Topic: [Open Source Hardware Project] Hive & Wasp Prototype Development (Read 16215 times)

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-wasp-project-collective-information-thread-422243

"One thread to rule them all,
one thread to find them,
one thread to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them."

Meeting Yesterday:

All Projects Overview

• We are still moving forward on a number of areas and from the meeting yesterday there has been significant progress on most of the projects currently going on in the WPC. The 0.1 beta hive (backplane) will be ready in time and sent to the EE in Seattle. Firmware has progressed and will be available for prototyping with hand assembled bringup boards and further use with the first prototype boards from the fabricator.
• The WPC Pool set a hard deadline for the testing of the pool as we near completion of that project. Our website will be reworked as we wait for pretty pictures / video and other media from the EE's working on firmware and hardware and our WPC internal share exchange has started development.
• Licensing story lines have been created and are being work on currently for use on the provisioning server where the firmware / licensing will be released and will be ready before sales begin.
• At this stage we are now reaching out to the community and finding partners outside the WPC who are interested in building our designs and have included a few of these people in our recent meetings so that they can see first hand where the team is in development and ask questions to the EE's. We want to open this up to those with the resources, time and focus to build our modular miners so that they can hit the ground running. We are here to support the mining community so big or small if you are keen and have time we want to include you in this Open Source project.
• We will have A1, BitFury and BitMain available at first and when we get our hands on the Minion we will provide that as well. If you are keen on using our designs then please contact me with your questions.

Logo Winner

• dzarmush is the winner of a really close vote by our members. We want to thank everyone who participated.
• Please contact me via PM or email [email protected]
• You have won a share valued at $250 USD as well as a free lifetime membership in the WPC valued at $100 USD.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3901162

ASIC Chip P0rn:

How many A1's to BitFury's you might ask?

Logo Competition:

We will announce a winner this week.

Membership:

We are keen to find more firmware people to help develop a range of functions we have planned for the Wasp & Hive. If you have experience in this area please PM me with your skills set and experience. I will push that information to our EE and see if that is what we require. If he is good with that then we can expedite your membership on that basis. As for those without those skills sets at this time we are going to hold off any new members until at least February and all membership will be through the website at that point.

See more information here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4499869

A1, BitMain and BitFury Chips

The 2 - A1 samples got delivered today. Our feeling is that a Metal-core PCB for the A1s and their buck controllers is necessary, and then cutting slots in the FR4 Wasp will allow us to attachment copper heatsinks to the metalcore, and Bergquist pads to the tops of the chips and the passives, filling the gap for an aluminum sink for the top. Hoping this initial prototype design keep the temps down in the 40s, with air. All this is necessary so as to increase the potential lifetime of these A1 first run prototype chips. This all takes time so the A1 prototype will be later than the prototype PCB's for the BitMain / BitFury Wasps. Soon as we have working prototypes we will release that information on our website. BitFury will be the first prototype to be built followed closely by the BitMain and then A1. We plan on a Minion Wasp prototype beyond these 3 initial chips. The members have put in all the funding required to pay for all the components, chips and fabrication so there is just time and sweat to give before we have soemthing to show.


WPC Mining Pool

Latest update is that the whole pool team now has access to the servers and that means it is only a matter of days before we have the pool up for testing.

Logo Competition

Poll runs till Tue Jan 14, 2014 3:35 am

A1 Sample Chips

Scheduled to arrive Monday on the west coast at our EE's. Some lucky developers already have their chips.

Logo Competition

We have narrowed down the choices and are now on a second round of voting for the logo.

The following members in bitcointalk are still in the hunt for a single share and free membership in the WPC. We wish you all luck and may the best design represent our collective.

medUSA https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/medusa-106054
dzarmush https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/dzarmush-176058
W-M https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/w-m-88832
Operatr https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/operatr-92499

Ok... as we get close to the final product you can drop us an email via our website once it is up.

Yes I´m interested. And also in build some. I got some contacts to engeneers students with able to smd. Will this helpfull? I don´t know. 

We are self-funded, but if you are interested in building Wasps & Hives let us know always interested in supporting more DIY teams and just to note the designs won't be released until the prototypes demonstrate we have full working hardware, software and firmware.

reserved ;-)


Sounds like an interesting project. I will help support and help funding if it woks fine.

Update Mining Pool:

Looks like the pool team are finally getting things moving server wise that means the tinkering can begin. We will have more details to post next week on the mining pool.

Chips, chips and more chips

In a recent round of discussion with various members it seem we will have even more chips than we originally intended on the prototype side.
A1's, BitFury and BitMain all should be well "overstocked" in the coming weeks as some of our members are having their orders being filled and more samples are sent out.

WPC Logo

Still a day or two left on first round of voting we are keen to announce the winner of the contest but still need more members to chime in on the designs.
Voting is pretty tight and at least 3 designs are now in the running and I suspect we might have to do a run-off vote to break a tie.

We are likely to get hold of Edit: The 2 x A1 chips are shipping and will be in the hands of our EE by next week. We will try and update progress on the A1 Wasp as well as the BitMain and BitFury Wasp prototype versions as we have actual demonstrable progress. All major announcements with regards to the release date of the Software, Firmware and the Hardware being created by the Wasp Project Collective will take place on our website only after we have tangible product to demonstrate like the working emulator or prototype Wasps actually working on the test bench. Once the website is up we will post news here for all but at this point only basic information on where we are in development will be made here. When the A1 chips are in Seattle we will drop another note here for all those following this project. Also note we will update the winner of the LOGO contest here as soon as most members have voted on our forums.

Project work is still ongoing no rest for the EE Elves at the WPC workshop and PCB fabrication is 24/7 at the local West Coast US plant we chose for prototyping the PCB's. Note that the parts and the schematics have been ready for a week which means some prototypes soon... very very soon.

Members note the next meeting time. 1000 PDT Seattle 28th December or 1600 GMT.

Note we are currently building a team of WPC members to handle the PR / Marketing for us as we really need to have multiple contact points so that we limit the WPC's exposure to a single point failure. Ideally we will have a website up to have most of our communication and updates there and post here only on a weekly basis.

Remember we have the IRC Channel is located on the freenode IRC network.

#WPC-Public (public)

If you don't have an IRC client, click here to visit the channel with your web browser.

Downloads

Windows or Linux:  http://xchat.org/
Colloguy for Mac:  http://colloquy.info/
All: http://hexchat.github.io/downloads.html

I'll buy one. Get it working for scrypt and I'll buy another.

Update:

The time frame for the following items would be from now up to first or second week of January 2014.

