure his Jalapeno heat parameters? For example putting it into polystyrene box and measuring temperature over time. Maybe start with low temperature and don't go too high. Remember, it was manufactured by BFL. Wink

Topic: 65 nm Chips - [BFL ACCEPTED 100% ESCROW by John K.] - Group Buy #1 - Kernel32 - page 5. (Read 14740 times)