Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

New Braiins OS and Braiins OS+ Firmware for Antminer S9 ASICs

31, Mar 2020

There is a new major release of the Braiins OS open source miner firmware for Bitmain’s most popular S9 series of ASIC miners available now. In fact there are now two different versions available Braiins OS community edition and Braiins OS+ enterprise edition, both available for free, with a different feature set and some specifics we’ll cover in a moment. You can use the new Braiins OS or OS+ to replace the original Bitmain firmware on Antminer S9, S9i and S9j and soon hopefully the newer S17 and T17 models will also be supported along with other devices in the future. Braiins OS is fully open-source and customizable so you can tweak it to fit your needs, it supports AsicBoost, supports Stratum V1 and V2 implementation, uses a custom BOSminer developed from scratch in Rust and provides some extra useful features that can help you tweak your ASIC miners and get more of your hardware. The Braiins OS community edition is completely free and open-source without the need to pay for it or any developer fees, unlike the case with some other custom firmware solutions.

The new Braiins OS+ enterprise edition is built on top of the standard community editions and has some extra features available, most interesting of which are the auto-tuning feature to increase hashrate and the low power mode for maximum efficiency as well as the pre-heat option. The rest is like in the standard edition, but the extra features allow you to tweak even better your performance or energy efficiency, depending on your specific needs. The small catch with the Braiins OS+ enterprise edition is that for the extra features you get you will have to agree to the 2% built-in developer fee, however you will also get a 50% reduction (from 2% to 1%) of the pool fee if you use the miners with Braiins OS+ on the Slush Pool for mining. Thanks to the auto-tuning feature in which algorithms automatically evaluate the optimal frequencies for hashing chip-by-chip, instead of treating the entire machine as one single unit the extra performance you may get from a miner should be much more than the fee that you will need to pay.

– For more information and to download and try the new Braiins OS and OS+…

Bitmain Antminer E3 Firmware Update to Extend the Miner’s Life

30, Mar 2020

It seems that Bitmain has taken seriously the issue with their Antminer E3 ASIC miners intended for Ethash stopping to mine Ethereum Classic (ETC) recently and their upcoming inability to mine ETH as well in the very near future. To ensure Bitmain can provide efficient mining equipment for the Ethereum community, it has launched a new firmware to support the Antminer E3. This new firmware has apparently been designed to allow miners to continue using the Antminer E3, even after March 2020. This new firmware addresses the prior issue of the growth of directed acyclic graph (DAG) files, which limited the capability of the Antminer E3s for mining ETH or ETC. This new firmware will expand the usage of Double Date Rate (DDR) Memory, as more space is needed to process DAG files according to the company.

So, how long will the Antminer E3 last with the new firmware? The new firmware has been designed to better support the Antminer E3, and so Bitmain is confident that miners can continue using the hardware past April 2020. With the new firmware update, the final approximate block height of the Antminer E3 is 11,400,000, so according to calculations, mining can continue until October of 2020. ETC mining will stop again earlier than ETH due to the current DAG Epoch for Ethereum Classic being ahead with about 10 Epochs. Regardless, the new DAG size that the E3 miners would be able to handle seems to be increased to 3.97 GB based on the block number data released by Bitmain. So if you have Bitmain Antminer E3 miners you should make sure to update them with the latest firmware released to be able to extend their life to the maximum possible.

– To download the latest Bitmain Antminer E3 Firmware Update extending Ethash mining support…

Hummer Miner Mars H1 Handshake (HNS) ASIC Miner Details

11, Mar 2020

A few days ago we have mentioned the Handshake (HNS) project and the fact that mining has recently started with GPUs and FPGAs that offer slightly faster hashrate at a bit lower power usage and that ASIC miners are also going to be coming out soon. Now there are more details about the first announced Handshake ASIC miner available from the Chinese ASIC manufacturer Hummer Miner with their device up for pre-order. The Hummer Miner Mars H1 ASIC should be offering 80 GH/s hashrate with 2000 Watts of power usage (25 Watt/GHs efficiency) and is priced at 12600 CNY or roughly about $1800 USD with shipping expected to start mid-June and not in May as previously expected. This gives some additional time for miners with GPUs and FPGA’s from Hashaltcoin to stock up on HNS coins before ASIC miners hit the market, even though profitability is already getting lower day by day as we are seeing.

– For more details about the Hummer Miner Mars H1 Handshake ASIC Miner (CN)…


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