The WPC Prototype Wasps

• We have in hand enough BitFury chips to produce 8+ prototype waps.
• We will have in hand enough BitMain chips to produce 8+ prototype wasp.
• We should have a first Hive prototype that is able to house wasps but as early prototype that will evolve.
• Target is to build a minimum of 20 total prototype boards in BitFury and BitMain configurations.
• If we have an odd assortment of chips we will also look at mixing and matching chips on the same Wasp.
• Video of the prototypes hashing will be made available to everyone.
• The gerbers and bom for the Wasp will be released only when we are confident that we have functional units.
• WPC will likely produce a small sample prototype run for testing and proof of concept purposes beyond the 20 initial boards.

The WPC Mining Pool

• We will have a functional mining pool up and running before the new year or possibly within the first week of January.
• Full testing of the mining pool will start after Christmas.
• Tentatively 20 Th/s to 300 Th/s range for this pool is estimated by the end of January 2014.

The WPC Website

• Site is ready except we want to have Wasp and Hive prototype pictures before we launch the site
• Site will add more and more functionality after it is live.
• Site will be a work in progress and feedback from WPC members and the community will undoubtedly be taken into account as we edit and modify the site.

The WPC Forums

• We already have a public facing forum for the community but will open that up after we post some basic information.
• News & Announcements - "Official News & announcements of the WPC"
• Publications - "Publications of The Wasp Project Collective"
• Apply for Membership - "Learn about the options available for membership in the the WPC"
• Hardware Support - "Hardware support forum for our products"
• Software Support - "Software support forum for our products"

Big meeting tomorrow... as we are going to received a number of important project updates on the Wasp and the Mining Pool as well as a pre-meeting to go over the the plans for a large production run for Wasps that will take place in January. All the members are keen on having modular miners on shelves before any sales start so we will be focused on the logistics challenges so that when Wasps and Hives are in stock we can ship direct in days thus given the community what is wants miners off the shelf.

Note to members we are moving off Zoho for most things administrative to our own forum over the next week or two so that we can communicate more directly with the WPC members. Please check your emails for the latest information on that move. We will phase out Zoho for all communications by January 2014 although we will retain some of the unique functions it has for project management over 2014 until we can integrate everything into our WPC servers.

We will post an update for everyone here before Monday.

And if anyone missed it at this time we are not accepting new members. Membership will reopen in Q1 2014 at some point in conjunction with a payment gateway for membership on our Website.

UPDATED:

Click link below to directly enter IRC Channel:
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#WPC-Public

Click link below to directly enter IRC Channel:
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#TheWaspProjectCollective

Sorry we are closed to new membership currently. We will reopen it when our website goes up.

You can follow the threads or go to our IRC chat channel to talk about the project.

Official IRC Channel
Non-Members and Members

The IRC Channel is located on the freenode IRC network.

#TheWaspProjectCollective

I will still be updating you guys here on bitcointalk and will still be answering your questions and PM's. If you
are interested in being a Manufacturer or resell of Wasps and hives e-mail me and I will get back to you once we have an agreement ready.
we will be offering our Firmware licences to everyone from the DIYer to the big boys. Our Hardware will be open source as soon as it is finalized. Thanks for all your support.        

The Zoho Project area is now closed to unpaid members. We will open up membership payments in the coming weeks.

Thank-you for all the interest we will continue to update here and we should have a website, mining pool and working Wasp prototype ready before Christmas.

Fabricators might be the people to ask for dibs. 

I just want dibs on the finished ready-to-mine product, if the price looks better than anything else out there.

Free lurking till Dec 15th. Get in and check out what $100 gets you there.

As for the BA fabrication. We have prototypes being done close the EE's not in China. And full production of units would be something that DIY builders or others could take on themselves. This is an open source hardware project so anyone can build but we retain some IP aspects so that licenses will be required to get FULL hash out of our units. You can learn how we handle that in our files on the project page. Feel free to review them when you are lurking. Access an email address away. Just PM gamers gamersglory to get Project access.

I saw a mention of BA and I hope that's not alluding to using BlackArrow for ANYTHING to do with this project.  If you want to know why I'm sure bobsag has some stories to share.

Also, what exactly does this $100 membership get you?  Any why doesn't your website you advertised work?

There will be possibilities to join the group after the 15th december ... for sure.

I'm still thinking.. always thinking.. Can I join even after the 15th? That's a Sunday.

Update: I will be the new point of contact for people to join The Wasp Collective now as Darin is moveing on to other things in the project   

What Logo do you like so far in the contest?

 https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-wasp-logo-design-contest-now-over-winner-announcement-soon-364115

There are some pretty good designs already.

Should let you know that those Minion specs are not final. Those are early ones. There has been some talk from black arrow that they or we may able to tweak it a little more. or that the chips  may end up being faster then they calculated. Can't fully confirm that yet though.     

I'll throw some money at the Minion device.

Minion chips for sure.

Following this project with great interest. Modular, open source hardware is exactly what we need.

Now we need an open source ASIC...

We hope we can do something different. But the chips are the BOTTOMLINE on anything. So there could be some great buys coming in February on chips hard to say.

One thing you can do is compare the BOM and gerbers and get a real costing on what these should cost. It will be open source hardware afterall. Also you can just buy the wasp individually do not need to go for a WHOLE HIVE right off the bat.

But Gamers can help you guys out... got run and clean up some of the messes I made on the Zoho Pages.

With units running 230GH-1.8TH,the price will be out there,unless you guys are different,gotta wait & see  

Yeah,greed does that to folks  

Just tired of the $4000 units everywhere.Hoping someone can get something in the $1000 area (with more than 20-30GH) so I can get on the miner wagon.

As of now BA looks about the only one that's priced decent.........but of course who knows if they'll deliver.........  

BTW,not trying to start anything,just sayin whats on my mind    & dreaming of units priced decently,not by how much BTC they'll make before they die in a puff of magic smoke  

Hello world I'm Paul and I will be handling Wasp Project updates as Darin has his hands full and then some    With other things in the coop. I am hoping to have the first benchshots of a working wasp very soon and will love to share them with you as soon as I get them. If you have questions you can Pm me or post them here in the thread. We are also always looking for new members if you want to join PM me or Darin. I think he still lurks in the shadows around here. EE's and Firmware programmers are still in need. also our logo design contest will be coming soon.


Update: the contest is up: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-wasp-logo-design-contest-now-over-winner-announcement-soon-364115

Where is the price? When these drop... what will BTC be in the dumper or in the clouds hard to say. Either way we can turn on any opportunity available as we are not restricted to a single chip.

Likely these will be LOWER than anything else and if you DIY you won't get anything lower than these units and you can control when they will arrive rather than waiting for another 2 weeks.

Unfortunately I do not see anyone concerned with price in the market right now. The Neptunes sold out in minutes right?

I think that you might be right that prices are too high but people are buying them even at ASICminer prices which these will not be at.

Also we are not likely going to do our own fabricated units for sale. We want to work with those who are interested in fabricating to the community and we will provide licenses with RMA support. At least that is our plan.

