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Topic: [CLOSED] Bitmine CoinCraft A1 28nm chip distribution / DIY support - page 2. (Read 81295 times)

legendary
Activity: 1029
Merit: 1000
Inquiring minds want to know, what converter/driver/controller chips are you using ...

It's a secret Wink

Quote
... and what does what looks like Q2 do (unless it's paralleled with Q1 or something interesting)

Yes, downside mosfets are in pararell, to minimize loses and increase efficiency.

Quote
The hardest part with A1 software seems to be thinking your software is broken when it's actually the power supply Wink

True. A1's are very demanding, but so far I was able to initialize chain and get proper readings from registers. I hope that today I will be able to  write piece of code, send test job to compute and read back a proper values Wink
sr. member
Activity: 271
Merit: 254
Can anyone confirm on having built a working A1 board?

http://imgur.com/fZuJCUX
No hashes yet, I'm working on software right now...

Smart one, these hi-current 'solder tracks'Smiley
Yeah, copper isn't enough... This 6phase DC/DC converter can output over 300 amps...

Inquiring minds want to know, what converter/driver/controller chips are you using, and what does what looks like Q2 do (unless it's paralleled with Q1 or something interesting). The hardest part with A1 software seems to be thinking your software is broken when it's actually the power supply Wink

I have a board that has solder-wick soldered on to carry additional current in a couple of places.
legendary
Activity: 1029
Merit: 1000
Can anyone confirm on having built a working A1 board?

http://imgur.com/fZuJCUX
No hashes yet, I'm working on software right now...

Smart one, these hi-current 'solder tracks'Smiley
Yeah, copper isn't enough... This 6phase DC/DC converter can output over 300 amps...
sr. member
Activity: 427
Merit: 251
- electronics design|embedded software|verilog -
Can anyone confirm on having built a working A1 board?

http://imgur.com/fZuJCUX
No hashes yet, I'm working on software right now...

Smart one, these hi-current 'solder tracks'Smiley
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
Can anyone confirm on having built a working A1 board?

my reference boards are working
legendary
Activity: 1029
Merit: 1000
Can anyone confirm on having built a working A1 board?

http://imgur.com/fZuJCUX
No hashes yet, I'm working on software right now...
legendary
Activity: 868
Merit: 1000
Cryptotalk.org - Get paid for every post!
Can anyone confirm on having built a working A1 board?
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
userbase++

If you all can confirm a single chip works, it would further motivate me to finish my schematic in KiCAD (and then work on a PCB layout) for the http://grid.coop/Minetor/ concept. Even if I have to have two chips, that would work, but I would have to run them at something like 400mhz or slower because I have a 30W power budget from power-over-ethernet. The real question about is 100mhz silly is what is the system total Gigahash/watt at that clock speed. If you can get away with some serious undervolting, it might actually make sense.

Also see http://bitspjoule.org/hg/nTekminer/rev/8128400e0aad for a patch that uses /usr/local/bin/gpio (from http://wiringpi.com/download-and-install/ ) for reset. I would rather use mercurial and bitbucket, but I will post a git version if that means someone will use it or it gets merged upstream.

I'm aware of wiringPi, but I'm not sure this approach is that much different from what I am currently doing. It is a separate binary that runs with root privileges, albeit set via setuid rather than an explicit sudo. I do like the idea of executing it through a fork() though.
sr. member
Activity: 271
Merit: 254
Integrated into the current cgminer version via the A1 SPI driver today. Some thoughts:

HW_RESET via Pi's GPIO needs elevated privileges and is hardware specific, so I prepared a separate binary for that. Currently HW_RESET is only done once at start, hopefully doing it this way won't be a problem.

The reference board doesn't really have any kind of detection mechanism other than probing the SPI bus, so the board selector is stubbed out.

Also, I was thinking of modifying the set_pll code so that the fb_div never drops below 100, would this be of use?

I'm not sure if these changes would be accepted into the main cgminer branch, since they are not for a commercial product, but if there is any interest, I'd be happy to share the code.
Commercial product or not, as soon as it is used by more than one user, it is worth being integrated. Detection would have to be fine tuned then to distinguish between them, but I can support you on that.

As for the privileged access: if I remember correctly, SPI access usually also requires root access, so it should be no problem integrating the GPIO based HW-reset functionality as part of a dedicated board selector.

