Topic: [ANN] Bitfury is looking for alpha-testers of first chips! FREE MONEY HERE! - page 35. (Read 176728 times)

Right now m-boards are effectively 800 bucks.  Would really prefer cheaper sourcing in case we need to replace one.  I would have thought with no asics that board would be dirt cheap.  A clone board with built in Ethernet higher power capacity etc I think would be great.

If properly designed you need only one type of board. One populated fully, other 8 just with regulator. And this also opens perspective to make other communication solutions like USB to SPI bridge and control via PC (or RPi).

Yes, let's make that one! Can be done over the weekend...

intron

The LPC + Ethernet is more like $15. That's less than a single ASIC. For a complete system with fan, heatsink, maybe a case, 12V power supply, the difference in cost is hardly worth the effort of having two types of PCBs and a new interconnect.

For lots of chips, the M/H board system is a better solution. Of course, an interesting option would be to replace the Raspberry Pi with an integrated CPU/Ethernet on the M-BOARD.

3 multiplexers (2$) and you can hook up 8 boards. Without LPC, ethernet it wiil be somwhere 150$ cheaper that's propably half a board for free
Not to mention one 8 port router less and 8 ethernet cables (less cable mess, less power needed).

CPU load is less than 10%, so it could easily drive a lot more chips. However, most of the cost is in the DC/DC regulator and the ASICs, so it wouldn't actually save that much money.

Thanks cscape for answer. Later I was looking at code and found an answer myself
Another question. What is CPU load at your board? If it's not to big you may consider to place expansion port on your board and split SPI to more simpler boards (only with DC/DC regulator). I think that good switcher can be this part http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SN74CBTLV3251PWR/296-9129-1-ND/378104.

I'll drop of a bottle of flux remover if needed:)

intron

Power regulator is the APTS050A0X3-SRPHZ module. And the junk around the module is not heat stress, but flux residue.

Most of the board is reflowed, but I decided to hand solder to power module later. This turned out to be quite a messy deal. The pins of the module are hard to reach underneath the PCB, and the solid copper pours around the module make it hard to get the temperature up.

Nice board cscape!   

What power regulator are you using?

Also is the heat stressed area around the regulator output on the main board from a repair or just a result of normal operation?

We haven't actually tested that many components. We picked a certain type, tested it, saw it performed well, and stuck with it. In the bitcoin world, time = money Around each ASIC there's a ring of 3x5 small caps from AVX, part #04026D105KAT2A (0402 size, 6.3V, 1uF, X5R). In addition, there are groups of 8 caps, 47uF, 6.3V, X7R. On the S-HASH board they are 1206 size, but on the H-CARD they're 1210 because these are a lot easier to get, and there's plenty of room anyway.

The amount of caps is probably overkill, but you can never have too much overkill.

Does anyone have sample chips?
I will need 2 chips for my project, but i have missed the first batch unfortunately

cscape - are any schematics published/available anywhere? And/or PCB drawings? (even if that's just the H-Card)
And/or the specs and list of components? (e.g. what kind of filter capacitors, how many, where, etc)

I'm guessing you guys have already gone trough the pain of testing various components ... so any future designs won't have to discover again the hot water.

Ok. No problem. I don't have any samples anymore, unfortunately.

That was clear at the first look Cscape )) and made me happy

Heatsink is not mounted yet on those photos, as I can see, but it is highly recommended.

BTW do you still offer few sample chips?
I will send you contact of person developing board for avalon, but wants to switch to bitfury, because of much better spec.

Is it OK?

Milan77

No, it's not the same board. Look at the pictures:


The right side of the board with the 16 ASICs is virtually identical, but the left side is different. On the H-CARD from bitfurystrikesback.com, you see that the left side is much simpler. It only has the power regulator for the chip core voltage and the edge connector.

On my S-HASH board, the left side contains a different power regulator (50A instead of 30A), and a CPU with Ethernet interface. Functionally, they are different too. The H-CARD on bitfurystrikesback.com plugs into an M-BOARD, and the M-BOARD hooks up to a Raspberry Pi computer board with the miner code.

My S-HASH board works stand-alone. You don't need any other boards, no Raspberry Pi. Just hook it up to 12V power supply, plug the ethernet cable in your internet router, configure it for a mining pool, and start making coins.

Of course, the S-HASH board will be more costly to produce than a bitfurystrikesback H-CARD, simply because it has more components and a more expensive power regulator. Of course, when you add the M-BOARD and the Raspberry PI, the S-HASH board will be cheaper to produce. But if you need more hashing power, and stick in additional H-CARDs, the bitfurystrikesback system will win again. So, it all depends on what people need.

The other difference is that the H-CARD runs at a lower core voltage, and will be more power efficient. So, for large applications where electricity is an important part of the cost, that may turn out to be a better choice. For small home miners, the cost of purchase will be more important, and power consumption/heat generation will be secondary. In that case, running the chips faster will get more coins for your coins.  

  not same board.

is this the same board as it was advertised here?
http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/product/25gh-miner-starter-kit-october-delivery/

or this this a new design? it does not tell which board or design is used on bitfurystrikesback.com

This is some nice work cscape, gz!

This line in spitest.c checks if the job is switched:

if (newbuf[16] != oldbuf[16]) { /* Job switched! Upload current vector and start processing new one! */

When a job switches, all nonces have been scanned (actually not all, as the cores only scan 756 out of every 1024 possibilities). While the cores work on the first job, you must prepare the next job, and send it to the chip. As soon as the job is finished, the chip will start on the next one, and you can read the results of the first. When the chip has produced some nonces they need to be decoded and checked in various ways (see spitest.c code).