C) Out of the price range of most folks.......................... 

Another high price miner,I can read between the lines........................

Best of luck though....we need more competition 

Have to agree on that.

The constriction we saw in BitFury was terrible on DIY people.

We are playing to the fact the marketplace for chips will continue to expand with at least some makers willing to "dump" chips in bulk. Also I see the 55nm drop in price to offload remaining stock as a great opportunity to get in with significant hash rate and then with our design slot in the newer chips never having to worry about PSUs, software etc. See Buzzdave's 5$ a chip in February remarks to see what where I am going with that train of thought.

But definitely we agree our community needs to do an OPEN SOURCE ASIC. We might be interested in working with others on that. Remember we will be able to add a new Wasp no matter what the chips so we are not hogtied too badly like those with a one chip solution.

Bick the problem I can see and that has been encountered with projects such as the Red Fury/ Blue Fury etc etc etc is if you don't design your own chip you are either:

A) standing there with your hands in your pocket waiting and HOPEING more reels of chips are made (AKA BITFURY)
B) Constantly having to redesign your main boards to accommodate new chips. And then your back in the same boat as option A.

Asicminer was/IS as successful as they are because they designed their own chip. They control how many are made based on their own needs. Does the Hive Project group at any point in time plan on designing their own chip, so they don't get stuck in Eternal Option A Loops?

Which type of wasps would you go for to fill your hive? Yes you can mix and match.

Hive with 8 x 24 Avalon A3255 55nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 230 Gh/s.

Hive with 8 x 24 BitFury 55nm chips  per Wasp would mine at over 440 Gh/s.

Hive with 8 x 6 A1 28nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 1.68 Th/s.

Hive with 8 x 2 Minion 28nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 1.8 Th/s.

The WPC is looking for a logo. We will be starting a contest later next week where our lifetime members will vote for a new logo designed by someone in bitcointalk and the winner gets 1 share in any ongoing WPC project and a free membership in the WPC. Keep your eyes peeled for the design brief in the threads and in the Services area.

We are currently restructuring our pages on the Zoho site and moving our current documents to our git server. With these changes and a larger group of lifetime members now involved in the promotion of the Wasp and Hive project they will be supporting this thread and providing information as we move around working on different areas in the Wasp Project Collective.

PM or email me if you are interested in lurking in the Zoho pages until the 15th of December without having to pay for membership.

That is FUNNY!!

Quoted for posterity. I'm sure that dig will be a wonderful motivation for our whole team to put out an even better product. Thanks sharing it with the team right now.

I am pretty certain the EE's working on the Wasp and Hive will do a fine job. Come ask them some questions Saturday if you doubt it and anyone is welcome including Fractal and Inaba. Let me clear up a few things. First I am not a CEO or the owner COO or CFO, nor do I control any of the wallets in this collective. We are a collective of like minded people seeking to change the dynamic in the mining community. We are pretty confident the Wasp & Hive will be that first dynamic change.

I give my time here to help promote the WPC and the Wasp and Hive project. I am just one of 26 [edit] 28 lifetime members and another 40  [edit] 50 plus people just lurking in the WPC.  We have at least 6 Electrical Engineers and as many people with decades of professional firmware and software design available and supporting the Wasp & Hive project as well as our Mining Pool and other projects. Many are long time bitcointalk and bitcoin community members so whether I am a member or not means little to the overall scheme of things as I have no power over much of anything other than post a few notes here in bitcointalk on the project.

I am just here to sweep the floors, turn out the lights at the end of the day and let the EE's and Software guys focus on the project. The real stars are certainly skilled enough to produce what has been outlined and I can't wait to post up more as it comes together. You can come and look around and decide for yourself if what we have posted in this thread is viable or true. Nothing to hide.

I suspect being able to actually ask questions directly to the EE that is behind this project might make a huge difference on whether becoming a member or say buying a few shares or earning a few shares through working on the various projects is something of value or not, or ultimately buying these modular miners when they are available. Rather than have me defend the slanderous remarks and off-topic comments just come to the Hardware Team meeting Saturday at 1800H Seattle time and make up your own mind. I am pretty confident that our Lead EE has this project well in hand and is certainly well supported financially as well as technically by our members.

Oh yes and it is Open Source Hardware did I forget to mention that or that the test code is up on the git?

The prototype is almost finished... ==>




truly modular ! 

Proud to announce that I am #21 on the member list, although I think I should be #20 since I made a partial payment right before avr. (I kidd... I swear! )

Again not 100% sure on the configuration but I will ask.

Yeah, the Wasps and Hives would essentially be a replacement for a regular computer motherboard if you get into Scrypt hashing.

Anyone can buy. Anyone can make them.

We are looking at December for prototype. January for fabrication.

Absolutely interested having theese products to upgrade my mining operation. Only members can buy or how to buy when ready? :-):-)
Very interesting project!

$250 is the smallest share you can pay for in any project actually 0$ is as you don't have to participate in any projects if you don't want. You can also work for shares. 10 hours = 1 share = $250. Rather keep all that discussion to the Zoho Project pages as this mostly about the prototypes we are building. If you have more questions you can ask them in the new member area.

PM me your email address and I will add you to the Project for free and you can lurk until the 15th of December when we close the project pages to non-members.

$100 is the lifetime membership.

What kind of money are we talking about here to join the swarm? 1k, 10k, 100k? Not just as member but to take full advantage of the design in form of working hashing hardware.

Thanks.

Not sure at this time how our reconfigured Hive would work Dabs. So can't really comment on those numbers. If the EE has time I will ask him Saturday. The EE's right now are neck deep in the BitFury / Gen2 Avalon chip design at this time. Hoping in about a week or so to see something pseudo hashing.

I'm curious about the Scrypt version. We can see maybe 1 or 2 or even 3 potential chip makers, at the same time we know we can plug in high end AMD GPU cards. Perhaps a Wasp can accept a bunch of 7950's, and the Hive has 8 of those Wasps?

It would look like this:

Hive with 8 x 4 AMD 7950 GPU per Wasp would mine at over 19.2 Mh/s for Scrypt.

But I would need 32 video cards to complete the Hive.

What does the Hive & Wasp Modular Miner bring to our community?
 
 
It will deliver, for the first time to the community, some form of obsolescence protection. Our prototype Wasps are designed and will prototype with legacy chips, as well as cutting edge chips soon to be released on the market. Imagine a fully populated Hive (backplane) that accept a variety of Wasps using Bitfury, V2 Avalon or other legacy chips as well as Wasp designed with the A1, Minion or future chips planned for Q2. Not only will we be able to produce Wasps with future SHA256 ASIC chips but our own designers have plans to demonstrate the first SHA256 and Scrypt mining configuration in the same modular design. That will truly be disruptive innovation for the those doing DIY as well as established resellers looking to create a truly lasting following base of end users. Our modular design will live on for years growing with the needs of the community.
 
