Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

Is Bitmain Preparing to Launch a Scrypt ASIC – Antminer L1

3, Sep 2014

bitmain-antiminer-l1

The official website of Bitmain Tech has a new product listing for a few days already of a new device called Antminer L1, but there are still no details and specifications published. However the listing for the new device has the speed rating listed in MH/s even though it currently says 0 instead of GH/s rating that we see listed for the Bitcoin ASIC miners that the company sells. Until now Bitmain has only been offering Bitcoin miners, however it will not be a surprise if they have been working on a Scrypt ASIC miner as well and may soon launch such a device. For the moment there are still only speculations about the new device, but hopefully we are going to see an official announcement with specifications and know if it is going to be another Bitcoin miner or a Scrypt ASIC miner.

Update: The announcement just came, AntMiner L1 will be a Litecoin miner offering a price of $5 per MHS and will start shipping in December. The L1 miner should provide a hashrate of 120 MHS for Scrypt mining and will have a price of $599 USD per unit with free shipping worldwide, based on 28nm production process it will have a power usage of 380 Watt at the wall. It also seems that the new miner will have support for mining Scrypt-N crypto currencies as well and not only Scrypt ones. There is also something new about the Bitmain AntMiner L1 miner and that is the fact that the company is essentially accepting pre-orders for a device that should be ready for shipping in about 3 months from now. Up until now Bitmain has announced new products and shortly after that the company started shipping them, so the products were ready when announced and not still in the development stage as is the case with the L1 miner apparently.

– Visit the official product page of the upcoming Bitmain Antminer L1 ASIC miner…

New Innosilicon A2 Scrypt ASIC Miners and Lower Prices

27, Aug 2014

new-35-mhs-a2-terminator-mini-scrypt-asic-miner

With September closing up and many new Scrypt ASIC manufacturers getting ready to start shipping their mining hardware things are heating up with the currently available miners and in order to keep the users interest we need to see new prices. One of the most significant things about the Innosilicon A2 miners, a thing we have noted in our reviews of their products, is that they are pretty expensive or actually were. We know that the company is using 28 nm technology for their chips and thus achieves higher performance with lower power consumption, but up until recently the price of the hardware did not justify the difference in power usage compared to other alternatives available with higher power usage. The good news is that apparently Innosilicon has finally decided to lower the prices by also making available new miners, making them a more attractive option and finally able to compete with ZeusMiner for example price wise for the same or similar hashrate while still offering lower power usage.

The new A2 MINI Terminator is available for $789 USD and offers 35 MHS Scrypt hashrate with a power consumption of about 350W. Unlike the old A2 Mini miner however the new model does not come with built-in power supply, though there is still a Raspberry Pi controller built-in into the miner, so you need to also buy a PSU for this one. The other new miner is the A2 MEGA Terminator currently available for $2499 USD. This miner offers 110 MHS Scrypt hashrate with less than 1100W power usage as the device comes with built in 1100W power supply and a RPi controller like the A2BOX miner that we have already reviewed. With the new A2 miners the price per 1 MHS comes at about $23 USD for a complete solution ready to be used out of the box (adding a PSU for the Mini miner as well). So if you are currently considering making an investment in Scrypt ASIC hardware that is currently available you might want to take a look at the new Innosilicon A2 miners.

Innosilicon A2 Terminator Scrypt ASIC RPi OC Mod

15, Aug 2014

a2oc-modified-web-interface

Innosilicon still has not made any release of the source code of their cgminer fork with support for the A2 Scrypt ASIC chips, what you get with their A2 Terminator Scrypt ASIC devices is a Raspberry Pi with a preloaded cgminer and simple web interface to control the device. The standard web interface however is a bit limited in the supported operating frequencies – 1000 and 1200 MHz. The recompiled cgminer does allow for a few more operating frequencies to be used, however they are not selectable by default through the web interface of the miner. Some time ago there was a modified image released by a user called Emdje that supposedly allowed more overclock options. However it has turned out that it was not really functional as even though you could select operating frequency at steps of 5 MHz the cgminer did not accept these values and instead defaulted to some of the supported frequencies.

Back when we first had the chance to do a remote test of a A2BOX Scrypt ASIC miner we have discovered that the only supported operating frequencies by the Innosilicon A2 Terminator Scrypt ASIC miners are: 1000, 1080, 1100, 1200, 1280, 1300 and 1400 MHz. This is why we have made a modification to the standard RPi image that ships with the A2 miners, so that you can quickly and easily add the supported frequencies to be selectable from the web interface of the miner. This should allow you to squeeze some more extra performance from your device, regardless if it is the smaller 2 module or the large 6 module ASIC model, as our tests have shown that most of the miners should be able to work pretty well at up to 1280-1300 MHz up from the maximum of 1200 MHz that you have by default. Below you can download the modification we have prepared along with the instructions on how to update your miner, so that you get the extra OC options available.

How to login to your miner via SSH/SFTP using putty/WinSCP:

– username: pi
– password: innosilicon

Where to find the miner and web interface:

/var/www

Replace the index.php file with the following modification:
– modified index.php

All that is left is to refresh the webpage with the miner interface and you should see the new options for operating frequencies available in the dropdown boxes for the A2 modules. For the smaller miners you need to select just the first two frequencies as you can see on the image above, for the large A2 miners you need to set all of the six frequencies. Do note that each of the modules can operate at a different frequency, so experiment and set the best frequency for each one that gives the lowest HW error rate and optimum performance.


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