Topic: GekkoScience is now dabbling with 16nm ASICs for new designs - page 37. (Read 76816 times)

Paypal donations welcome as well?

It'll take a second pass to verify everything, but the pod layout might be done. With that, all parts and pinouts for the standard control set have been determined and porting it to other stuff shouldn't be too difficult. I'll be ordering parts today to start prototyping the controls, with full integration when the 1/2-chip test PCBs arrive in a few weeks.

Looks like I'll be going with a 2/3-pin fan setup instead of a full 4-wire PWM so just about any 80mm case fan will work. In order to make 2- and 3-wire fans work interchangeably (2-wire has no tach line) I'll probably use that for reporting only. The fan'll start out on some initial speed (50%?) and throttle up or down to maintain a stable safe temperature. Maybe that'll be user-set with a default (70C?) setpoint. Probably should have pretty granular speed controls and something like a PID loop to avoid fan speed bounce like a lot of people are seeing with the auto-tuning S9 firmware. The means of thermostatic control should be built into the cgminer driver for the most control and flexibility, but I'll probably rig some means of emergency control into the onboard micro to avoid cgminer-disconnect meltdowns like the S5 would do on occasion.

Thanks for the support, everyone. Efficiency and transparency are essential for any community-centered project to keep going, and I'll do my best.

Donation sent. Looking forward to retrofitting all the old antminers.

Donation on the way!
https://blockchain.info/tx/2cc40382c67b678a92e05d483bddf8b75782cc50772506cd4bd2ff0c88c17313

  Keep your good job Sidehack!

The 1Gekkosci is my address, in existence well before the 1BURGER was set up. It's been used for general stuff and mining payouts for quite a while now.

The 1BURGER was set up specifically for donations toward miner projects and whatnot, so Biodom's point that it's more appropriate makes sense, but either could be used.

I'm thinking a 2-chip stick would be best. It'd be pretty well on power scale with the BM1384 Compac, and overall the same size since I could put both chips under a heatsink of the same dimensions.

I've almost completed the pod layout (put about six more hours on it today, but didn't work yesterday since I hadn't had a lazy day at home in a solid month) which includes selecting parts and pin assignments for the controls system. Most of the parts I picked, I have SOIC or DIP versions of already on hand so I can start working on code on breadboarded mockups more readily while waiting for PCBs. Since the controls are already designed, shifting them over to a 1/2-chip test board should be pretty trivial; this would make piecewise testing easier and compress down to a stickminer easily.

The pod is laid out for 11 chips, since Bitfury's comm multiplexer is designed to handle that many. Designing a larger miner will be a matter of stacking more 11-chip sections onto one board, probably 44 chips total. Controls will be nearly identical - software will have to know there are more modules and be able to relay to them, but that change will be a fraction of the difficulty of setting up a single 11-chip module with the full sensor package.

The pod (project name Amita) as it's designed now will be able to measure temperatures from the heart of the chip field so it should be more accurate than, say, the S5 sensor on the backside of the middle of the PCB. It'll be able to measure total input power and the string voltage, adjust string voltage in software, and drive a 4-wire fan with speed measurement.

The TypeZero board (S1/3/5 refit) board should be able to do all this as well. No guarantees yet if it'll read input power, but string voltage measurement and software adjustment, fan control and probably multi-point temperature sensing will be there for sure.

Punin of BitFury has mentioned several times in the past about helping out with this project; he got me sample chips and datasheets, which is more than anyone else has done in a while. I'm hopeful about continued support, but in order to prove to BitFury that working with us is worth the trouble, we need to make sure this project stays visible and the interest the community has in its successful completion is apparent.

And, as requested, donations to help support things can go to 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr

EDITED: 1BURGER...is sidehack's address where we sent burger type money in mining development support beforehand.
how about sidehack reactivating 1BURGER... (as he seem to suggest in prior post, most people probably cannot find it as it was 1-2 years back) for people who would like to contribute burger size (or 2-3  , etc) donations for home miner or two-three chip super stick (?) development and use 1Gekkosci.. address for potential partnerships and larger size donations/collaborations?
This way, 1BURGER is clearly just pure donation and 1Gekkosci could be used otherwise.
Thoughts?


see above

I've got at least a dozen here. But when you consider the mountup is the same for S1, S3, S5 and C1 waterblocks that becomes multiple buttloads. That being the case has been kinda central to the point of the project since it started.

Is there really that many S1s still floating about?

His btc address is in my signature.

I can't find it anywhere within reach....

I don't have much in coin at the moment, but I can easily/quickly set something to LoadBalance and FailOver.

Skip the middle man.  Just send  some btc to his address.

I pushed/donated some hash rate to the Burger fund on Eligius a while back but they are experiencing quite a long run of bad luck right now. Maybe you could point us to a different pool with the Burgerfund that isn't your testing channel?

I'll donate as well. I've got 25 S1s and over a hundred S3s sitting in the scrap pile. Be happy to put some of it to use.

I like the smaller wattage idea.  But it's still in the realm of not being too small.

And, sure, post the address, I'll pass some your way.

I'm gonna shoot for 220W stock, but like everything I intend to design, it'll be adjustable up and down.

Also...

Should we bring the 1BURGER address back into play?

Even if the boards were only 175 watts each that would be fine. Space isn't really an issue for most home miners.

Sidehack,

I would like to have some S1-S3-S5 upgrade type of board.

that's my preference.

Thanks ;-)

It would be great if Gekkoscience could come up with a 16nm ASIC miner , we need more competitors when it comes to bitcoin mining.

Definitely up for a multi-chip USB stick miner