 
What will the Hive & Wasp Modular Miner cost?
 
We are carefully designing our system to match or provide additional savings over "retail", "pre-order" systems currently available. The one factor that holds back real saving are the costs of the ASIC chips and their availability. We avoid some of the vagaries of the marketplace as we are able on a moments notice to react and design based on chip prices and availability. We can provide some of the shortest turnaround time in designs of new miners in the market, whether it is a new or older chip and based on our ability to redesign our current PCB with minimal changes. The Hive remains the same no matter what Wasp slots in and the software doesn't change just new firmware which is ready at production time you won't be waiting for firmware or software.
 
 
When will you be ready to mass produce your Hives & Wasps?
 
We will be testing our designs in the next few weeks. A fully populated prototype Hive hashing with 8 Wasps is probably ready in late December or Early January. We will be showing the community some of our work on the prototype in a video to be released before Christmas. Ideally we would hope to see Wasps and Hives being put through production at volume sometime in January 2014.
 
 
What chips will be available?
 
Your guess is good as ours, but we have put our effort into acquiring the following ASIC chips and are working on Wasps for them: Avalon A3255, BitFury, A1 and Minion chips. If the BitFury, A1 and Minion chips are available in sufficient quantity anyone will be able to build our hardware as it is open source and license it to get its full hashing potential. Some basic numbers for the fully populated Hives we are currently working toward prototypes:
 
Hive with 8 x 24 Avalon A3255 55nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 230 Gh/s.
Hive with 8 x 24 BitFury 55nm chips  per Wasp would mine at over 440 Gh/s.
Hive with 8 x 6 A1 28nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 1.68 Th/s.
Hive with 8 x 2 Minion 28nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 1.8 Th/s.
 
Any questions with this revision?
 

Update:

Membership has increased to 19 lifetime members our goal is to reach 30 before the 15th of December. 35 people are currently lurking and learning about the inter workings of the Wasp & Hive as well as other projects. We have started selling shares internally for the Wasp and Hive project, our Mining Pool, and will open up shares on a short run miner project to get out some hashing units before December.

A lifetime membershipin the Wasp Project Collective is $100 USD paid in BTC or via PayPal in USD. You can still be added to lurk up until the 15th December when we close the project pages to non-members.

Drop me an email or PM if you would like access.

-------------

Teaser:

We are swarming in 30 minutes.

Got questions about the project? Keen on supporting the DIY community? Just want to LURK in a corner?

PM me your email or email me and I can add you to the project and the meeting.

Join the swarm before it is too late!

Management Team Meets Fridays
Canberra, Australia 2000 ACT (GMT +11)

Design Team Meets Saturdays
Seattle, USA 1800 PST (-8 GMT)

WPC Mining Pool Development Team Meets Fridays
Jakarta, Indonesia 1200 WIB (+7 GMT)


If you have the time and are interested in our project feel free to email me or drop me a PM with your email and I will add you to the Zoho Project page where you can find out more on where we meet and the agendas for the meetings.

Hoping to do more than entertain... we want to provide you with disruptive innovation. Sit back and enjoy.

Watching.

Just finished a short formative meeting about a new project for the collective.

The Wasp Project Collective Mining Pool

WPC Mining Pool Development Team Meets this Friday the 29th November
Jakarta, Indonesia 1200 WIB (+7 GMT)

We should have an operational pool ready by December 7th, 2013.

The meeting will provide an overview for the shares and costs involved and key members involved in the oversight of the pool hardware and software.

---

Interested in working on our collective mining pool? Drop me a PM or Email to be added to the Zoho Project page.

You know IM in board.

Adding the CLAM ASIC to the mix.  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/55nm-clam-asic-test-results-343856

We have requested some sample chips to work on as a Wasp. We are still waiting on chip specs on those. If anyone has an interest in developing the Clam Wasp then drop me an email or pm.

Wasp Controller and Maintenance Software

Summary

The Wasp Project Collective Wasps are self-contained hashing blades utilizing various hashing ASICs, and adapting each of them to a single unified power, command, and control structure. Several programs residing on the controlling PC or embedded computer interact with the Wasps through the common protocols for:

+ Mining eCoins, not limited to BTC
+ Testing and configuring the Wasps, both individually and "Collectively" (of course )
+ Performing in-place firmware patching or upgrading.
+ Purchasing and managing licenses for the Wasps
+ Debugging firmware on the Wasps, while running one of the above programs in parallel.

Come join us and help develop some truly disruptive innovations in mining hardware as well as being part of a dynamic SHIFT in the DIY / Open Hardware community. 40+ members and growing and many are software and hardware engineers. We are building a better community with this project and we need your help. To see more on our Wasp Controller and Maintenance Software drop me an email or a PM to get added to our Zoho Project page.

From the last EE meeting potential prototype using BitFury Wasps.

*  32 chips per Wasp.
*  8 Wasps per Hive.
*  +/- 588 Gh/s. (2.3 gh/s per chip)
*  Prototype likely hashing in December.
*  Production could start early January.
*  We are currently reaching out to the community for those who might be interested in the BitFury versions as well as A1 and Minions.

Other notes.

* A1 / Minion designs for Wasps will be a very short turnaround based on rework of the BitFury / Avalon Wasp configurations.
* Remote hot patches for firmware will be available.
* Remote diagnostics on the hardware will be available.
* VPN to the prototype boards will be available for Firmware design and testing live for members of the design team.
* First 3D render on the Bitfury Wasp was released internally at the meeting and it was great to visualize the Wasps for the first time.

It was certainly an informative meeting and as always the meeting was recorded so members can listen to the full meeting in the coming days once it has been uploaded.

From our ever growing document pages on the Zoho Project you can see that this Open Source project is really trying to bring some much needed conveniences to miners.

Wasp Controller and Maintenance Software

Wasp Firmware Patching and Upgrading

PatchPanel is another snap-in based utility intended to manage Wasp firmware and hot-patch state. As such, it uses many of the snap-ins from CDMpanel, in order to identify, isolate, read status, and install overlays on the selected Wasp (no batch mode is proposed at this time, though manufacturing might need such a program). It has unique snap-ins for querying status of patches and firmware releases, and for installing new versions of each. It can also revert hot-patches and remove them from the program-FLASH image.

.
.
.


Wasp Remote Debugger

Wasp's remote debugging facility is provided by Atmel's (the MCU manufacturer's) remote debugger, with the assistance of on-board ADB support through its own dedicated set of endpoints. Remote debugging is enabled by flags in the opaque data block downloaded when the Wasp is started, after it identifies itself and its capabilities.

What is a HIVE?

The Hive - A Home for Wasps


Summary

The Hive is a collection of small and large circuit boards whose purpose is to provide power, as well as command, control, and testing signals to one or more Wasps.

