Topic: Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com - page 1954. (Read 3050080 times)

Possibly they ordered a chip surplus with the intention of selling loose chips a la Avalon/BFL if they couldn't make up the difference with miners.

Back to the topic of KNC. Did they ever say how many chips they have on order? Wondering how they are still selling miners on their website saying shipping in september.

And why I'm baffled, since BFL has obviously not binned them correctly.

BFL has been selling their round of loose chips at different prices based on the bin (A/B/C/D). If they are being too aggressive with their binning, they are actually getting paid less than they could be. That seems very un-BFL-like. Curious.

No kidding, that's why people are having fun unlocking the potential with firmware upgrades!

Running your chips below their maximum stable clock is a very different thing from completely disabling functional engines. One may be an optimal trade-off with power consumption and chip lifetime; the other simply wastes potential.

I don't understand the point you are making at all. With the exception of the MiniRig, BFL don't run their chips flat out, that's why speed bumps are available over the base unit. The MiniRig has been reported at being 480GH/s instead of 500GH/s but I don't know how many people experienced that, I have only read the one report.

The foundry is being too aggressive with the chip binning, then. They're probably defect mapping by using a tool like one of these:

http://www.kla-tencor.com/front-end-defect-inspection/puma-family.html

Any die with a defect gets knocked down a bin, and the corresponding engine gets disabled. Two defects, another bin... and so on. That's going to be overly aggressive, since not all of those defects will be killer.

What BFL SHOULD be doing is burning the chips in, and binning them based on performance. Who knows why they're not.

Obviously, a 90nm defect in a 28nm process would be a lot more devastating than it would be in a 65nm chip, so a higher proportion of the defects might prove to be killer. I always thought 28nm was an odd choice... why not something a little more mature, like 45nm? They'd have saved millions on the mask set alone.

BFL don't make the chips, and they are only 65nm,  I can just imagine what you would find on a 28nm chip.

I assure you defects are quite real. I looked at one today under a scanning electron microscope. I think it winked at me. Or maybe that was the astigmatism...

Clearly, BFL is just as incompetent at binning their chips as they are at making deadlines.

Except when you read the threads in this forum where people have changed firmware and activated all the engines on their BFL chips, the results have been really good, so much for that theory!

Certainly BFL has encountered issues with killer defects on their chips. Know what they do? They disable the regions with defects and bin them. Suddenly there's not much correlation between yield and die size anymore.

(Intel does this also, and their chips are *much, much* more complex. Then again, if you ever had to deal with those fuckers, you'd understand how they get their defect concentrations down. "Our spec is zero defects, hurr hurr hurr... Your recipe creates 2 defects per wafer..."

Sorry, sorta got an axe to grind with those guys)

Anyway, here's to hoping that KNC is at least as competent as BFL.

Dryer outlets in North America are just two 15 amp circuits with one neutral. 180 degrees out of phase so you can still run 120 volt items with the same wiring as if you were running them 240v. Perfect for running 4 jupiters.

... a hot cup does not kill... I got electrocuted too and lived, but that is not the point. the point is that it CAN go very wrong and it does in about 3% of the cases with lower voltage...
The lethality of an electric shock is dependent on several variables:

    Current. The higher the current, the more likely it is lethal. Since current is proportional to voltage when resistance is fixed (ohm's law), high voltage is an indirect risk for producing higher currents.
    Duration. The longer the duration, the more likely it is lethal—safety switches may limit time of current flow
    Pathway. If current flows through the heart muscle, it is more likely to be lethal.
    High voltage (over about 600 volts). In addition to greater current flow, high voltage may cause dielectric breakdown at the skin, thus lowering skin resistance and allowing further increased current flow.
and that is from wikipedia, for your reading pleasure regarding higher voltage -> lower current.
Stromweg    Accidents whole     Acc. deadly    rel. Verteilung(insgesamt)    rel. Verteilung(tödlich)    Lethality
Hand-Hand    2891       82                             77,3 %                        48,5%                            2 ,84 %
Hand-Fuß             349           19                              9,2 %                         11,2 %                      5,44 %
Hand-Füße    294               18                            7,7 %                         10,7 %                      6,12 %
Hände-Füße    106               20                           2,8 %                            11,8 %                     18,67 %
Verkürzte Stromwege Oberkörper
(wie Hand-Brust, oder  Brust-Rücken)
                    108             30                             3,0 %                        17,8 %                       27,78 %
Insgesamt    3748    169                            100 %                          100 %                         4,51 %

I am too lazy to translate all of it, but you should get the gist...  DON'T try to play with currents if you have no practical knowledge of the matter...

Dryer Outlets??     

most dryer outlets are 240 V.  which is ideally what you want.  i installed a 240 V receptacle precisely for the avalons and they're running great.

240V here in Aus

You do of course realise that the higher voltage actually means you are less likely to die from electrocution right?
Cos the current is thus lower.
It's the current that kills you, not the voltage.

... I also remember my older brother sticking a screw driver in a power point when we were very young ... he's now >50

Yes electricity can kill you, so can a chainsaw, driving on the road, holding your breath under water, catching an aeroplane ...

You really think bitpop is a complete idiot? (I don't) Coz that's what's implied by the "DON'T DO IT" silliness.

Sounds as silly as a Starbucks hot cup warning ...

That is the most stupid question ever. Do you know how many people die in Germany alone because of electirc shocks?
Germany has a standard voltage of 230V, "Starkstrom" has up to 1000V and is used by a dryer outlet. 600V can effectively reduce the resistance of the skin and increase lethality by a lot. And most people who died did not even have that high voltage...

Damn im going to be sticking these all around the house then. Especially the kitchen, the best amps.

Watch out for sharp knives in the kitchen also ...

My favourite questions asked in electrical engineering at university was by a lecturer:
"So how many of you have been electrocuted?"
(lots of hands went up)
"How many of you didn't survive?"

Okay, it's "Starkstrom", dunno what that is in english still, call an electrician, it's not that expensive and you live afterwards...