Does the asic rig really need professional grade ISP ? What prevent AM from renting apartment with electricity included and mine the shit out of it ?
Cooling, electrical availability, and security. Also, most apartment complexes forbid commercial use.
Lets take Avalon as an example, the numbers should be similar to ASICMINER boards due to similar tech.
A 3 module Avalon would need 600w to do 66gh. 600w on 120v is 5 amps. You can put 3 of these on a standard NEMA 5-15 120v line, or 15 amps to run 198gh. This is equivalent to 8 amps on Euro 230v, so you could plug 6 of these on a single circuit if you're using an appropriate 230v/30a circuit. This is also approximately 9 watts per gh.
This also means you need about 2050 BTU/hr cooling per unit. Home air conditioning units are usually low efficiency and non-redundant, and are often sold in 9000 or 12000 BTU sizes and are not meant to run 24/7. A 9000 BTU unit could service 3 units and could wear out during the course of a really hot summer. A 9000 BTU air conditioner could use 600 or more watts.
So, for every 3 units, you're using 1800 + 600w, or 20a on 120v, or to round up to the least common multiple between 15 and 20, 12 units would take 60a. 60a would be 4 circuits, or probably all an average apartment in the US has that isn't dedicated to water heater, heat/cooling, oven, or fridge.
In the US, an apartment, even a small one in a unpopulated area, could go for $1000-1500/mo. For that, you're getting no building security, having to pay for your own cooling, having to staff your own on site techs, for 12 units that do 792GH.
Instead, he could do business with a DC that handles high compute density customers, and pay $2000-2500/mo per rack, get 4 120v 20a circuits, security, redundant cooling, and on site techs as part of the cost, and given 9 watts per gh, and given 9600w per rack, you'd end up with about 1067gh or approximately 12 4 module Avalons or 16 3 module Avalons.
Given the shape of the Avalon case is approximately 4U and using 4 module Avalons you can put 1584gh physically into a single rack, given the 80a 120v budget, 1056gh, leaving 24U empty or 1/3rd of the rack or 2U in between each unit.
Only problem with traditional datacenters is that the are spec'd out for much lower power density devices.. There aren't really any other computing devices that have this high power density. Even rack servers aren't nearly this dense. IE: You need way more power and cooling for the same amount of square footage.
Oh, I completely agree. the company I'm trying to startup is focusing directly on customers like friedcat. Its very not easy, and its a somewhat niche market (many would be customers couldn't even afford to fill a rack).
