There's some pre-order sale threads over in Group Buys, and I'll be starting to bring in parts before long. PCBs and heatsinks should be in hand in about two weeks. Novak's on vacation and I'm tied up with assembly tasks for a huge PSU boards order so there probably won't be any dev work done on either hardware or code until next week. I think we're going to skip Amita design and go right into a simple multi-chip board with full software control of clock, voltage and fan. From there we can extend it to 18- and 30-chip designs.
Independent from what PlanetCrypto is working on, we've been thinking about building a 4U machine made for swappable boards and such. With BM1384 it'd put up 5TH, so next-gen chips would be even better. The plan was to make the layout fairly flexible, internal connections a generic USB bus, and publish the specs in case anyone else wanted to build boards for the same form-factor. Basically, an intention to define an open standard. Once I get back to hardware dev we'll see what happens.
To clarify:
Gekkoscience is a standalone entity as is Planetcrypto.
I can unequivocally say that any interaction between the proposed entity and PC will be contractual in nature as it has been between Gekkoscience and PC.
We, as a company, may elect to contribute, gratis, resources/assets to any company or individual (time on one of our super computers, for instance, for chip simulation) at our discretion.
PC will probably fund the proposed entity (subject to our share holder approval) through the share purchase vehicle as I will personally.
Currently, I'm leaning towards a corporate organizational model that files for an IRS 503(c)(6) tax status which is commonly known as a Mutual Benefit Nonprofit Corporation.
Briefly described here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual-benefit_nonprofit_corporationThis will make investing in the organization less attractive to "whales", i.e. individuals looking to make huge ROI's in the short term.
But is, I think, more philosophically inline with what the Bitcoin mining community needs.
To quote from the Wiki referene:
"Mutual benefit corporations are formed for common gain purposes such as ..." "... promoting the social or economic welfare of member individuals or organizations (for example through trade groups, professional organizations or business districts)." In this instance the the proposed organization would be loosely defined as Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturers.
Stated succinctly, The proposed Mutual Benefit Nonprofit Corporation will promote the social and economic welfare (common gain) of member individuals and organizations by getting to tapeout a state-of-the-art Bitcoin SHA-256 hashing chip.
And yeah, PC will be interested in purchasing some of those 5TH machines as well.