Topic: [Coincraft or Minion 28nm] - Meeting for Group Buy Chip to Miner (DIY: THE WASP) - page 2. (Read 7021 times)

Yes seems pretty clear we have enough people to move this forward.

I vote for skype or google hangout, or I can host us a TS3/Vent/Mumble server.

... we should form a group of interested person ... get a communication plattform like IRC ... and move this project forward ... .-)

Yes in total agreement. Now how to move this forward taking those excellent points in mind?

I think given the density that can be achieved a run of 125 of these 4 chip boards might be something to go for now and work concurrently on alternative uses for them firmware wise as they are being designed. Also a controller board is the right way to go I believe and makes these units modular but very manageable given they will not need to be all that large. Guessing something like 9x9cm. The other possibility is FPGAs could also be interchangeable in this system should scrypt coins miners become available soon.

I would totally do a submersion oil build. I have extra radiators and pumps from old Watercooling systems I can use to cool the oil already.

Following with interest 

I fully support the idea and believe in the community collective with detailed DIY service or some of the community members stepping up to provide a low cost assembly for those that can't or won't chance assembly.  As long as it is expandable as mentioned similar to the hive reference that would allow scalability.  I have not done enough research to even throw my hat in the ring as to "What else" ASICs can do to comment intelligently on that front.  As far as the price goes That's a probability and statistics professors dream problem.  There are inverse relationships that are interdependent on each other as you know:

Price
Time to market
Difficulty

It's a balancing act but a simple economics equation.  If they can be created and shipped while the projections show a probable ROI they will sell plain and simple.  If they are close to ROI, but can be expanded with expected dropping prices for each batch that then project ROI the original batch has a higher chance of selling than being a stand alone product.

At $1700 as I mentioned doing 200Ghash they would need to be out in November and at 400Ghash December.  That's using genesis block projections, but there are people that have more in depth projections as well beyond the readily available sites.  The price point is determined by the time and difficulty projections of that time unfortunately not the hardware costs themselves to assure they will sell!

I could envision a controller board that could either daisy chain other boards together or provide a backplane for hashing boards.  Yes this currently exists, but what I see is chip sockets that are similar to motherboard CPU slots insert chip snap down chip, heat sink, cooling and go.  Controller sees it configures and hashing begins!  This expandable board system and controller would allow for continued growth with changing technology smaller faster chips etc.  This then at that point is just a matter of device power consumption as long as each board released projects towards ROI and you could continue to use the original controller with firmware updates etc.  Just how I'm seeing it as instead of replacing devices as they get beyond useful life you can continue to use the same rig system just replacing or adding hashing boards indefinitely.  Maybe even once the additional use of ASICs is found there could be a trade in program or something similar.

That's a lot of tangents, but I think the power beyond ROI projections is in a future proof controller and expansion system if possible.

Wow.

That is definitely nice in the winter... come summer?

I am kinda keen on oil submersion have components priced out going and have space on the 3rd floor of my building for a test tank something that could hold 100 to 200 of these units and maintain constant temperature year round. PM me or email we can bounce some ideas back and forth.

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Thinking about the "hive".

These units could be racked together so that you can expand a farm pretty quickly. Start with one and add more as you expand. 1 hive can be stacked on another hive for even greater density.

Assuming a dec-jan delivery, My cooling will provided by the 2 4 ft exhaust fans bringing in the 10f outside air .

Wow! That be great but I think we should value your contribution a bit more than that, so I  am sure a collective of members such as this would be willing to work out something that at least covers your costs and a bit to maintain and upkeep the systems? I am thinking cooling is going to be an important part of these newer units where a "turbo" mode doubles the hash.

Pretty rough rough numbers so hard to really say yet.

The point of this is cutting out the "middlemen" to certain degree and going at this from a more collective perspective, so in terms of costs it be a lot more reasonable to do a DIYer or even the novice miner using this methodology, than say purchasing a similar ready made "off-the-shelf" unit from someone else and given that the group buy members are the owners of the project there won't be the same sort of lack of information for the members that can occur. I would hope also that we can look at this rig in some way to upcycle or reuse it for other purposes rather than just a dead miner. There needs to be some sort of way to give ASICs a secondary value if they become redundant as miners. Vanity Address Generating Engine? But yes we have to look very closely at the numbers what sort of target price do we need to make it viable?

Crazy Canadian....

Good luck, hoping for some W1/W16 for Christmas!

For such a community project, I will donate my hosting for the cost for power/cooling. No profit/parts, I would be honored to help out

Definitely something to follow.  Looks like details are coming out this month on the chips pertaining to a data sheet if it hasn't already?

At those numbers (8.5$ per Ghash) and a quick swag at the term it looks like these would need to be ready to ship in around the next 60 days at $1700 per 200 Ghash to make it towards a ROI projection.  Looking at getting them out in November at 200 Ghash or possibly December if they can hit 400 GHash (4.25$ per Ghash) should be a target.  If that isn't realistic or at least close it may be a tough sell!

Feel free to PM me or post more questions.

Basically we are working on some concepts for the miner based on what we know of the chips from this point obviously early days but there seems to be some headroom and longer term ROI for this chip. Potential for alternative cooling as well. We will be working out more details on the plan but feedback here is also welcome so we can work out a fair equity for those doing the hard lifting for design and fab. We are hoping to make a design that will also be able to upcycle so that parts can be reconstituted should there be a new revised chip.

Could be a winner, watching.

This sounds like a interesting opportunity, to get ready for the future mining market ...

I would be willing to be part of it ... also for organizing stuff and such ... I'm from Switzerland, so might be useful for the communication or other stuff with bitmine.ch ... !

Not definite on numbers that can be determined more accurately later but something like this has worked.

Suggested plan:

1. Purchase 500 chips = $50,000 (Depending on numbers of people in the group buy this could be a larger number of chips)
2. Prototype design boards and firmware etc = $5000 not certain but costs for design could be quite low per board and covers EE, SE and LEAD fab in finished chips / boards costs.
3. Members pay for the finished production boards with chips = 150$ or less would need to see the BOM / Gerbers to get the real costs.
4. Shipping out units from various fabrication points = cost of shipping / duties.
5. Gerbers and BOM released for everyone as open source hardware / software.

EE's putting in the design work etc is given percentage of chips / finished boards as sweat equity contribution.
SE's putting in the firmware / software work etc debugging work are given percentage of chips / finished boards as sweat equity contribution.
Lead on fabricators is given percentage of chips / finished boards as sweat equity contribution or slight mark up for time and effort to oversee production.

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What would happen is people would be in a group buy that starts with a chip and ends with a shipped board this way all the costs are covered and shared proportionally by all the members in the Group Buy without the mark up that normal group buys have as everyone is responsible to share the load as it were depending on your initial chip investment. The EE's, SE's and Lead on Fabrication should also be invested to some degree in chips.

10 chips $1000
10 boards $50 / board
Prototype development costs $10 per board.
Shipping $50

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10 boards $1700 (20 Gh/s x 10 = 200 Gh/s and potentially 400 Gh/s)


Note of course some people just want the DIY experience unpopulated boards and parts and chips can be shipped and you can go to town as well. And given the support from the EE people can send fubar boards back to them for repairs in the event of a "meltdown". Still others might want to do their own fabrication and get more chips and resell to the community so they do not need to pay for production form other members. With some minor alterations this is how the BitFury 1 USB made it to production as well from Big Picture Mining Cooperative it works very well as a model for production.

Interesting ... what's the financial plan?

Gotta have a mascot for a group buy like this right?