Re: [LABCOIN] IPO [BTCT.CO] - Details/FAQ and Discussion (ASIC dev/sales/mining)
Hey all,
I looked up the specifications of other ASIC hardware to get a feeling about power consumption, heat, etc. to check what might be possible for the upcoming sample batch.
What Labcoin said:
Latest chip specifications:
Amount of chips:
The post from Sam is a bit older, though.
Expected hashrate:
The following illustrates the amount of chips needed and hashrate / chip to fullfil the goal of 3-6 TH/s with 1000-2500 chips.
For example Labcoin would need 2000 chips with a hashrate of at least 1,7 GH/s per chip to deploy 3,4 TH/s. This would translate to 4,59 W power consumption per chip or 9,180 kW altogether.
Looks fine till now, even if they underperform hard, they would accomplish their goal, but ...
Some said 12.8 W/chip will melt the chip etc., so I looked up already available chips. Note: this is not about efficiency, but only about the limits of power consumption.
So green in this picture means the chip hashes stable and red equals unstable or meltdown.
I think it's not wise to say "because BitFury can't do it, Labcoin can do it neither", but it's intended to get a broader picture.
Pictures of the custom cooling solutions to achive this performance (BitFury, Avalon, AsicMiner #1, , AsicMiner #2):
Again the relevant quotes:
QFP 44 is a bit smaller than the packaging used by competitors (= more W/mm²) and no exposed heat pad basically means the heat is kinda trapped in the packaging.
TL;TR: I think the sample chips will underperform greatly in comparison to the original announcement and might only hash at 1,5-1,7 GH/s/chip. This relates to a power consumption of 4-4,5 W which would approximately match a deployment of 3 TH/s+ with 2000 chips.
Disclaimer: I'm not really familiar with this topic at all, but I tried to connect the given dots.
I looked up the specifications of other ASIC hardware to get a feeling about power consumption, heat, etc. to check what might be possible for the upcoming sample batch.
What Labcoin said:
Latest chip specifications:
Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W
For the test run we opted for QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad, (...)
Amount of chips:
Right now we're looking to get 1000/1500 chips from the first run at 130nm.
- The first run of chips are expected to arrive within a week. This is a 2500 chip run and Labcoin expects at least 2000 chips to be of "production quality".
The post from Sam is a bit older, though.
Expected hashrate:
TLDR; Things are going as planned with no delays as of yet. Labcoin expects to hash at approx 6TH within 3-4 weeks and 50TH+ by mid to late October
(...) mining will start no later than 10 September with about 3-4 TH, and to reach the full speed within October.
The following illustrates the amount of chips needed and hashrate / chip to fullfil the goal of 3-6 TH/s with 1000-2500 chips.
For example Labcoin would need 2000 chips with a hashrate of at least 1,7 GH/s per chip to deploy 3,4 TH/s. This would translate to 4,59 W power consumption per chip or 9,180 kW altogether.
Looks fine till now, even if they underperform hard, they would accomplish their goal, but ...
Some said 12.8 W/chip will melt the chip etc., so I looked up already available chips. Note: this is not about efficiency, but only about the limits of power consumption.
- BitFury chips are hashing at 2,7 GH/s with 0,8 W/GH/s which results in 2,16 W/chip (reference), 55 nm, QFN 48 packaging, 7,0 mm x 7,00 mm.
- Avalon chips are packed in a QFN 48 package with a chip size of 7,0 mm x 7,00 mm and a transistor size of 110 nm. burnin's overclocked Avalon chips are running stable till somewhere near 430 MH/s with 1.3 V and a power consumption between 3,85-4,35 W/chip (reference #1, reference #2) with a air cooled block cooler or water cooler.
- The crasiest thing I've seen done till now is an overclocked Block Eruptor USB to 672 MH/s by mjgraham (reference), but it's not really a BE anymore, but a giant cooling block with additional hardware attached. Anyway, this thing would run at 10,49 W/chip and AM chips have a transistor size of 130 nm.
So green in this picture means the chip hashes stable and red equals unstable or meltdown.
I think it's not wise to say "because BitFury can't do it, Labcoin can do it neither", but it's intended to get a broader picture.
Pictures of the custom cooling solutions to achive this performance (BitFury, Avalon, AsicMiner #1, , AsicMiner #2):
Again the relevant quotes:
Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W
For the test run we opted for QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad, (...)
QFP 44 is a bit smaller than the packaging used by competitors (= more W/mm²) and no exposed heat pad basically means the heat is kinda trapped in the packaging.
TL;TR: I think the sample chips will underperform greatly in comparison to the original announcement and might only hash at 1,5-1,7 GH/s/chip. This relates to a power consumption of 4-4,5 W which would approximately match a deployment of 3 TH/s+ with 2000 chips.
Disclaimer: I'm not really familiar with this topic at all, but I tried to connect the given dots.