Re: GekkoScience is now dabbling with 16nm ASICs for new designs

Got a question that’s actually TOTALLY related to 16nm development.

One of the reasons I’ve been thinking from the get-go about using a microcontroller to interface to the Bitfury chips is their communication setup. The chips use a specific internally AC-coupled 2-wire communication to a central level-shifting multiplexer chip. This guy takes in standard 5V SPI through a particular IO port, which shouldn’t be difficult. However, there’s a specific non-SPI reset signal to initialize all your chips that needs to be fed in this port. So I figured, let’s put in a micro to relay data from USB to SPI, add a command to enact that specific signal, and then use the micro to also implement temp sensing and voltage control. I could use a basic USB-SPI converter and scrub the active controls (like the Compac and 2Pac, give it manual voltage and whatnot), but there’s no way to implement that reset signal.

Except I may have just figured out a remarkably simple way to do it, which will also be really easy to test and requires only a few components that I already have in bulk. In fact, all of them are already in use on the Compac and 2Pac.

So, here before long I’m going to rig up a hardware test and VH is going to see if he can make it work. If he can, we’ll have the approximate guts of a 2-chip BF16 Compac implementing manual voltage control. I’ll also wire fixed thermostatic control onto it, which is to say there’ll be a temp sensor that turns off the Vcore power if the stick overheats and turns it back on when the stick cools down. I should have done that with the 2Pac, really, but oh well.

So, the plan has been to develop a BF16 Compac with temperature sensing and software voltage control. But firmware development is going to be the part of design that takes the longest and has the most hiccups. Therefore, who would be offended if I tried to bring to market a BF16 Compac with BM1384-Compac-style manual voltage control if it meant we could get it done that much sooner?