Objectives:

+ Develop a line of products that span the realm of installations ranging from the home-user's single blade to oil-immersed racks of industrial hashing systems, making trade offs of cost versus features to fully address both ends of this range.

+ Provide power and communication between one or more Wasp blades and the linux-based controller which runs the mining program.

+ Allow for hot-plugging of Wasps of any type into the same backplane, providing automatic overload prevention - new Wasps will not be enabled unless the Hive can provide sufficient power.

+ Provide a range of backplanes, from a simple, single-Wasp connector to a rackable backplane for multiple (8-10) Wasps.

+ Provide connectors for multiple, redundant, and hot-pluggable power supplies to supply power to a multi-blade stack, or to a rack, self-adjusting as the blades are plugged in.

+ Provide manual controls for system power-on/off, audible and visual feedback for individual blade readiness/status, and control of individual blade power feed.

Features:
 
Single board Hive

+ Has sockets for a standard ATX power supply - 24-pin motherboard connector plus two, 6-pin PCIe 12V connectors.

+ Has push-on/push-off button for power control.

+ Has power-on indicator LED for each of 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and 5Vsb.

+ Has standard USB B-receptacle for cabling to controlling computer.

 
Stacked-board Hive

+ Accepts any mixture of Wasp implementations, in any number of arbitrarily provisioned slots with no manual configuration required.

+ Has sockets for a standard ATX power supply - 24-pin motherboard connector plus two, 6-pin PCIe 12V connectors.

+ Has push-on/push-off button for power control.

+ Has power-on indicator LED for each of 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and 5Vsb.

+ Has standard USB B-receptacle for cabling to controlling computer.

 
Rack-mounted Hive

+ Has connectors for a local control panel with buttons and display.

+ Accepts any mixture of Wasp implementations, in any number of arbitrarily provisioned slots with no manual configuration required.

+ Has sockets for a standard ATX power supply - 24-pin motherboard connector plus six, 6-pin PCIe 12V connectors.

+ Has one or more high-power edge connectors for server-style pluggable 12V-only power supplies.

+ Has buttons for system power control and reset, with operation similar to standard PC.

+ Has power-on indicator LED for each of 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and 5Vsb.

+ Has mechanical position and connectors for mounting a Raspberry-Pi (R-Pi) or Beagle Board Black (BBB) controlling computer, as well as connectors for USB and power so that those controllers can be attached from remote mountings.

+ Has a position for audible-feedback "speaker" (piezo transducer) to be plugged into.

+ Provides circuits for automatic slaving of server power supply(s) to the PC controls, providing single-point manual control of all system power.

+ Provides individual manual enable/disable controls for each slave supply.

+ Provides individual, software assisted enables for each Wasp slot's power, with visual indicators of status.

+ Provides fully automated Manufacturing Acceptance Test capability.

+ Provides significant, partially automated Operational Diagnostic Test capability.


------------

Interested in working on the HIVE? Come join The Wasp Project Collective today!

The Wasp Firmware Architecture

Summary

The Wasps are a collection of mining blades customized to individual hashing ASICs or FPGAs, all of which conform to a single architecture in firmware, communications protocols, and drivers. This document discusses the architecture and subsystems comprising the firmware on each Wasp. Any Wasp variant can be plugged into a Hive (backplane+power supply) beside other Wasps of different design, and all run simultaneously, communicating with one or more mining controller programs at the same time.

In addition, any Wasp can be the target of a remote debugger, or a maintenance program without affecting any other resident of the Hive.
Wasps are compound USB devices, with multiple endpoints in support of mining, configuration/management, In-System-Programming, field maintenance, diagnostics, and firmware debugging.

Firmware Objectives:

1. Safely start up the Wasp, controlling bus voltage sequencing, on-board configuration, power-controllers, hashing engines, monitoring subsystems, and USB (full speed, 12 Mb/s) communications with the mining controller.

2. Safely shut down the Wasp in the event of various continuously monitored problems being detected, including temperature excursions or bus voltage failures, or as a result of commands from the mining controller or the hot-plug button.

3. Interact with the mining controller's USB system to identify the Wasp type and capabilities.

4. Interact over USB with the mining controller to characterize the on-board hashers with regards to functionality, range of clocking, and total output, and collect that configuration data into a block of information passed to the mining controller as an opaque data block, as well as storing the parameters in resident non-volatile memory. On startup, we must be able to detect a valid configuration, or its lack, and adjust the various on-board resources accordingly.

5. Interact over USB with a program on the mining controller to provide diagnostic, logging, and maintenance operations.

6. Download and install firmware updates and hot-patches, and firmware "overlays" - temporary programs sent to the Wasp for specific, non-mining purposes.

7. Configure, command, and monitor the power-controllers on the Wasp.

8. Configure, command, and monitor the hashers on the Wasp.

9. Configure and monitor the environmental sensors on the Wasp.

10. Maintain a non-volatile log of actions and events, which can be requested by the mining controller or maintenance program, or which can be reported on a regular basis to those programs.

11. Perform comprehensive diagnostics and Built-In-Self-Test, displaying the summary results on LEDs and communicating those results through the USB connection.

12. Interact with the mining controller to generate staged local work items for the hashers, and present them over the SPI ports to the hashers. Queueing the local work items for those hashers able to maintain an internal queue must be supported.

13. Regularly poll the hashers for nonces found to meet the presentation criteria, re-construct the local work that resulted in those hashes, and present the resulting share submissions to the mining controller.

14 Interact with the mining controller to shift to new work items, once the controller has commanded a shift in the local work configuration. Introduce these new work items to the hashers with as little latency as possible.

15. Manage a cryptographically signed device certificate, for use in compatibility checking on firmware updates, as well as for licensing protection.


Firmware Subsystems:

... to see the rest on the document become a member on the Zoho Project Page.

-------------------------

Do you want to help work out the Firmware with us? PM or email me to join The Wasp Project Collective today.

We have our own solution with the wasp and hive with an add on that will supplement existing GPU miners but that is a few months away and yes easily any FPGA / ASIC scrypt hasher chip can be designed into a Wasp and easily slot into our system if we have the chip specs. I suspect as well we will not need to change software so you can literally run both Scrypt and SHa on the same unit. Of course that is just my layperson perspective I will ask the EE's for clarification on Saturday.

----
[edit]

Yes Dabs according to the EE it would be no problem. In fact we will likely develop a Wasp next year that mines scrypt coins. So keep watching.

Mr. Bicknellski, no one mentioned it yet, but when the time comes that someone makes either a FPGA or ASIC for scrypt, those could possibly work in the WASPs / Hives ? Interesting for those scrypt based alt-coins.

