If you thought i was making this post because i wanted to mass produce cloned hash boards and sell them for a profit because i claim to be able to produce them for cheap, then no, thats far from what i meant. I am aware thats not going to be at all profitable and moreover theres always a legal caveat to the story (which is why the companies tend to "modify" their clones instead of making a copy). I was more of planning to get back the ROI from the boards themselves by using them, if they worked of course.
It would have to be at least some light modifications made to the PCB because I don't think companies can get away with making a token change to some circuit. Which makes me wonder if the cloned PCBs you get from this will be as efficient as the original, since chances are the design houses will not make a perfect clone of the PCB. Maybe they'll do stuff like making some path longer (I think
I'm a developer, not an electrician or circuit designer) that makes some part of operation less efficient, to avoid infringing on some random company's IP.Apparently the company that made the cloned S9 hash boards almost doubled the hashrate on them. However that means there would either have to be more chips on board or they essentially overclocked a board, which would mean that modifications would need to be made to the firmware and to the microcontroller on the hash board.
Having a trace somewhere that is slightly longer wouldnt effect things too much as far as i know. But any change, in the end, is a modification.
The companies which produce cloned FPGA board clones (like arduino clones) usually tend to use a slightly different version of the ram chips or some other chip on board which then they can sell for a profit.
Making a one to one copy of the hash board like i suggested/planned on doing shouldnt have any considerable difference in the hashrate, provided that the PCB used matches the appropriate ratings for the amount of heat and current that is going to be passed through it.