Hardware design is challenging to say the least. Also, hardware engineers are scarce.

I graduated from the top computer college in my country and I can say that only a couple of people from my generation really knew about hardware - that means designing circuits that don't go boom.

Nowadays chip design is computer assisted with programming languages dedicated to that purpose (Verilog and whatnot) but in my experience it's still very esoteric and convoluted, unlike software programming that is more or less accessible to everyone.

Plus, you need all sorts of hardware to get designing like prototype boards, FPGAs and such. Simulators are OK but they can't go very far.

Software is also expensive for this sort of endeavor. Companies like Xilinix charge for the software quite a pretty penny even if it's quite useless without the hardware.

I think that the few good hardware engineers that exist are immediately gobbled up by companies like Intel, AMD and Nvidia...

There are countless companies that will print your PCBs and assemble your product but you need to know how to make it. I've actually known someone who worked with an Israeli electonics company(it seems to me that there are lot of chips built and sold there) and their community is a lot more closed than the software community that is so open and blooming.

Honestly, I thing the way to go would be to find some sort of chip that is massed produced(like Avalon is doing now) that can be installed on a multipurpose platform. Like, let's say you could buy 50 little PowerVR GPUs and plug them into a board and run them for mining. Or a very basic ARM CPU... But large companies are not interested in Bitcoin mining right now and that's for the best, probably.

The raspberry PI for example is demonstrating that there is a demand for more DIY mass produced hardware out there. Who knows, maybe some day little CPUs will be sold like transistors are today.

We need a platform, like FPGAs that can run a multitude of chips and do whatever task we want it to.

Sorry for the lecture guys... Feel free to flame me

Understood. But do you think they will be able to cover their production costs while shipping all the requested units?
Can you link that wired article?

Hello fellow miners,

According to my limited info on ASIC building, it can cost at least 250k $ to make one of these units but they are selling them at 274$!

Now FPGA mining made a lot more sense - sensibly priced hardware, mass produced, programmable for custom purpose - power consumption - not so great.

My point simple: given how much it costs to build ASIC chips(no matter how brilliantly efficient they might be) they probably only gathered enough funds to manufacture a portion of the ones ordered.

So they will ship a couple of units every week to appease the masses. In the mean time, people will continue pre-ordering(all sales final!); they will keep up this rhythm until they hit their profit target or they get bored or the supply drops  - at that point, after having smartly moved their profits to offshore accounts along the way they can file from bankrupcy and skip town, not delivering one more single unit.

Call me paranoid, but this scheme makes sense and I see no reason why they could build ASICs for only 274$ - unless they have their own factory??

Hello guys,

Honestly, I wish I had ordered one a year ago. Now it makes little sense to order one.
Sure, this drip distribution methods make sure the the hash-rate of the network does not sky rocket... so it's good... in a sense.

What I wonder is: how revolutionary is their design? Once one is shipped to a developer, it could be reverse engineered...maybe?
Did they design their own custom chips? Or are they using chips build some other company? In that case, couldn't we reproduce their work?
All I heard is that they optimized power consumption, allegedly by tuning the chips (how? transistor count, die size?)

LE: I studied a bit more ASICs. They probably have custom chips. If with all the people interested in bitcoin mining, couldn't an open source solution be build? As far as I can tell the challenge with ASICs are the building costs - that's why they needed to get the preorders, otherwise they wouldn't have built anything. The price is another strange thing - 274$ a unit(150$ originally) is a rather low price for a custom build chip...

I would normally call bullshit on such a product(it's why I never ordered one - sounded like a fantasy) but it seems that at least a few units shipped and that they are indeed performing 5GH/s at 30W. At least according to the youtube videos.

Does anyone have some technical details on these little Jalapenos?

Hi,
I had recently found this and wanted to give it a go... too bad.
Any other decent 0% fee PPS pools?

The same can be achieved using brew instead of macports.
Beware that ADL support is broken.

OK, here's the issue with ADL_SDK and cgminer on os x:
- the adl_sdk.h uses __stdcall which isn't supported with clang on os x, removing that fixes compilation

HOWEVER, once it compiles you will get link errors because the AMD libs/driver for OS X simply don't have the required ADL layer compiled in... so no use trying.

Also "-mnative" is a bogus flag, don't use it.

Try the following:
Update your Xcode to the latest and install command line tools/update.
If that doesn't work, you might try an alternative toolchain via brew.

Multumesc

Voi ce mining pool folositi?
Ma intereseaza ceva cu un profit cat mai decent pt un hashrate mic (am 50MH/s pe secunda si planuiesc sa imi mai adaug 200MH/s cu un AMD 5770).

Am incercat 50btc si slush's pool, sa zicem ca profitul era 0.003/zi la 50MH/s.

I am guessing -mnative does not make sense to your compiler so the compiler check failed. Did you want -m32 or -m64?

P.S. You need to have the latest Xcode installed.
Also, from Xcode go to Preferences/Downloads and install the command line tools in order to have gcc/make outside of Xcode.

You could run using "xcrun..." but that's a whole other story.

I've actually compiled this yesterday hassle free.

I am a developer but it wasn't a challenge, no matter your level.

What you need:
1 .hombrew: http://brew.sh (ruby should be installed already)

Once brew is installed do a 'brew update' in the console
Now, I am not sure what packages are needed because I have lots of them already installed but the configure script will let you know what you are missing .

2. Install git if needed (on Mountain Lion I think it comes preinstalled, check if you already have it)

3. Do a 'git clone https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer.git'

This creates a cgminer folder in your current folder (console)

Now, automake scripts use pkg-config which doesn't automatically pick up brew packages so you need to do this export:
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Library/ENV/pkgconfig/10.8/
(for OS X 10.

I put mine in /etc/bashrc so it's always there.

4. After doing the export in the previous section run "./autogen.sh" from cgminer folder
If you're missing stuff install them via 'brew install'

5. Do a './configure CFLAGS="-O3"'

6. Do a sudo make install to build it and copy it in your bin folder

Umm... that's it.

Unlike other ppl I am not gonna beg for a penny for this very basic info
Would post anywhere else but I a "newbie"

Salutare,

Uite ca s-a auzit si in Romania de bitcoin
Si nu a disparut inca ! cum scria pe una din primele pagini ale acestui thread.