20 days to a prototype? Possibly. I will just leave this here.


http://www.onlinecountdowns.com/countdown-clock/show/Prototype%20Wasp%20Drops%7C52ab3d10%7C3

So true... I wonder myself how people with larger mining operations are going to handle more and more hash rate and how to keep operations on par... do they simply let the units they currently have go dark and stop mining?

What we hope to provide is a way to help larger operators compensate somewhat for that need to replace the whole unit every time something new hits the mining market.

Anyhow. Not sure how soft the mining market will get there still doesn't seem to be any slowing down of miners being sold. I can't understand why that is, given the hard facts of the difficulty increases.

Depends on how you look at ROI.
FIAT vs BTC

Look at Some of those DZ Co-OP buys on Jupiters. Sure they didn't make the BTC back yet they invested. But the BTC they did make back if they sold it made +ROI

Im sure MOST people end up BUYING BTC from coinbase etc... so its all relevant.

Few if any miners will ROI now but if you do these as DIY you could I think get ROI but we are still waiting on the BOM to do a serious cost estimate. We are more keen on licenses than fabrication and direct sales as a collective so if you have a group of people interested let us know.

What is good about what we are offering is flexibility and not getting locked down into one chip developer and given you can expect our modular system is at least for the year or two safe from being outmoded. A possible strategy might be to start with older chip based Wasps like BitFury chips that are possibly cheaper in January or February and upgrade the empty slots with newer Wasps as they are available. We are keen to work with people who want to license from us and fabricate units so keep us on speed dial Dabs particularly anyone with a line on HF or Cointerra chips, as well as Bitminer and BlackArrow of course.

We already have some keen interest in our BitFury Wasp as well as A1 Wasp so I am sure there will be fabricators come January for a wide range of Wasp for our modular design.

I'm thinking I would get some Black Arrow units, and probably get some Minion based Wasps. I'm still thinking. I'm always thinking. It's the money that's needed though ... the debate in my mind is always about ROI, difficulty, and related stuff (or is it better to just buy coins and hold, and watch as BTC goes past $1000.)

The Hives will have 8 available connection points for the Wasps.

Each A1 Wasp potentially 240 Gh/s Overclocked (6 chips); more likely, with untested chips, 200 GH/s per board.

So to get 10 Th/s with the Hives and Wasps you would need roughly 5 to 6 units. That is if you get the nominal total of 2000 Gh/s, or almost 2 full backplanes (assuming that all chips are fully working AND overclockable to 40GH - not really likely, but our software can get the most possible out of them).

Thinking of building some are you Dabs?

You would require between 20U to 24U's worth of space as we are currently expecting a 3U to 4U standard server per Hive.

----

Willing to wait until the Black Arrow Minion in February?


A 4U 48 chip Minion could throw 3.072 Th/s so you could get 5 to 6 units and range between 15.360 Th/s to 18.432 Th/s.

Or put 50% A1 Wasps in January and February slot in the Minions and top off your Hives. You are not restricted to one chip with our designs heck if you got some BitFury chips you can start in Early January mining with our system and upgrade as our new Wasps become available. Once we have demonstrated our Avalon and BitFury Wasps then we are confident that A1's and Minions will be hashing within weeks of the chips being available to our licensed partner fabricators.

Yay! I want a 10 TH/s miner. hehehe.

Correction:

We will update the firmware each time there is a new chip - as they will have different configuration patterns and so forth.

However we won't have to update the cgminer/bfgminer/waspcollectiveminer software for each new chip and that is essentially how we get all the Wasps to play nice in the same chassis. The same software runs them all.

Update:

From the last meetings we had on Saturday and Sunday our project EE has clarified some the issues that could have potentially caused prolonged delays in redesign of our own boards or would have caused reliability issue with our units. This is a direct result of heat and power  issues related with the chip packages of all newer 28nm chips that are soon to hit the market next month and early in 2014. We are now more confident in our prototype potential release dates.

BitFury Wasp Prototype

+  16 to 24 chips  for 300 gh/s to 440 gh/s depending on the configuration.
+  4U Server configuration
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype are a week away.
+  By December the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By December the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as January for these units should there be a market for them.

Avalon Gen I Wasp Prototype

+  16 to 24 chips for 50 gh/s to 75 gh/s depending on the configuration. (Gen II chips would be higher)
+  4U Server configuration.
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype are a week away.
+  By December the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By December the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as January for these units should there be a market for them.

A1 Wasp Prototype

+  A1 designs will be applied to the BitFury Wasp design and should take less than a week.
+  4U Server configuration
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype would occur in late December.
+  By Late December the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By Late December or Early January the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as January for these units.

Minion Wasp Prototype

+  Minion designs will be applied to the lessons learned from the A1 Wasp design and should take less than a week.
+  4U Server configuration
+  Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype would occur in January or earlier.
+  By Late February the prototype testing video should be out.
+  By Late February or Early March the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+  The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as Late February or Early March for these units.

We are keen on working with chip manufacturers to get their chips into our modular design as well as working with group buys, diy'ers or EE's who have previously handled production of Avalon, BFL, BitFury or others boards that have made it to the marketplace. Our intention is to put out the wasp and hive as open source software and hardware and provide support for those who wish license our units for production. Given that our modular system does have a number of other uses depending on the design of the Wasp mining bitcoin will not be the only thing in the designs repertoire. There are also future plans in the near future to adapt the basic design with add ons to allow for scrypt mining but there is functionality well beyond cryptocurrencies such as a robotic controller.

Our modular miner design strengths include:

+  No requirement to change firmware software for each new Wasp.
+  Firmware will be loaded during fabrication for each new Wasp.
+  Multiple varieties of Wasp chip set mining together in the same modular unit.
+  Short lead time to production of new chips with the modular design.
+  Scales easily and a rapid deployment of hash-power.
+  Protection against obsolescence.
+  Resale value of the components for other purposes beyond mining bitcoins.

If you are keen on getting a sneak peak at our designs that are up on the Zoho page before we close the pages to paid members... then drop me an email and I will add you to the Zoho Project page. Membership to the The Wasp Project Collective is always open and investment in the Wasp and Hive is ongoing and we welcome paid members to join either the design or project management team on this project. We welcome questions and we hope to provide evidence of our prototype miners hashing soon. Come join us.

Let's challenge the market. Happy to be a part of "The Wasp" project.

Update:

Our BitFury prototype should be testing by the end of next week. Next meeting 6pm Pacific Time Seattle USA on the teamspeak server. Minute notes from today's meeting will be posted later in the Zoho Project page. Members welcome anytime on the teamspeak channel to talk with the EE's. The current designs are being done in PCB123® - Free PCB Design Software from Sunstone found here: http://www.sunstone.com/pcb123.aspx

Notes on Chips Order of Prototype Development for the Wasp:

1. BitFury chips in hand will be arriving this week and will be put into prototype boards by end of the week and live development update will be available via VPN for members interested in the design process.