Finally, as for limiting the minimum system clock to 100MHz, I have no defined response if that is really a hard limit. If you say you were not able to lock it below that, it would make sense to add a related sanity check to the code (although I doubt that this will be a use case).

I can also confirm that a single chip A1 board did not function by itself. It replied to soft reset, but refused to be enumerated. It functioned fine when plugged as chip-3 into a 2 chip chain, though.
Now this worries me somewhat, since I remember that during the very first bring-up phase we once break the chain after the first chip (shorted MISO/MOSI) and were able to work with only one chip. Are you saying that enumeration does not work at all, or the current driver failed to do so? If you had available a SPI trace of the enumeration command, that would help to ensure it is not the SW failing.

If any of you DIYers get to the point of starting up cgminer, give me a message and we can have a two user userbase Smiley

The devspi should be a usermode driver, so there shouldn't be a need for root. At least that's what I have observed in my adventures. GPIO (on the Pi) on the other hand is usually mmaped to lower memory, thus the best one can do is to drop privileges as soon as the mapping is established, but that would still mean starting as root. I believe this was the reason that legkodymov's bitfury driver from sometime last summer did not get incorporated into cgminer proper. But perhaps I am mistaken and there is a way to do this, in which case I'd be very happy to learn about it.

I realize that running at 100MHz is kind of silly, but one use case I can think of is if you don't have a working cooling solution but really, really want to start hashing tonight Smiley or allow self to keep working while bigger fans are on their way.

One of the boards me and mazurov built had only one of two chips on it, and jumper W1/W2 was soldered in "perpendicularly" to close the MISO and MOSI. Unfortunately, I did not save the log, and that particular board has made the ultimate sacrifice in the time since Sad The testing was done with the simple test prog that I posted earlier, and now that I think harder about it: the chip replied to SOFT_RESET, replied to BIST_TEST (showed up as one chip chain), and I believe it replied to BIST_FIX. Now, IIRC, it did not respond to the READ_REG command that followed if it was alone, but did respond as expected if it was plugged in after (using the chaining plugs) another board as chip 3.

userbase++

If you all can confirm a single chip works, it would further motivate me to finish my schematic in KiCAD (and then work on a PCB layout) for the http://grid.coop/Minetor/ concept. Even if I have to have two chips, that would work, but I would have to run them at something like 400mhz or slower because I have a 30W power budget from power-over-ethernet. The real question about is 100mhz silly is what is the system total Gigahash/watt at that clock speed. If you can get away with some serious undervolting, it might actually make sense.

Also see http://bitspjoule.org/hg/nTekminer/rev/8128400e0aad for a patch that uses /usr/local/bin/gpio (from http://wiringpi.com/download-and-install/ ) for reset. I would rather use mercurial and bitbucket, but I will post a git version if that means someone will use it or it gets merged upstream.
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
Integrated into the current cgminer version via the A1 SPI driver today. Some thoughts:

HW_RESET via Pi's GPIO needs elevated privileges and is hardware specific, so I prepared a separate binary for that. Currently HW_RESET is only done once at start, hopefully doing it this way won't be a problem.

The reference board doesn't really have any kind of detection mechanism other than probing the SPI bus, so the board selector is stubbed out.

Also, I was thinking of modifying the set_pll code so that the fb_div never drops below 100, would this be of use?

I'm not sure if these changes would be accepted into the main cgminer branch, since they are not for a commercial product, but if there is any interest, I'd be happy to share the code.
Commercial product or not, as soon as it is used by more than one user, it is worth being integrated. Detection would have to be fine tuned then to distinguish between them, but I can support you on that.

As for the privileged access: if I remember correctly, SPI access usually also requires root access, so it should be no problem integrating the GPIO based HW-reset functionality as part of a dedicated board selector.

Finally, as for limiting the minimum system clock to 100MHz, I have no defined response if that is really a hard limit. If you say you were not able to lock it below that, it would make sense to add a related sanity check to the code (although I doubt that this will be a use case).

I can also confirm that a single chip A1 board did not function by itself. It replied to soft reset, but refused to be enumerated. It functioned fine when plugged as chip-3 into a 2 chip chain, though.
Now this worries me somewhat, since I remember that during the very first bring-up phase we once break the chain after the first chip (shorted MISO/MOSI) and were able to work with only one chip. Are you saying that enumeration does not work at all, or the current driver failed to do so? If you had available a SPI trace of the enumeration command, that would help to ensure it is not the SW failing.

