We are all waiting anxiously to see what wafer 3 holds.. but it may be that all 6 wafers suffer and we'll need ot dig into 7+ but that won't stop us from shipping.
Wafer 1 was burned but power draw was only 1.76w/GH
Just a quick update, we've managed to get the power down to less than 150w just on firmware updates alone and there's still a big area we are tweaking that will likely increase the hashrate a bit.. if it works out like we are thinking it might, we'd be at ~34 GH/s at less than 150w merely on software tweaks. Once the hardware tweaks in the labs, taht will come down even further.
Wafer 1 was ONLY, 1.76w/GH. ONLY. That still means the jalapeno doesn't exist, and the minirig uses 2640 watts. They knew this a month ago, and said the problem wasn't with the chips, it was with the test rig, then the problem wasn't with the chips, it was with the boards. Everything he said today counters The update from a month ago(yeah, it really has been a month).
4 March 2013 Update
Today the bumped wafers were confirmed at the packaging facility and they have been "bumped nicely," so all is well as far as bumping goes. Packaging is currently scheduled to be done on Wednesday, although that's subject to change, I don't see any reason that is going to change at the moment.
The chips achieved 350 MHz hashing on 4 engines as well. We are going to have to wait until the chips are packaged to take the chips higher than that with more cores, as the test rig is not able to supply enough power and there are some wire bond issues that make it unstable beyond that. Once the chips are packaged, they will be tested more fully. Regardless, the chips are hashing properly and all IO appears to be correct, which is the important part. I will update when further testing is complete.
Timeline for the second set of 6 wafers is currently scheduled several days out after we have a successful test of the packaging (they'll have to make their way through bumping and packaging as well) and then the remainder is scheduled for ~7 days after that. I can't be more specific with regards to a date on the 6 wafers yet, as I don't have specific dates. I will update once I do.
1. A month ago he said they processed 5 wafers, now he says they're waiting for the third wafer
2. So the test wafer ran at 1.76w/GH only running 4 engines, and only running at 350mhz. How could they not expect higher power usage when running more than 4 engines, and running at 500mhz.
3. again, saying the second set of 6 wafers, when they only processed 1 wafer out of the first set of 6?
1/4 of the chip at 70% clockrate used 1.76w/GH.