Topic: GekkoScience BM1384 Project Development Discussion - page 57. (Read 146665 times)

I'd be surprised if more than 200 Prisma units sold in the US, but I'll be glad to re-purpose the heatsinks I've stockpiled.

Yes, if a patent is to happen it'll have to happen with the help of someone experienced in that neighborhood already. We can talk about that later, sure.


Yep, the KISS (or we like to say SDR) is part of why I hate high-power-density stuff like KNC and HashFast put out, because when the only way to cool something is with water and the best "home scale" way to do that adds a hundred bucks in strap-on equipment that leaks and dies entirely too often, I prefer to dodge it. Yep, if someone can solve convective flow liquid cooling in a small, clean, reliable and self-contained manner that'd be pretty nice but until then I'm going to lean on monolithic heatsinks and easily replaceable reliable fans.


I'll make boards that can bolt onto the S[odd] chassis, but I won't exceed the power density which their native heatsinks can handle on air cooling. Not until everyone has something else, anyway. The point is to make things cheap, efficient and accessible, so building things designed to fit onto very simple reliable and plentiful chassis is dumb if they don't actually work on that chassis.



Yep, the Prisma is nicely dense. One of the issues with the Prisma, as you've mentioned, is that it was perhaps too dense and the tail-end chips were running pretty hot. I speculate that top-cooling a designed-to-be-top-cooled chip will probably have a better Tcs than the Prisma chips cooled through the board onto a heatsink with no TIM. I also speculate that a design made to be underclocked can probably last a lot longer on those heatsinks than one running full power constantly. I also speculate that there are thousands of bare Prisma heatsinks running around the US waiting for someone to either recycle or repurpose them. I also speculate that the form factor of the board would work nicely with rectangular heatsinks blade-style in a 2KW 5TH 3U machine. It should also continue to work well in whatever the heck liquid cooling scenario you want to come up with. So I think I'll continue that plan for now.


&c, &c...

I'm going to avoid making anything for which liquid cooling is a requirement, at least on my own project time. If you want to commission a design that dense, we can talk numbers, but for the reasons given above I won't ask the community in general to buy watercool-required hardware. If it's something like the C1 where you strap air-coolable boards to a heatsink in higher density, sure that's just fine. I won't build a single S[odd] sized board that pushes out more power than a single S[odd] heatsink and fan can handle though, because that does not serve the community at large which has a million heatsinks and fans available but may not want to pay even more for some newfangled specific setup just yet.

I'm definitely aiming to serve people in the sub-500TH market, but I'd prefer to serve people in the sub-50TH market. Sub-5TH market even. One thousand miners in one thousand homes is a heck of a lot less central than one thousand miners in ten warehouses. It spreads out a lot of things, encourages people to learn and do for themselves, and doesn't assist in rich people getting richer (at least not near as directly). Yet another reason we will not be offering bulk discounts on our Compacs, Amitas and TypeZeros - the price is the price no matter how much money you do or do not already have.

Yeah, I'd really like to know who's in charge of the BE300. That chip is the reason we wanted to build miners in the first place - as soon as the sample data was released, Novak and I spent a full day and a half talking over how we'd do it if we were going to build a miner using those chips.

Regarding patents and patenting:
We're more alike than you might think. I stayed an E-5 in the Navy precisely because I loved the tech versus the paperwork (Was THE senior E-5 in the Navy for almost a decade till I got caught and was forced to advance or get busted to an E-4.)

For some types of patents the process has become much simpler and dramatically cheaper. As is evidenced by http://www.legalzoom.com/sem/ip/patent/patent-lb.html?kid=07705699-061f-2529-72f2-00004a8dcce3&cvokid=07705699-061f-2529-72f2-00004a8dcce3&keyword=legalzoom%20provisional%20patent&matchtype=broad&cvosrc=ppc.google.legalzoom%20provisional%20patent&gclid=COLYl-qWxcUCFQ4yaQodDIIA_w

Jesus, look at that URL. Anyway.
Depending on your upcoming design(s), we would entertain taking on the patenting process BS and is something we can converse about when the time is ripe.

Regarding non-air cooling:
None taken. But let's see if I can make a case for a liquid cooled design for the masses. Air is a REALLY low density liquid. As such, there is a finite limit on how much cooling can be packed into consumer product. That limits profitability of an air cooled consumer design. Which makes them less profitable than an "industrial" design. Traditionally, liquid cooling adds several levels of complexity and failure points, most notably the mechanism to pump fluid. Now if one could design a liquid cooling system that used convection to move the fluid. . . .  This also solves the noise issues that plague a home design that can largely be ignored in a DC. And while pumps have a lower MTBF, fans fail too. And then there's the KISS principle.

Standardization is what made the small block Chevy engines/transmissions, Ford Model A, and Ford 9N/2N/8N tractors advanceable and popular designs. Combined with their affordability. If I were designing something, anything, I'd lean towards something that had become the "defacto standard". In the Bitcoin mining H/W world, I think, hands down, the S1/S3/C1/S5/S? boards physical dimensions account for the majority of the hashing power out there. I think I'd steer clear of a Prisma physical dimensions design and focus on packing the largest amount of hashing power into a board that "bolts up" to a S1/S3/C1/S5/S? cooling device. Be it air, waterblock, or immersion. If it had an edge card connector that plugged into a server PSU all the better, poke poke. 

