Topic: Community brainpan - please discuss and debate desirable features for a miner - page 6. (Read 5838 times)
June 22, 2016, 04:27:41 PM
Just throwing this out there, but that's pretty freakin' not helpful at all obvious and simplistic surface-level suggestions.
June 22, 2016, 04:22:29 PM
actually delivered on time and on spec
June 22, 2016, 04:21:27 PM
Just keep it as simple & cheap & as easy to use as possible 
June 22, 2016, 11:00:53 AM
So, folks who know me on here know I have an interest in miner design. I have my ideas on how to do things and what is "good" and "not good", but plenty of other people also have their own ideas.
So I would like, if possible, to use this thread to facilitate civilised debate over possible features for a consumer-grade miner. Let's assume the machine sits in the spectrum of Avalon6 and S7 for general size and power consumption. Those attributes are fixed.
I'd like to see what the community consensus is about such items as integrated controllers (like Bitmain) versus external chainable controllers (like Avalon uses), or using purpose-designed cabling and protocols (lke Bitmain) versus a more generic bus (like ASICMiner's UART or Rockminer's USB) to connect. What do we want to see for power interfacing, or voltage control? Should hashboards have sub-controllers or be dumb and driven directly by the central controller? Stuff like that.
Partly I'm interested to see where my own ideas line up with the community at large, and partly I want to draw from the collective (and collectively overwhelming) variety of expertise present here, the end result of which should assist in designing an actual miner with the hopes that it's "the best". That part of the goal should be no surprise to anyone.
So, let's start today's discussion and start picking things apart.
I like the single-fan tube concept of the Avalon6, but would like to see heatsinks on both sides of the board. This isn't always possible, and with a string-topology miner can become dangerous. However, in designs like the A1 Dragon and AntMiner S3, having chip-side and PCB-side heatsinks allowed for efficient heat transfer without a lot of fan noise. Does the decreased Tca outweigh the risk of failure due to electrical short circuits through the PCB-side heatsink, and the extra milling requirements of at least one of the heatsinks to avoid contact with other components?
I like the daisy-chaining concept that Avalon used in the -4 and -6 machines. I'm not overly fond of the required USB dongle signal converter, and would prefer to keep operating requirements a bit simpler. Jstefanop mentioned some weeks ago an idea to make small (~20W) miners with USB connectivity, and each daisy-chainable. That would require a 2-output hub chip in each miner, which is definitely fun but I'm not sure if that's better than just using a hub. I think star topology afforded by a hub would be better (certainly more fault-tolerant) than a daisychain of miners. Does the availability and affordability of USB hubs and cabling, and the maintainability and fault-tolerance of a tree layout versus chaining, outweigh the potential software and hardware overhead (and physical connection reliability concerns) of using USB versus a more primitive protocol for miner interconnection?
Any chaining like this will only matter if the miner uses an external controller. This reduces overhead for a fleet of miners, and makes administration easier (with a single point of access). However, the controller becomes a single point of failure for what could be a fairly large operation, and distributed control software leveraging cgminer API functions already exists. Does the ease of administration, ease of replacement, and general reduction in equipment overhead for a single central controller outweigh the cost of single-point failure? Is it better to have a completely self-contained controller (like seen on Antminers, requiring only a network connection) in every miner unit?
If using an external controller, higher-level protocol or not, it makes sense to have an intermediary microcontroller on the hashboard (or, in the case of Avalon6, on a separate board that talks to the hashboards directly) which handles all upstream communication, and multiplexes chip-bound data, fan control and sensor reading. Would it make sense to have this integrated at the board level even if the miner has a self-contained controller? This increases board-level hardware complexity, but can also add features like semi-autonomous fan control in emergency situations when the controller software is exhibiting erratic behavior (for example, S5 overheats). It could also be responsible for implementing changes at the board's voltage regulators, in the case that adjustable core voltage is desired; you cannot convince me adjustable core voltage is not a mandatory feature, so something will need to do it.
So, lets get started.
So I would like, if possible, to use this thread to facilitate civilised debate over possible features for a consumer-grade miner. Let's assume the machine sits in the spectrum of Avalon6 and S7 for general size and power consumption. Those attributes are fixed.
I'd like to see what the community consensus is about such items as integrated controllers (like Bitmain) versus external chainable controllers (like Avalon uses), or using purpose-designed cabling and protocols (lke Bitmain) versus a more generic bus (like ASICMiner's UART or Rockminer's USB) to connect. What do we want to see for power interfacing, or voltage control? Should hashboards have sub-controllers or be dumb and driven directly by the central controller? Stuff like that.
Partly I'm interested to see where my own ideas line up with the community at large, and partly I want to draw from the collective (and collectively overwhelming) variety of expertise present here, the end result of which should assist in designing an actual miner with the hopes that it's "the best". That part of the goal should be no surprise to anyone.
So, let's start today's discussion and start picking things apart.
I like the single-fan tube concept of the Avalon6, but would like to see heatsinks on both sides of the board. This isn't always possible, and with a string-topology miner can become dangerous. However, in designs like the A1 Dragon and AntMiner S3, having chip-side and PCB-side heatsinks allowed for efficient heat transfer without a lot of fan noise. Does the decreased Tca outweigh the risk of failure due to electrical short circuits through the PCB-side heatsink, and the extra milling requirements of at least one of the heatsinks to avoid contact with other components?
I like the daisy-chaining concept that Avalon used in the -4 and -6 machines. I'm not overly fond of the required USB dongle signal converter, and would prefer to keep operating requirements a bit simpler. Jstefanop mentioned some weeks ago an idea to make small (~20W) miners with USB connectivity, and each daisy-chainable. That would require a 2-output hub chip in each miner, which is definitely fun but I'm not sure if that's better than just using a hub. I think star topology afforded by a hub would be better (certainly more fault-tolerant) than a daisychain of miners. Does the availability and affordability of USB hubs and cabling, and the maintainability and fault-tolerance of a tree layout versus chaining, outweigh the potential software and hardware overhead (and physical connection reliability concerns) of using USB versus a more primitive protocol for miner interconnection?
Any chaining like this will only matter if the miner uses an external controller. This reduces overhead for a fleet of miners, and makes administration easier (with a single point of access). However, the controller becomes a single point of failure for what could be a fairly large operation, and distributed control software leveraging cgminer API functions already exists. Does the ease of administration, ease of replacement, and general reduction in equipment overhead for a single central controller outweigh the cost of single-point failure? Is it better to have a completely self-contained controller (like seen on Antminers, requiring only a network connection) in every miner unit?
If using an external controller, higher-level protocol or not, it makes sense to have an intermediary microcontroller on the hashboard (or, in the case of Avalon6, on a separate board that talks to the hashboards directly) which handles all upstream communication, and multiplexes chip-bound data, fan control and sensor reading. Would it make sense to have this integrated at the board level even if the miner has a self-contained controller? This increases board-level hardware complexity, but can also add features like semi-autonomous fan control in emergency situations when the controller software is exhibiting erratic behavior (for example, S5 overheats). It could also be responsible for implementing changes at the board's voltage regulators, in the case that adjustable core voltage is desired; you cannot convince me adjustable core voltage is not a mandatory feature, so something will need to do it.
So, lets get started.
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