If any of you DIYers get to the point of starting up cgminer, give me a message and we can have a two user userbase Smiley

The devspi should be a usermode driver, so there shouldn't be a need for root. At least that's what I have observed in my adventures. GPIO (on the Pi) on the other hand is usually mmaped to lower memory, thus the best one can do is to drop privileges as soon as the mapping is established, but that would still mean starting as root. I believe this was the reason that legkodymov's bitfury driver from sometime last summer did not get incorporated into cgminer proper. But perhaps I am mistaken and there is a way to do this, in which case I'd be very happy to learn about it.

I realize that running at 100MHz is kind of silly, but one use case I can think of is if you don't have a working cooling solution but really, really want to start hashing tonight Smiley or allow self to keep working while bigger fans are on their way.

One of the boards me and mazurov built had only one of two chips on it, and jumper W1/W2 was soldered in "perpendicularly" to close the MISO and MOSI. Unfortunately, I did not save the log, and that particular board has made the ultimate sacrifice in the time since Sad The testing was done with the simple test prog that I posted earlier, and now that I think harder about it: the chip replied to SOFT_RESET, replied to BIST_TEST (showed up as one chip chain), and I believe it replied to BIST_FIX. Now, IIRC, it did not respond to the READ_REG command that followed if it was alone, but did respond as expected if it was plugged in after (using the chaining plugs) another board as chip 3.
donator
Activity: 919
Merit: 1000
Integrated into the current cgminer version via the A1 SPI driver today. Some thoughts:

HW_RESET via Pi's GPIO needs elevated privileges and is hardware specific, so I prepared a separate binary for that. Currently HW_RESET is only done once at start, hopefully doing it this way won't be a problem.

The reference board doesn't really have any kind of detection mechanism other than probing the SPI bus, so the board selector is stubbed out.

Also, I was thinking of modifying the set_pll code so that the fb_div never drops below 100, would this be of use?

I'm not sure if these changes would be accepted into the main cgminer branch, since they are not for a commercial product, but if there is any interest, I'd be happy to share the code.
Commercial product or not, as soon as it is used by more than one user, it is worth being integrated. Detection would have to be fine tuned then to distinguish between them, but I can support you on that.

As for the privileged access: if I remember correctly, SPI access usually also requires root access, so it should be no problem integrating the GPIO based HW-reset functionality as part of a dedicated board selector.

Finally, as for limiting the minimum system clock to 100MHz, I have no defined response if that is really a hard limit. If you say you were not able to lock it below that, it would make sense to add a related sanity check to the code (although I doubt that this will be a use case).

I can also confirm that a single chip A1 board did not function by itself. It replied to soft reset, but refused to be enumerated. It functioned fine when plugged as chip-3 into a 2 chip chain, though.
Now this worries me somewhat, since I remember that during the very first bring-up phase we once break the chain after the first chip (shorted MISO/MOSI) and were able to work with only one chip. Are you saying that enumeration does not work at all, or the current driver failed to do so? If you had available a SPI trace of the enumeration command, that would help to ensure it is not the SW failing.
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
so you tried but it did not work?

Yes. There was some issue with initializing
the SPI chain correctly. It looked like a
chain of length '1' was not supported.

I also made a 10 chip A1 board, but never
even populated it. It all took too much time
and we moved on.

But c-cape did the coding, you should ask
him for details.

I can also confirm that a single chip A1 board did not function by itself. It replied to soft reset, but refused to be enumerated. It functioned fine when plugged as chip-3 into a 2 chip chain, though.
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
Integrated into the current cgminer version via the A1 SPI driver today. Some thoughts:

HW_RESET via Pi's GPIO needs elevated privileges and is hardware specific, so I prepared a separate binary for that. Currently HW_RESET is only done once at start, hopefully doing it this way won't be a problem.

The reference board doesn't really have any kind of detection mechanism other than probing the SPI bus, so the board selector is stubbed out.

Also, I was thinking of modifying the set_pll code so that the fb_div never drops below 100, would this be of use?

I'm not sure if these changes would be accepted into the main cgminer branch, since they are not for a commercial product, but if there is any interest, I'd be happy to share the code.
sr. member
Activity: 427
Merit: 251
- electronics design|embedded software|verilog -
so you tried but it did not work?