I contend that if you put that much hashing power on a board that meets those physical dimensions (or Prisma dimensionality) that it will no longer be able to be cooled by air without ridiculously massive heatsinks.

The Prisma design is nicely dense, but is finicky with regard to heat. Due to the huge surface area required "on air" to keep them from burning up (here I'm referring to the cooling not a flawed circuit card design). Friedcat's design to "tube" the heatsinks was brilliant but required from a heat dissipation standpoint (and that required a "one off" heatsink design). Hash chip (BE200) temperature from the front to back vary enormously. The last chain of chips on each board in a properly operating Prisma have got to be on the edge of max Tj. I'm surprised they survive. Waterblock and immersion cooling solves this issue.

IMHO, to keep the consumer/home hasher "in the game" of BTC mining (as this strengthens the BTC ecosystem) they need the kind of industrial strength high density hashing power that large farms can afford to implement. In effect what I'm talking about is miniaturizing a mining farm into a desktop unit from a W/GH/s standpoint. Superior high density board designs (efficient and flexible) are a component of this solution, but, pretty sure you can't do that "on air". Cuz' if one could, the "big boys" would be doing it. Haven't ever heard of a large mining concern that doesn't have a facilities chilled water system, for a reason. This becomes all the more important because home hashers typically buy electricity at a premium price (residential rates).

These small scale mining issues will become more, not less, pronounced as transistor size decreases and eventually bumps into the quantum wall at or below 12nm (Dec 2015 - Feb 2016 ?). The "big guys" will be able to afford and manage those high density designs because they cool with a denser liquid that is enabled by economies of scale. Something the home hasher, currently, can't afford to do.

Am reasonably confident that if you'all produce a high density design that has a common dimensionality (S1/S3/C1/S5/S?) and it can't be cooled by air (in a reasonable volume), this community will figure out a plethora of ways to cool it. Like yourselves, there are some pretty bright bulbs in this box. And am not saying, by any stretch, that I'm included in that box.

First step is to get a board to work with because it's obvious that the "big 4" don't give a F@#$ about us little guys. Little being defined as sub 500TH/s mining operations.

Another key element in securing the survivability of the "little guy" is a source of state of the art hashing chips. Because a board design can only be as good as the components on the board. AM could have been this if they hadn't imploded. And why I'm REALLY interested in who owns the IP for the BE300. But those are topics for other posts in other threads.

Heading out to spend the obligatory Fathers Day w/kids and grandkids, catch ya'all l8r.
 

Don't worry come monday parts arrive and sidehack on!

I am wearing the t-shirt as I type.

Now you have to do a TypeZero board with 42 chips

What I meant about costs regarding patents is, if the budget for the project so far has been about $600 I don't think we're gonna be able to scrape together however many thousands of dollars it takes to file a patent claim. I'm also sorta allergic to BS, and every patent I've ever [tried to] read makes almost no sense because any technical information is completely obscured in stupid legal language. I mean if someone wants to go through what I put together, decide if it's patentable, translate the technical information into Vogon and push it through the system pro-bono, sure we can patent some of the TypeZero stuff. But right now I'm a little more concerned with being one of two engineers in a two-man business than being a paperpusher. You may be right about everything, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm broke and undertrained in legal documentation.

Also, and no offense to PlanetCrypto because I know he really likes liquid cooling, but I really don't care much about it. There's just something reliably low-tech about a heatsink and fan that makes things so much easier for regular people to work with, and since making things regular people want to work with is our priority, I'll stick to considering those needs. That said, if our Spec1 boards are compatible with S[odd] heatsinks, it also means they're compatible with the waterblocks folks are using for them, so there you go. The Spec2 board would be built dimensionally as a Prisma board, which I know PanetCrypto has worked with in immersion cooling attempts. Something like that might be better for an oiltank. If y'all want to figure out the best ways to high-density or watercool the works-with-aircooling boards I want to make, I won't get in the way. But I'm not going to retool designs for MinerEdge-style boxes unless someone wants to specifically commission that project and pay for the dev. The miners I want to make are for people, not corporations.

Also, no progress. Family reunions all weekend. Hopefully I have PCBs in the mailbox on Monday though - barebones 18-boards and version 0.5 Compacs.

As I understand it, Novec Fluids are chemical cousins to 3M's Fire Suppression fluids used in Data Centers.
It's like a "thicker" fluorocarbon freon.
I've personally had my hands in tanks of it and I'm not growing any third arms or heads.
And while it wouldn't be my first choice in a beverage I'm pretty sure it won't kill ya' if ingested in small quantities.
It does not get shipped as a hazardous, toxic, or flammable item.
Pretty sure even the US postal system will take it.

