Update 5/9/2014
1. The Minion has arrived.
a. Has been tested at 120Ghash. The power measured at the wall was 150Watt. This includes the 8% loss of the PSU and currently 20% on the DC/DC converter. This translates on 0.92W/Ghash at the chip level. We have asked the ASIC designers to come to our office to study how to further improve the power efficiency.
b. The expected loss on the DC/DC should be around 10%. We have identified that part of the power used is lost by the inductor. A new customised inductor is scheduled to arrive in one week.
b. We decided to write a software application which will produce a full report to include details on voltage, speed and efficiency at all ranges. Estimated time to completion is up to 3 weeks but this additional feature will not affect the shipping schedule.
c. We believe that further overclocking is available, further tests are scheduled after we complete the assembly of the 200A board tomorrow.
2. All Minion orders have been shipped today.
3. Most of the X3 and X1 PSUs have been delivered are now in stock.
4. The majority of the heatsinks have been manufactured.
5. The first lot of X3 cases has been received. (Aluminium alloy)
6. The control board assembly has just been completed. This is behind schedule and we are not confident at this stage that we can write the LCD driver in useful time for first shipments. If this is the case we will release firmware updates to enable the LCD functionality.
7. The first batch of LCDs was delayed 1 day and is now due to arrive tomorrow.
8. Unfortunately we have been told that the X1 case will not be delivered in time. If the X1 miners will not be ready at the same time with our X3 miners we made a contingency plan to start hashing with our own X3 units for our X1 customers affected by this delay. Bitcoins mined on their behalf will be transferred accordingly. Full details will be announced directly to customers, therefore please do not flood our customer support with tickets regarding on how to receive Bitcoins.
9. Our main PCB assembly factory failed to initiate the assembly 2 days ago as scheduled. We were forced to switch the assembly production with another local factory which is now scheduled to start the assembly tomorrow.
10. X3s are scheduled to start shipping early next week.
Pictures
http://ecointalk.net/gallery/album/20-09-may-2014-progress-update/