Yes. There was some issue with initializing
the SPI chain correctly. It looked like a
chain of length '1' was not supported.

I also made a 10 chip A1 board, but never
even populated it. It all took too much time
and we moved on.

But c-cape did the coding, you should ask
him for details.
hero member
Activity: 826
Merit: 1000
°^°
so you tried but it did not work?
sr. member
Activity: 427
Merit: 251
- electronics design|embedded software|verilog -
dont want to derail you too much,
but anyone designes a simple 1-chip A1 board?

i would like to try one A2 chip on it

We made this single chip A1 evaluation board:



Never got it hashing, I not even have a picture
of the real board;)

hero member
Activity: 826
Merit: 1000
°^°
dont want to derail you too much,
but anyone designes a simple 1-chip A1 board?

i would like to try one A2 chip on it
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
After some distractions over the weekend, I finally have some news to report. Using the new PLL formula

Code:
sysclk = (refclk*fbdiv)/(prediv*2^(postdiv-1))

I was able to lower the sysclk to 100MHz, where the chips finally ran at a temp that did not burn my fingers when
touching them (infrared thermometer is on the way). I remember reading somewhere in this thread that chips
could be run at 200MHz without cooling, is that still true? Or does that refer to running them at idle (not under load)?

As a side note: the minimum fb_div appears to be 100. Anything lower would not PLL lock.
sr. member
Activity: 271
Merit: 254
Hello Zefir,

thank you for your response and sharing what you have learned!
I was talking about a CCD200/400, yes. I'm more the software guy so I figured creating my own board, which I very wanted to do, would not make sense at all. Too much to learn from scratch and not enough time to do so. :|


Your experience and observation is why it would benefit (silicon fabs) to do a  AGPLv3 reference design board we can all experiment with. They'd sell more chips if us software/system guys had a full system we could tweak the design for.

I have been thinking about doing a single-chip A1/A2 miner design using KiCad (open source PCB tool) just for that reason.

Well, this is a political topic meanwhile and I can not disclose as much as I would like for now. But I can tell you that this is a perfect example on how idealism was killed by bad business ethics and greed.


So it seems we need to work on our licensing agreements and give them more teeth. Someone will either license the http://q3u.be/patent/q3ube/ from me and I'll get paid up front, or they'll 'steal' the design, and then I will end up bankrupting or owning their company in the resulting GPL violation lawsuit a few years later.

We also have https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner and so it seems like its time to find a silicon fab that can make us a 40nm chip that fits in the A1/A2 footprint for a long-term solution.
donator
Activity: 919
Merit: 1000
Hello Zefir,

thank you for your response and sharing what you have learned!
I was talking about a CCD200/400, yes. I'm more the software guy so I figured creating my own board, which I very wanted to do, would not make sense at all. Too much to learn from scratch and not enough time to do so. :|


Your experience and observation is why it would benefit vendors (or maybe Innosilicon) to do a  AGPLv3 reference design board we can all experiment with. They'd sell more chips if us software/system guys had a full system we could tweak the design for.

I have been thinking about doing a single-chip A1/A2 miner design using KiCad (open source PCB tool) just for that reason.

Well, this is a political topic meanwhile and I can not disclose as much as I would like for now. But I can tell you that this is a perfect example on how idealism was killed by bad business ethics and greed.

As this thread indicates, being open source was mine and Bitmine's goal from the beginning. As you note, the idea was to make everything public and get compensated for the engineering efforts by increased chip sales. Obviously this only worked as long as we were sure that the chip engineering contract will be respected and Bitmine remained the exclusive distributor of A1 chips. The rest of the story is well known meanwhile: chips being sold directly into the market, mass production of mining products driven by foreign open source SW, disruption of mining market.

Don't get me wrong: open source is the way to go and pays off in most cases. In my day job it took me 5 years to convince my boss to go open source and it took another 3 years to notice an economical gain for giving our work away for free. What you get back is free testing / bug fixing and maintenance, leading to a long term higher stability for long-living products. And that's the key killer argument for open source: long-term.

In our bitcoin world things are different: I am not aware of a single mining product that ever passed the prototype state - with a typical lifetime of 3-6 months there is simply not enough time to mature. Consequently, open source (at least for now) can't be economically profitable for the publisher if he has no means to prevent free-riding and plagiarism.


This went slightly off-topic, and despite all said, keep up your open source spirit - it will pay off some day.
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