2. Our EE in Utah will work concurrently on the Avalon chips he has in hand already the development of this Wasp will be over the next few weeks updates will follow at the next meeting.

3. A1 chips still from what we know will ship in December but we are still waiting on chip specifications. Designs can be modified with in a few hours of specs being dropped and we have contingencies already in place for a variety of different specs of the A1 chips.

4. BA chips are still on schedule to ship in February and chip specs should drop soon.

As always we are still open to anyone willing and interested to join our group we have a $100 USD membership fee and if you want to create a new project or support the current Wasp / Hive development a 2 BTC opt in will cover the costs of the prototype development as well as chip purchases. Drop me your email and I can add you to the Zoho Page.

Meeting slightly delayed... will start on Teamspeak in about 1 hour and 10 minutes at 8:30 pm Utah Time. One of the EE's still on the road heading home.

1 BTC was set when the BTC / USD price was reasonably low not at nearly $400. We all have to adjust. Tomorrow when it is 50$/BTC at least we have the base at $100 USD.

That sounds better than the 1 BTC price for membership you had before.

Given the rapid increase in USD/BTC price we are setting our membership fees at $100 USD lifetime membership in the group and lowering the chip buy in for the A1 chips to 2 BTC. We are basing our prices on Bitstamp. That should be easier for members to get involved in the project.

We have purchased the domain www.thewaspproject.com so if you are keen on helping build the site ground up join The Wasp Project today and we hope to see everyone at the EE briefing tomorrow. Lots of great news will be on offer I am sure from both Utah and Washington. Exciting times for us.

Update from the EE in Seattle

+ Full schematic/BOM ready for review for BitFury, A1 chips this weekend.

+ Firmware is progressing - the 8-bit AVRs are being used to emulate the various target hashers, by acting as slave SPIs and passing the work info to a PC. Right now, we're just reading and writing, but shortly we should be able to pretend to be a hashing chip by doing the hashing on a GPU and sending the results back... will be very slow, but will verify the firmware even before we get boards back.

+ 32-bit AVRs should be in today, and the test setup running shortly thereafter.

+ Please keep pressing Zefir / Bitmine for A1 data - there are a lot of questions critical to the design that Bitmine hasn't answered yet!

------------

Meeting on Teamspeak server will be at 7pm on Saturday Utah time with both EE's and support team. All members on the Zoho Project page are welcome to attend.

November Prototype Wasps.


Avalon Wasp (Being Designed in Utah, USA)

Avalon Gen I Chips In Hand
6.4 Gh/s (16 chips)

BitFury Wasp (Being Designed in Washington, USA)

BitFuryChips In Hand
40 Gh/s (16 chips)


The Wasp could hold more than 16 chips but for the prototypes 16 will be enough to demonstrate the Hive and Wasp modular design and help us work out design issues before we get to the A1 and Minion chips in December and February respectively. We will have to Engineers working on the Wasps.

Probably through Group Buys or DIY resellers for Avalon / BitFury Wasps & Hive (Late November December / January)
Probably through Group Buys or DIY resellers or potentially through chip fabricators for A1 / Minion Wasps & Hive. (A1 in December / January | Minion February)

Also this will be open source so you could always DIY as well once we are sure everything is functional. We will not be releasing anything until we are sure it is functional in terms of the Open Source Hardware of this design.

We could sell units through our website controlled by local members. Meaning local members could fabricate and sell units in your country and manage the logistics to cut down delivery time and customs issues. Although at this point though we are concerned first with having working prototypes for the Hive and Wasp.

Following up on the OP I just had a short conversation with one of the EE's and the design for the BitFury / Avalon Wasp could hold 16 or more chips. The Quad A1 is now more likely to be a Hex A1 or 6 chips per blade. With a 6 slot Hive so a fully populated Hive with 6 x Hex A1 Wasps could run 1.5 Th/s.

Note it is already "OVERPRICED" as one just has to check out the costs per chip in Zefir's A1 chip buy. Given the difficulty, cost of production, chip costs etc these units will still have one very significant advantage over any other mining systems in that any new chips that come out can be designed into Wasp's which can then be plugged into the same Hives already running say Avalon Wasps or BitFury Wasps. Turn around in weeks, after a new chip is shipped, to mining with that new variant of the Wasp. Modular is the way to go so you are not trapped into one type of chip from one manufacturer.

When can I buy one?

Looks very promising.

Happy to be a part of this project

As the Wasp Project team moves closer to the working prototype we thought we would post up some details here of the 4 chip A1 Wasp currently in the works. Our modular design will be able to use any ASIC chip that is sold to the community past, present, and future. We will be using Avalon Generation 1 and BitFury chips (even a KnC chip) to test the Hive and Wasp capabilities and as soon as the A1 Bitmine Chips ship December or when the Minion Black Arrows ship in February we will have the ability to fabricate Wasps based on those chips in a very short turnaround time.

The Wasp Project is an open membership collective and we are committed to Open Source Hardware and Software and we are very interested in working with chip fabricators, diy'ers / hobbyists as well as miners looking to upgrade their "ageing" and "inefficient" systems. If you want to learn more or even become a member of the team please check out our Project thread. We should be testing the Avalon and BitFury Wasp (and potentially a KnC Wasp) prototype with the Hive in November and we will post more details in our Project thread here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-wasp-28nm-asic-miner-open-hardware-development-project-299255

This is exciting since there is the potential, for the community especially those with BitFury and Avalon Gen I chips, to buy or build these units in a few weeks time given the prototypes work out well. We are hoping that our modular system will allow our community to develop a variety of Wasps as new chips become available and up-cycle your mining rigs using the Hive modular design.


Quad or Hex A1 Wasp System Architecture


Introduction

Our Quad A1 Wasp is comprised by five main sub-systems: the A1 hashing chips and their SPI interfaces, the USB interface, the firmware-controllable power supplies, the power distribution circuitry, and the debug, monitoring, and display subsystem.

The Bitminer A1 hashing ASIC is the workhorse of the blade, with 32 fast hashing engines and an SPI based interface for controlling them. Each chip has its own chip select on the SPI bus mastered by the xmega microcontroller.

Control of the entire blade is performed over the USB bus, which is managed by an Atmel ATXmega256A3U microcontroller. The USB connection is a client of the system's main computer/controller, where the mining software runs and connects to the Internet for pools.

Firmware on the microcontroller configures the buck power supplies to provide individually tailored voltages for each A1. The buck controllers also provide many safety features to protect the A1s during hot-plug or power supply failure.

