Topic: Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board - page 117. (Read 286370 times)

Make it optional.

It's not a strange question and we didn't design it for any specific format. This time we just wanted to do something simple and that is what Cairnsmore1 is.

There are 2 things under consideration here.The first is that for the next generation we do design either with a specific case or racking in mind. We are also considering what we might do with the current Cairnsmore1 and we might do a simple case for these. Worst problem is then is the cost of shipping such a case.

Hey Yohan,

I know this may sound like a strange question, but is there any mass produced case that would fit the quad board? It looks to be roughly the same size as a PC104 board, but I doubt any of the mounting holes match.

Until we publish the data, or somebody else does, that's an academic question. Some patience is required but not too much longer to wait now.

Yohan

Could a 8 or even 12 chip board bring the price down to match BFL's offering in price/performance ?

Yes, I am making some assumptions. But as I said, it's more a matter of testing. as far as the design is concerned there is no reason to believe the icarus bitstream won't work out of the box. And worse case it may require some tweaking of the control fpga's bitstream to adjust communications to be more "within the range" of the icarus. But ultimately the board is designed to run the icarus bitstream AS-IS. (without any alterations). IE you could flash a binary bitstream to them from icarus and it should not know it's not on an icarus board.

So yes, I assume with their available skillset and experience they can have this thing with an icarus bitstream on it for ship day. (and I could be proven wrong on that, if so, so be it )

Excellent Glad I could help...

(damn these internets and their inability to convey the subtlety of inter-personal interaction!)

Its not a Delta AFB1212. There is no reason to EVER use non-enterprise/industrial fans in a computer.

http://www.delta.com.tw/product/cp/dcfans/download/pdf/AFB/AFB120x120x38mm.pdf

They make ones that are slower/quieter than what most people are used to from Delta (although, if you're worried about noise, taking a faster than and undervolting to 5v is often superior, as is ramping voltage on chip temp; it also reduces wear greatly).

Sorry, didn't mean to offend. your post implied you didn't realize it was a preorder, so I was clarifying. I was mistaken.

As for there being no specs, that's not accurate. There are tons of specs. Hardware specs. IE we know what chips, we know how many, we know how they are arranged (to some degree) we know the list of features on the board, it's power supply circuit capabilities, and it's communications capabilities. And we know it's price. We can make fairly clean educated guesses by the fact that the board was designed to be 100% wire to wire compatible with an Icarus (2 of them side by side). With added features. And due to the nature of how FPGAs work, we can safely assume the icarus bitstream will run on it. (because of the addition of the flexible "control" FPGA).

By knowing that the FPGAs are identical, and that they will run the icarus bitstream what that allows us to assume is that they will see very similar hashing rate to 2x the icarus board at roughly 2x the power consumption of an icarus board (same power efficiency roughly). At $640/board that's $160 per FPGA for an S6LX150. Where the Icarus was $470 (for the last 50) or $500+ prior to that (for most of the boards out there). Meaning approx $250/fpga. That leaves a lot of wiggle room in the stats while still keeping this option more profitable than the Icarus. Which is why people are jumping on the pre-order (in my opinion anyway)

So yes there is no firm hashrate and power stats yet, but there are plenty of specs out that are firm. In addition Enterpoint has been doing VERY good at meeting their promises, and being very open and active communication in this thread. And they have said they are testing, once they've confirmed it can hash and have stats on that, they will post them (before the sale of the board).

Nobody has one but Enterpoint right now, but they should be shipping the first couple units out within a week or two.

Until then we're all in the same boat waiting.

thanks for defining "pre-order" I was having a lot of trouble with that.

and yes you helped a lot.. there are no specs at all just guesses.. thanks!

They are currently in pre-order. (meaning they haven't shipped any yet). People here are pre-ordering (no money changes hands until they are ready to ship). Also there is a fair bit of confidence in Enterpoint's ability to deliver. The pre-order is at a reduced price, so people are taking advantage of it to get cheap, efficient, hashing power.

There are speculative stats, but no confirmed 100% firm stats yet. Enterpoint is still doing testing on their prototype boards. Once they have validated they can post real numbers. Right now the info from enterpoint is that it will run Icarus bitstream as-is. Meaning 190MHash/s per FPGA (4x FPGAs). But there is hints that it will have dynamic clock control (from the 5th FPGA) which is something icarus can't do. Meaning it could potentially overclock and out-perform the Icarus if cooled well (it has heat sensors so it will throttle back if overheating to protect from damage). But this is all unconfirmed. The feature is there, but whether it will provide any hashing benefits in the immediate release window is unknown. It may require a more "custom" bitstream to use all the hardware features on the board.

So that said, the expectation is that the board will draw somewhere under 50Watt (based on the power supplies on the board, and the fact the chips are identical to the icarus, and using the icarus bitstream should draw almost exactly what 2x icarus do, plus a watt or two in overhead for the added circuitry on the board), and provide anywhere from (speculation based on above info) 760MHash/s to 850MHash/s depending (based on the Icarus firmware).

There is also the option it's performance can increase with a new bitstream. If we can get the chips up to 250MHash/chip for example, that's 1GHash/s even per board. (but again, speculation, based on the fact that at least one other on the forum claims to have a bitstream running at 250MHash/chip)

Does that help?

sorry I havent been watching the thread but..has anyone even got one of these to mine? is there any specs - mh/s.. watts.. ? or is everyone just impulse buying and hoping for the best?

From the clues in the thread so far just over a 120mm fan wide and about one and a half long judging from the picture above..

I couldn't easily find this, but what are the dimensions of the board?

FAN spec looks good but I looked up the nearest distributor and no listing of the 12cm model that I could so it sort of suggests that it's very new and maybe not quite available yet.

We are committed anyway in a large way to the Arctic F12. It's pretty quiet and more to the point available in large numbers to us in a short leadtime. When you start looking at the quantities we are buying many of them have to take the boat from china and that's usually 6 weeks min delivery.

If people want they have the option to change the fan themselves it will be simple enough to do that.

VAT

UK VAT applies to all sales to the UK. It also applies to other EU countries unless we are dealing with an entitly like a company that has a local VAT number which we have to check and fully verify before we sell without applying VAT. We do then have to report all of these VAT free sales via ECSL so the EU does track this. The end entity then still has to VAT but it is in their own local system which is at local rate. I think most countries are similar rates to our 20%.

Outside of the EU we don't charge VAT but local taxes or duties may apply which will be usually collected by the courier.

Is this confirmed ? 400 GBP sounded so much better than 480 now

Don't know how much the price difference is in the UK, but you might want to consider using this fan:

http://www.silenx.com/quiet.fans.asp?sku=efx-12-15

More quiet, good air flow and fairly cheap. This one is thanks for Fizzisist for making me a fan (pun intended)!

Pre-ordered four pcs... 

Keep in mind that is without VAT which is about +20% in most european countries.