Quote from: dexX7 on September 04, 2013, 07:08:55 PM

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:

Quote from: TheSwede75 on July 27, 2013, 02:37:13 PM

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

Quote from: labcoin on August 29, 2013, 10:38:02 AM

For the test run we opted for QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad, (...)

Amount of chips:

Quote from: labcoin on July 12, 2013, 01:35:58 AM

Right now we're looking to get 1000/1500 chips from the first run at 130nm.

Quote from: TheSwede75 on August 19, 2013, 04:51:37 PM

- 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:

Quote from: TheSwede75 on August 19, 2013, 04:51:37 PM

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

Quote from: labcoin on August 28, 2013, 09:55:35 AM

(...) 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 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:

Quote from: TheSwede75 on July 27, 2013, 02:37:13 PM

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

Quote from: labcoin on August 29, 2013, 10:38:02 AM

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.

Thanks for your post.