7000, 7100, 7200; when a small quantity is poured into your cupped hand evaporates in seconds.
We use it around the shop as a circuit board cleaner.
But at ~$300/gallon it gets used sparingly.

The MSDS sheet is on the 3M website if really curious.

And it's not nearly as slimy as mineral oil, yuccchhhhh.

Yeah, the manufacturar saying it is one thing, but the governments doing their thing is another

weird, in a couple videos i watched about novec they say it is completely environment friendly 

Welp, i saw in their site that Novec is allowed only on a handful of countries (because hazardous materials restrictions). I too asked my local 3M branch and directed me to smuggle them via a 3M paint importer. Go figure

Nice investigative work.  I don't have any overhead really right now in my PSUs to turn up the clock, but maybe I'll switch some things around in the near future.

S5 Profit versus Clock Speed Analysis.
Analysis Spreadsheet may be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yq1c22quyktfm32/C1%20%26%20S5%20Profit%20vs%20Clock%20Speed%20analysis.xlsx?dl=0

So now I'm curious, what countries/regions ban or can't be shipped to Novec Engineered Fluids?
In our conversations with 3M they seemed to believe/portray that Novec could be shipped anywhere.

"Most of it was just common sense, ..." For you'all easy-peasy, for the majority not so much.

"I've standardized a design/interface?" chip chain design and USB interface.

"If by "record time" you mean "over a month behind the initial timeline", then yes." Apply the 80/20 rule. 80% gets accomplished in 20% of the time allotted, the remaining 20% of the work takes 80% of the time.
Or stated another way, figure out how long you think it's going to take (in hours, days, months, etc), double the number and increment to the next time measurement metric. So something I think will take 2 hours really takes 4 days. 

Using the later estimation method, I'd say you're way ahead of schedule.

For my own projects I always add on an additional 10%. I lovingly call that additional time my "fudge factor". I include it to compensate for all the unknowns that can't be budgeted for. Like staff being called away for family emergencies (family first, rightfully so), supply chain delays, natural disasters, and a million other things that can't be anticipated. Project management is a combination of math and art. It's not a precise science, it's a fuzzy science.

Patent protection doesn't protect what you've spent. Patent protection protects what a thing/idea is worth. It protects future value. It's a time constrained value estimation.
"I'm not sure tuning code is actually a patentable idea, since it's been done before on other hardware." But likely not the way you're going to do it, on the H/W you're working with. That makes it distinctive, and hence patentable. And probably worth protecting. Even if you only improve how it was done in the past, that improvement is patentable, and again, I believe, worth protecting. You deserve to be paid equitably for your effort, because it's not something everyone else can do.

Now I'm gonna' shut up, quit distracting you, and let you get on with your day. 

Lucky you, living on a Novec 7100 allowed country

Some stuff we did with immersion cooling.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PlanetCrypto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fStHV_Q-x7s

Given your quality power breakout boards. I can see this as a big plus in your stable and will help out all I can. The biggest problem with mining as everyone knows is ROI and the cost of running and the heat. A really good idea would to make cooling a big priority. I would like to liquid cool my stuff. just makes it simpler to mineral oil submerge everything and pump the oil through a fan cooled panel like a old cars ac condenser. another idea is make a master backplane for data that you could plug in set amounts of the miner cards so scaling can be dine like the old 10gig miners.

I didn't really reverse-engineer much. Most of it was just common sense, though I did look at their board a bit to figure out the inter-node level shifters (and I think I improved on some parts of that just a little bit).

I've standardized a design/interface? Which part?

If by "record time" you mean "over a month behind the initial timeline", then yes.

I think trying to patent anything we come up with will probably cost more than, basically, the whole rest of the project. I'm not sure tuning code is actually a patentable idea, since it's been done before on other hardware. I dunno, I think you're complimenting our efforts too highly - but maybe that's because I'm pretty disappointed so far.

Let's look at this objectively.
IMHO:

• You've reversed engineered another companies board (no small feat),
• you've dramatically improved on their design,
• you've standardized a design/interface,
• all the while maintaining a competitive price point,
• and accomplished these herculean tasks in record time,
• on a shoestring RD&D budget.

If for whatever reason autotune, either in firmware or S/W, isn't implemented I see no reason for embarrassment.
You're already a league ahead of the competition, implementing autotune makes you the "only game in town" and puts you a light year ahead of the nearest competitor.
Autotune, if implemented in firmware, extends that competitive advantage dramatically.
If you guys were to even do a patent applied for you could non-exclusively license that tech to whomever.
You could receive a licensing fee, or include it in an agreement to buy chips.

I just want to see you guys "get ahead" whatever that means to you'all.
So let me paint a picture, you could exclusively license the tech to a chip manufacturer (who may be a competitor, not naming any names here) for an agreement in writing for current and future chip availability and pricing.

Or maybe the above AND a smaller fee (so you have the resources to buy chips).

Have no doubt you can make autotune happen, however you decide to.
But autotune and self-healing is a serious game changer in my mind.

Just sayin'

KISS strategy is always the best.

Keep It Simple Stupid