Posts Tagged ‘KnC’

GenTarkin’s Custom KNC Titan Scrypt ASIC Firmware

17, Mar 2016

gentarkins-mod-102

We were not among the ones to preorder the last ASIC mining hardware that KnCMiner has sold to users, the Titan, but recently we have obtained some KNC Titan Scrypt ASICs to play with. The first thing you will notice is that even the latest official firmware of the devices version 2.0 is still pretty basic and the hardware is buggy, especially the earlier batch 1 devices. So we started looking for an improved version of the original firmware that would allow us to get the best out of the KNC Titan Scrypt ASIC and we have ended up discovering GenTarkin’s Custom KNC Titan firmware.

knc-titan-miner-status

This modified firmware provides users with an improved and more functional interface and more importantly a safer to use and capable of providing you with the optimal performance and power usage that your Titan cubes can provide you with. This of course comes at a price, you need to purchase a full license for the modified firmware that is currently sold at $75 USD for the controller and if you have an additional devices you can purchase extra licenses for $35 USD each for each controller (key for activation only), not for each cube. There are also additional discounts available for volume licensing for purchases of 10 or more licenses for large miners with more devices available.

knc-titan-advanced-options

We have just started using the latest version 1.0.2 of GenTarkin’s Custom KNC Titan Scrypt ASIC firmware on the hardware we have obtained and as you can see on the screenshot both cubes we have attached to the controller have some issues with some of the chip dies and DCDC power units. You can see the difference in how the advanced settings page looks like for both the stock and the custom firmware. The power usage for example on the custom firmware reports more accurate power usage numbers and when you take into account the power efficiency of the PSU you can get pretty accurate power consumption numbers for the actual power used at the wall. There are number of additional protection mechanisms built in as well as optimizations to help run your mining hardware stable and with less issues on the long run. The Energy Saver is also something new and very interesting feature that supposedly can help you find the optimal settings for each die and thus help you get lower power usage while retaining optimum performance.

We have just started using GenTarkin’s Custom KNC Titan firmware and so far we like the improvements and extra features we see from the latest stock firmware from KNC, in a few days we are going to be sharing more from our experience as well as doing a more detailed review. Meanwhile if you have some KNC Titan Scrypt ASIC miners and you are using the stock firmware you might be interested in checking out this custom firmware, especially if you are having some issues with your devices or have more than one miners.

– Visit the official website for GenTarkin’s Custom KNC Titan Firmware for more info…

KNCMiner Solar, New 16nm ASIC Chips Coming in 2015

19, Nov 2014

knc_solar_eclipse_logo

KNCMiner has announced that they will have a new 16 nm based ASIC chip called Solar ready in early 2015 (most likely a SHA-256 ASIC for Bitcoin mining). The company expects that their 5000+ core Solar 16nm (FinFET) processor technology will deliver at least a six-fold increase in performance compared to the previous generation 20nm hardware thus achieving 0.07 Watts per GHS. This should allow an increase of up to 10 times in the hashrate with the same power consumption of the previous generation of hardware. Interestingly enough the company only announced the new chips only and no miners that will be based on them, something that may not be so bad as an idea considering the negative opinion miners have on pre-orders including the previous ones from KNC. Regardless, it will be harder for KNC to sell new miners to customers unless they already have the hardware available and ready for shipping and not giving promises that they may not keep on shipping date. So the fact that no ASIC miner products using the new Solar chips are being announced yet could mean KNC can decide to use them in their cloud data centers only and not offer them to end users at all. KNCMiner is not without a competition however, CoinTerra, another ASIC manufacturer has already announced that they are working on 16nm chips and that miners based on them will be available in 2015. The fact that the 16nm production process is not yet widely available and ready for mass production would however mean that the first ASIC chips made using it may be pricier, at least until the yield of good chips is high enough. The development of very complex chips with thousands of cores is another thing that will require a serious financial support, but apparently KNC does not need to make pre-orders this time to get the money required from miners.

Potential Class Action Lawsuit Against KnCMiner

13, Oct 2014

kncclassaction

The Law Office of Charlotte C. Lin has announced that it is investigating KNCMiner for possible breach of implied warranty of fitness, misrepresentation, and other violations of law by failing to provide a functional or usable product, false advertising; failing to deliver product within adequate time frame, and failing to provide refund upon demand. The Law Office of Charlotte C. Lin is inviting everyone who is not satisfied with his Titan order from KNC to contact them in order to get more details on what possible legal actions can be taken against the company.

Under the terms of the advertised Titan, it should “Yield a minimum of 300 MH/s” and “purchasers shall also receive the Titan during Q3 of 2014” both of which have certainly been up for debate in the mining community at large. The investigation relates to whether the Titan delivered hashing power below advertised, whether the Titans were delivered late, whether such violations breached its Implied Warranty of Fitness and whether KNCMiner made misrepresentations.

– For more information about the possible class action lawsuit against KnCMiner…


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