Topic: [BitCentury] LittleFury USB Bitcoin Miner - Up to ~4GH/s! [CLOSED] *locked* (Read 8960 times)

You might want to change the title of the thread to reflect the new status (or lock it ... or whatever).

It should have been obvious there would be little interest in this product. Just compare it to a 5 Gh/s BFL. Your LittleFury has:

• a lower hash rate
• a higher price
• a longer delivery time

Due to lack of interest; we have decided to discontinue this offering. The handful of users who have placed orders will be happy to know that instead of refunding; we will be hand assembling and fulfilling your orders out of prototype chips. You can expect to receive your devices in August, a full 3 months ahead of schedule.

We are open to leasing our design if anyone is interested in printing usb3 miners from their own chips/reels. Please contact us via PM or E-mail ( info [at] bitcentury dot io ) to discuss arrangements.

got my eyes on this thread, hopefully the price can be a bit lowered

Or coinbase or localbitcoins.

It has something to do with a current mirror, I only got
a sketchy schematic from bitfury that was used for doing
SPICE runs I guess. Not of much help though:)

intron

I'm very curious about that too. It's a big advantage. My guess is that inside is simple OPAMP. Connect output with some power transistor (outside chip) and you can have regulated high amp zener diode. This diode will hold voltage at settled point while delivering current to chips that will need more "juice". There will be some power loses but if chips will draw very same current then this losses should be minimal. But DC/DC converted will be simpler, smaller and more efficient. You can do this with every chip, mounting opamp and power transistor outside package.
But it's all guesses and I may be wrong
Documentation from Bitfury is needed ASAP

Will this device be 'string powered'? It's a feature that is on the
bitfury ASIC and makes it possible to power them in series. Could
potentially cut the current requirements in half.

I myself have still no idea how this works however:)

intron

That will be cool. If these guys were priced out at parity with BFL stuff (I know I know... my Jally has mined out 6 BTC already though) I would jump on with a preorder or two. Anything more than the $50/ Gh/s that the BFL is approximately at is too rich for my blood. I'll just keep buying more BFL miners. I hope this product is a great success though. More success in the market will bring down prices across the board. And more TH/s will squeeze out the smaller players!

The first devices are scheduled to be delivered in August 2012.

Let me clarify - Have any devices powered by these chips been sold and are currently in use by anyone that is a consumer? I'm not talking about sample chips used for development, etc.

Yes, you can see them in action on our website at www.bitcentury.io

Do Bitfury chips exist yet?

brambi1 has the point. Just see how many steps there are if you want to buy BTC on MtGox. How many steps, and how much time all that takes.

I would think about it at 150 to 200$... And you can make it work at that price easy... If not you someone else will...

Too expensive for such a pre-order. I think you can do it either with a relative high price in November when you have the miners in hand or pre sell it now with a lower price.

Hi kaerf,
It's possible to up the hashing rate of the chip, but there are critical power usage and thermal concerns above certain levels. We wanted to start off with conservative numbers and design, rather than over promise. Further, we have not finished testing the chip at these higher hash rates (beyond 2.4GH/s). For more details on the tests we have performed so far and the efficiency ratings, you can read this blog post here: https://bitcentury.io/blog/initial-testing-of-bitfury-asic   (scroll to the very bottom of the post)

You can see that at 2.4GH/s the bare chip (no heat sink in these tests) is already at 76 degrees celcius and consuming 1.7W of power, which also translates to a W/GH efficiency  that is ~45% worse than the 2.082 GH/s per chip we're currently achieving.  So, while we can cool the chips down by various methods, we can't really do a whole lot about the significant power consumption increases. With USB3 having a wall of 4.5W's, even just at 2.4GH/s (nevermind 3 or 3.5 or the max theoretical 5), the power consumption of 3x chips would already exceed the 4.5W limit (3chips x 1.78W=5.34W).

As per our latest video, you can see that at 2GH/s, Nigel was able to touch the chip for many seconds in a row. In fact we had some earlier takes of similar video with him touching the chip even longer, without burning his fingers - but this was with a heat sink as shown in the video. Once we go above 2GH/s temperature rises quickly and we were also contemplating in the background safety issues around much higher hash rates considering that this USB product is pretty much targeted at people new to bitcoin, or those who are not wanting to do hardware assembly etc; as such, safety is an important consideration. Cooling fins and other methods probably will help that, we are currently looking into that, but wanted to get a product announcement out the door ASAP.

Cheers,
Luis

Open an account on MtGox, use BWT to finance your account in USD, buy BTC for USD, withdraw BTC to your wallet.

Cheers,
kev

or up the hashing power. Since you're using usb3, you should be able to squeeze more than 4 GH out of 2 chips...even try moving to a 3 chip solution.

I'd gladly pay that price now and order a ton of them. The problem is your eta is November which is too much money for the performance. Like mentioned, these would have to be around $150 each if your shipping them in November. The difficulty is going to skyrocket by then and ROI would take to long at current BTC value.