Umm, that's cool, but I can assure you not that's clearly not he case on all units. I have pictures of the one I took to Atlanta using a Kill-A-Watt, and there were enough witnesses that were present, including members of this forum (Bargraphics, Phin Gage), and representatives from competing companies that saw this for their own eyes. Also there's plenty in this thread amongst the first recipients to verify otherwise.
And I'd be willing to bet a few satoshi's that the unit you took to Atlanta did not have the same firmware as those units that were subsequently shipped out to Day 1 customers onwards...and that the voltage was tweaked upwards in the interim thus increasing the power requirements (in the name of increasing performance/stability, I'm sure). Couple the fact that the actual physical design of the product was changed quite substantially (8 VRMs to 4 VRMs) and it's not exactly apples-to-apples
No, you are wrong. It was a standard unit I made when at the manufacturing facility. By that point I had not seen my hotel for a week, and certainly no one had had anytime or were confident enough to tweak a unit. Literally decided on going. Booked a flight at 11pm, the night before, for an 11am take-off. Then searched for a hotel, made a device, drove several hours back to Stockholm, washed, packed and made my way to the airport. Thing is no way was a clocked machine risked that early. We had only seen the chips 5 days earlier and just had to have something that worked. Why if something performed well, would it not be given to customers. Austin and Beccy Craig from Life on Bitcoin have had it in their possession since that Atlanta conference. Can we please stop this 8/4 VRM nonsense. The additional 4 vrms were surplus to reaching spec. They were in place in the beginning in case they were needed to achieve the spec. They weren't so they aren't.
Well that is surprising given the results that later cropped up with overcurrent PSU's and exploding capacitors..do you have a link to those kill-a-watt photos from Atlanta? I don't remember the values you saw there versus what was in the youtube video in Sweden. And just to clarify..when I said "tweaked" I meant subsequent production machines, not the one you took to Atlanta. In other words, my assumption was that the initial "beta" firmware or whatever you had then was running at say .8V and then when you guys decided on the production values for the boxes that were going to start shipping it was bumped to .9V for the added stability/speed benefits that brings. I wasn't suggesting that you custom-tuned the Atlanta box. But however it worked out in the order of events...there were definitely some growing pains in relation to power at the PSU and the power through the VRMs that had to be ironed out, as I know you are extremely familiar with
As for the 8/4 thing...well, you keep saying it didn't matter when the facts showed that it did. There was a material difference in how those things ran before/after the change which had to be accounted for in new firmware. Again, I don't think it was some malicious conspiracy or anything..but I do think it was a reckless change that was done without adequate testing which caused issues that had to be addressed further down the road.
Sure, as below, pretty sure I posted one of these before as I took a few for that reason. It was hard to balance the non-backlit LCD screen, with the bright Macbook Air Screen. This is with the Screen brightness turned down to it's lowest, so sorry there is two. Again there were a coupe of hundred people at the conference that witnessed the device's performance on the day.
So getting to the bottom of the 4/8 VRM thing, it was just brought up within an interview for a new engineer, which was cool as I have an answer from Marcus and it was definitely not a cost saving issue. The reason; KnC bought the entire world's supply from General Electric of those VRMs and could not get anymore without a month's wait, meaning a lot of people would have been without their kit if every board required them. They were indeed a margin and as you can see not necessary to reach the promised spec. GE could not supply more for any money, and there was actually a scary period where it was believed 8 may be necessary, in which case then there would have been a problem fulfilling all orders.
Thanks! I think you did post them but I couldn't remember if it was in this thread or somewhere else..but thank you for indulging me
And that's quite different from the reading in Sweden @ 850-ish watts, so I think one can safely say that there was something different between those two, and by extension what eventually made it out for customers. And thanks for the background on the VRMs...very interesting and makes perfect sense in the timing of it and why it was rolled out without extensive testing. I withdraw my "reckless" statement and replace it with "unfortunately timed".