Backplane voltages required by the Wasp's circuits other than the hasher internal power are all provided either directly from the backplane or through the use of LDO linear regulators. This Wasp must provide the VIO for the hashers and regulators, voltage references for the the A/D circuits monitoring on-board voltages, power for the LED indicators, and power to the connectors for diagnostics and monitoring (the optional local console & display). Almost all the ancillary voltage sources are switched and controlled by the xmega, to provide protection for hot-plug circumstances.

Finally, the monitoring and display subsystem is tasked with monitoring temperatures on the board and the power circuits, monitoring voltages, and displaying their various status levels through single- or multi-color LEDs, which can be pulse-width modulated by the xmega.

Voltages and temperatures on this Wasp are monitored through the xmega's A/D subsystem, and through TWI bussed thermometer circuits, as well as through individual sensors in the ASICs and the buck controllers. Provision has been made to attach additional daisy-chained TWI thermometers for the cooling system to on-blade headers. There are several LEDs on the Wasp's edge furthest from the edge connector, used to provide visual identification, board health, operational modes (hashing, debugging, programming, unplugging), and two push-buttons associated with unplugging and manual mode switching. Finally, as mentioned previously, there is a header for the attachment of an external diagnostic and maintenance console, and a firmware debugging and programming header can also be populated.

A1 Hashing ASICs

The bitminer A1 hashing ASICs have 32 on-chip hashing engines for mining SHA256 based eCoins. These engines can run at somewhere between 0.5 and 0.95V, and the higher the voltage, the higher the internal clock can be configured. The chips are nominally rated at 25GH/s each, at 0.65V, and up to 40GH/s each at 0.75V, if all 32 engines are functional. The seller guarantees only that at least 30 engines are functional, but makes no guarantees about any clock speeds or voltage survival beyond the baseline. Our implementation of the voltage controls and the clock controls performed by the microcontroller allow us to automatically characterize and then optimize the running environment for each chip individually, under firmware control. Since the controls can be changed using the communications protocols, a user can also re-configure his blade while it is hashing, in order to lower the power consumed while increasing the ratio of hashes to Watts. The firmware will also, if configured, manage the power and clock to protect the A1 from overheats caused by cooling failures, for instance.

All communication between the microcontroller and the hashing chips is conveyed over the SPI bus. While the A1 has pads to allow the SPI loop to contain more than a single ASIC, there is no benefit to that feature for us, and it involves significant costs in PCB routing - potentially even forcing a change to a four-layer board. Instead, we buffer the SPI bus to each A1, and simply assign a separate SPI select line to each. This allows us the firmware simplicity of talking to a single hasher at a time, and works better than slaving all the hashers to the slowest one's SPI clock or polling interval. It also prevents long shift chains that can tie up the polling system and lower the utilization of the hashers, because one that finishes while others are being re-initialized, must wait up to several hundred microseconds for its new job. It's also cleaner - we don't know what errata are involved in these new chips, and so treating each one independently gives us the best chance at having a fully functional blade, without very costly hot-air rework to replace a poorly performing chip.

The Atmel xmega series contains a USART which can be used as an SPI bus master with DMA, relieving the microcontroller of the duties of servicing the SPI inputs and outputs. This - along with a similar DMA capability on the USB port - makes the microcontroller very responsive to new commands from the mining software and enabling separate work queues for each A1, which are all moving at different speeds, potentially. We don't have to run at the lowest common denominator, and hence can get more hashing out of any given blade than a design that is limited in that fashion.
 
USB Interface

The particular xmega microcontroller selected for this design has an on-board native USB interface whose outputs require only external anti-static protection and noise filters to implement a USB 2.0 Full Speed (12Mb/s) interface. This interface is configured with two device descriptors, making the blade a compound USB device. One device is basically only used for normal mining specification of hashing jobs, and for returning any golden nonces that have been discovered. This makes the miner software simple, and allows it to conform to a single protocol without regard to the type of hashing chip that the Wasp uses. The descriptors also allow for self-identification, as required by the USB specifications, and can show the mining software what opaque configuration data block it might load, to initialize normal operation.

The second of the compound devices is a more complex management interface. It functions to enable FLASH programming, as well as overlay loading and invocation, and can duplicate the monitoring and maintenance reporting for voltages, temperatures, and power supply availability, etc. from the first device. Firmware licensing verification operations are performed using this interface, and it also provides an interface for running diagnostics that can override the first device's commands - or disable them completely.

Power Generation and Control

This model of Wasp, like every model, uses PMBUS-configurable buck power supplies to provide the variations of main internal operational power to the hashing chips. The IMVP-7 specification has resulted in many viable alternative buck controllers, since they are used primarily in the production of CPU point-of-load regulators, both for laptop PCs and desktop PCs where the graphics processor is implemented on the CPU chip. Because most graphics engines take the same low voltages as the processors, at nearly the same high current levels, there exist dual buck controllers such as the TPS59650 which can create two independent power supplies of the same voltage range, individually programmable throughout the range (0.1-2.5V, in 50mV steps!), at 40A current levels with very low ripple, and monitoring/recovery circuits for over-current, over-voltage, under-current, under-voltage, and synchronized soft startup - all for about $3/per chip, in medium quantities!

Quad A1 Wasp derives all its power needs from the edge connector(s) on its PCB. All backplane configurations provide the following voltages:



This provides drive power for the buck controllers, which generate programmable voltages in the 0.1V-2.5V range at currents around 30A for each section. It, too, is switchable by the Xmega, to support hot-plug. Higher amperage (60A) supply is possible with a second, optional power-only edge connector.

+5Vsb is used to supply all the power to the microcontroller, through a 3.3V low-dropout linear regulator. It is always on, unless the backplane power is completely unplugged, and provides constant availability for the USB connection. +3.3V is used to power the buck controllers, any level translators, and most LED drivers. +5V is the standard switched power that is used only for needs greater than the standby power can supply. It is currently unused on the Quad A1 Wasp. +12V is the main power source for the hashing chips, once it has been conditioned by the buck controllers. With four A1 chips running at turbo speeds, this rail will need to supply the blade with about 160-175W, or somewhere around 18-20A. Other proposed Wasps may use more power, and require the addition of a second power stage connector on the motherboard, bringing the total available power for +12V to 60A.

Power needs for the Quad A1 Wasp involve a few additional voltages derived from the backplane supplies. Low current needs are met with low-dropout linear regulators, while the high current, variable voltage needs of the hashers are met with switching buck regulators, one per A1 chip.

This type of buck controller is perfect for driving a pair of A1's, and the PMBUS is a well known specification for controlling them, which even has pre-built firmware libraries available from Atmel to serve as the basis of firmware development on the Wasp. The Quad A1 Wasp would have two copies of the circuit in Figure-1, below, which would share the xmega between them:
A1 Wasp Power Template

Figure 1: Template for Internal power generation and control for 2 A1's



The dual buck power supply circuit would be a slight simplification of the Texas Instruments reference design available from the manufacturer at TPS59650 Reference Design.