Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

SFARDS SF100 – The first 28nm Dual-Mode Miner is Getting in Mass Production

23, Jun 2015

sfards-sf100-miner

SFARDS Technology has successfully developed and produced the first FD-SOI 28nm SHA-256 (Bitcoin) and Scrypt (Litecoin) dual-mode mining chip SF3301, as we have previously reported. After more than one month evaluating, prototyping, and extreme-condition pressure testing, the first 28nm dual-mode miner, SFARDS SF100 is about to start mass production.

SF100 dual-mode miner has 24 SF3301 chips that support the following modes:
1. Dual mining mode, Bitcoin hashing power 1700 GHS + Litecoin hashing power 47 MHS, the power consumption at wall of whole miner is 960W.
2. Bitcoin single mining mode: Hashing power 1700 GHS, power consumption 770W.
3. Litecoin single mining mode: Hashing power 47 MHS, power consumption 180W.

With 0.45W/GHS + 3.8W/MHS, the power efficiency of SF100 is showing really good potential. It is also possible to overclock to certain extent (Sha-256: 2 THS, Scrypt: 55 MHS). Based on recent Bitcoin and Litecoin price, a dual-mode SF100’s revenue is similat to that of a to a 2.8-3.2 THS pure Bitcoin miner, which makes it equivalent to 0.3-0.34W/GHS power efficiency when it is dual mining. Taking June 19th price for instance, one SF100 generates 4.2 USD from Bitcoin and 3.8 USD from Litecoin, or a total 8 USD per day (without the costs for electricity deducted).

SFARDS Technology will start selling the SF100 dual-miner to public in July, though there is still no official end-user price announced and the first batch quantity is limited. The SF3301 dual-miner ASIC chips will be available for sale on August to people interested in using them in their own miner designs, again no pricing has been announced yet.

SFARDS Now Offering SF3301 Sample Chips and Development Boards

4, May 2015

sfards-development-board-1

Thew new ASIC manufacturer SFARDS is now offering SF3301 sample chips for people interested in building their own miners using the dual-mining SHA-256 and Scrypt ASIC chips. The price is currently set at $200 USD per a pack of 2 SF3301 chips. Alternatively you can also purchase a sample Development board set that includes one dev board with a single SF3301 chip, two power supply boards, radiator and fan at a price of $400 USD. The prices are pretty high and do not include shipping, but do note that these are sample chips and development boards for people that want to test what the SFARDS SF3301 chips are capable of or make their own miners based on the chips. The actual volume prices of the chips and the miners based on them should be lower, or they will be pointless…

sfards-development-board-2

Dev Main Board:
– SF3301: 1 chip
– Heatsink: heatsink & 12mmx12mm fan
– FBB Voltage: +/- 0~1.0V
– Communication Interface: RS232 / TTL

Dev Power Supply Board:
– Output Voltage Range: 0.5~1.6V
– Voltage Step: 6.25mV
– Max Current: 120A

SFARDS With Preliminary Datasheet for SF3301 ASIC Chips

30, Apr 2015

sfards-sf3301-power-usage-hashrate

It seems that things at SFARDS are progressing well as the company has just released some documents including a datasheet for their upcoming SF3301 Bitcoin and Litecoin dual-mining ASIC chips. The documents include a preliminary power usage report on expected power usage in LTC and BTC mining modes that you can see on the image above. The numbers released in the above tables are higher than what we have anticipated based on previously released information about performance and power usage as the power efficiency numbers were apparently for too low operating voltages and frequencies that are going to be producing too low hashrates to be useable. Also it seems that SFARDS already has some sample chips and will announce pricing details on May 4th as was announced on their official Twitter account.

Official specifications of SFARDS SF3301:
– 160 BTC Units
– 31 LTC Units
– BTC mode up to 80 GH/s with 0.31 W/GH
– LTC mode up to 1.89 MH/s with 2.0 W/MH
– Dual-Mining mode: 100 GH/s BTC and 1.75 MH/s LTC
– Highly integrated with PLL and Pre-Calculation Engine of BTC
– 2-wires UART interface
– Support Crystal and Oscillator
– Fully adjustable clock frequency
– Support body-bias adjust
– On-chip thermal sensor

Based on the official specifications of the SF3301 Dual-Miner chip we are now looking at 100 GHS BTC and 1.75 MHS LTC mining performance per chip with expected power usage of just about 35W. And if we want to overclock it to get about 150 GHS with 3 MHS hashrates it would scale up to about 100W of power usage. Do note that these numbers and specifications are preliminary and are on per chip basis. If we make a 10-chip miner it could turn out to offer 1 THS Bitcoin hashrate and 17.5 MHS Litecoin combined hashrate with a power usage of about 350W which sounds like a pretty reasonable number. However overclocking this to get 1.5 THS and 30 MHS would scale the used power about 3 times all the way up to about 1 KW. So in the end it is going to be all about finding the best balance between hashrate provided and power usage with the maximum performance with overclock definitely not going to be the best option here, but then again the price of the hardware is also going to play a very important role here. People are already placing high hopes on the SF3301 ASIC chips to revive the interest in Litecoin and bring the price to a higher levels as mining for LTC resumes with a more up to date mining hardware that has better power efficiency.

– To check out the released technical documents at the official SFARDS GitHub page…


top