5. KnCMiner Neptune

The KnCMiner Neptune is quite possibly the grand daddy of all Bitcoin mining machines. The Neptune is basically four modular 20nm ASIC boards, designed so that the machine will continue mining even if one (or more) of the boards fails. The Neptune follows up from their previous miner, the Jupiter, which was built on a 28nm process.

The Neptune has a minimum hashing speed of 3TH/s, which translates to about 1.66 Bitcoins a day. This is a vast improvement on the Jupiter, which was only able to mine 0.6 Bitcoins a day. KnCMiner also mention that they have the right to increase the speeds as it nears shipment, so the Neptune might end up being even faster once it gets into miners’ hands.
The KnCMiner Neptune is currently available for pre-order, and is scheduled to begin shipping in Q1/Q2 of 2014, limited to 1200 units.
Price: $12,995

Read More

4. Black Arrow Prospero X-3

Black Arrow’s Prospero X-3 is powered by 20 Black Arrow Minion ASIC chips built into a 19" rack mount unit. The Minion ASICs are built on a 28nm process and are an in-house design. The Prospero X-3 will also have a built-in LCD display that will show statistics and diagnostics.

The 20 Minion ASIC chips in the Prospero X-3 give it a hash rate of 2TH/s, good for about 1.1 Bitcoins per day as of the time of writing. The Prospero X-3 has been designed with up to 20% under- and overclocks in mind. It also supports the lightweight Stratum mining protocol.
The Prospero X-3 is available for pre-order and is scheduled to be available at the end of February 2014.
Price: $6,999

Read More

3. Hashfast Sierra

Hashfast’s Sierra is a high performance water-cooled Bitcoin mining machine powered by three Golden Nonce ASIC chips. It is built into a 4U rack mountable case and comes with two Seasonic power supplies built in.

The Sierra has a nominal hash rate of 1.2 TH/s, which translates to about 0.66 Bitcoins a day as of the time of writing. The thing with the Sierra, though, is that it doesn’t have an on-board controller, so you’ll have to connect the Sierra to a main control unit via USB. This main control unit can be anything that will run CGminer, a mining software.
The Hashfast Sierra is open for pre-orders and is guaranteed to ship by March 31, 2014.
Price: $6,300

Read More

2. CoinTerra TerraMiner IV

CoinTerra’s TerraMiner IV is a water-cooled Bitcoin mining machine powered by CoinTerra’s own in-house ASIC chips, the GoldStrike I. The TerraMiner IV is built on a 28nm process and comes in a 4U enclosure with a power supply included, which is a rarity in Bitcoin mining circles.

The TerraMiner IV has four ASIC chips, and with each boasting a 500 GH/s hash rate, it means that the TerraMiner IV has a total hash rate of 2TH/s. At the current mining difficulty, that translates to just over 1.1 Bitcoins a day. CoinTerra also claim that the TerraMiner IV is power efficient, although there are no numbers available yet to prove this claim.
The April batch for the TerraMiner IV is open for pre-orders.
Price: $5,999

Read More

1. Fast-Hash One

There are three machine models in the Fast-Hash One series of Bitcoin mining machines: the Silver Edition, the Gold Edition and the Platinum Edition. These are 19" rack mountable Bitcoin machines, with the main differences being their expandability and the power of the included mining modules. All three machines come with one mining module, but can be upgraded to have six.

The Silver Edition is powered by a 64 GH/s module and tops out at 384 GH/s. The Gold Edition is powered by a 128GH/s module, with a maximum hash rate of 768GH/s. The Platinum Edition comes with the most powerful 256 GH/s module, and can go up to 1.536TH/s. Overall, when fully upgraded, these machines will mine anywhere from 0.2 up to 0.85 Bitcoins a day.
While the Silver Edition does not support expansion cases, both the Gold and Platinum Editions support up to six expansion cases, with each expansion case able to hold up to 16 modules, for even more mining power. The Fast-Hash One mining machines are available for pre-order.
Price: $2,499 – 5,999 for base units

Read More

HTC Posts Full Source Code For "Power To Give" App And Associated BOINC Server

If you're a fan of source code (and who isn't?), you might be excited to know HTC has released the code for Power To Give. The Power To Give initiative was officially announced a few days ago at MWC with its corresponding app in the Play Store. Today, the HTC Dev portal posted a full source drop of the project, including the app and various platform-specific versions of the server code.

Power To Give is based on BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It was designed to be a single application through which multiple organizations could automate the process of delivery, computation, and reporting of work units. Some popular and well-known groups using BOINC include: SETI@Home, PrimeGrid, and my personal favorite, World Community Grid.
Getting to the source code package isn't quite as easy as a single link. Unfortunately, you have to go through the HTC Dev portal manually or you will be automatically redirected to HTC's main website. Simply start at this link, and change the criteria to: Device = (leave it alone), Carrier = Generic, Region = WWE, Android Version = (leave it alone), and switch the radio button to Other. Hit Find Files and you should see an item with the description, "HTC PTG (Power To Give) Application Open Source Code."

The 204 MB zip file contains 3 packages: boinc-htc-open, common-ui-open, and htc-power-to-give. If you're interested in the server platform, protocols, and some of the client API, check out boinc-htc-open. For the actual app, you can look straight to htc-power-to-give. There might be a few issues getting the app code set up correctly in Android Studio, but it imports and builds cleanly with the latest version of Eclipse.
It's always good to see more open source software out in the world! Even if you aren't in the mood to muck around with code, take a look at HTC Power To Give and donate some CPU cycles while you sleep.
Source: HTC Dev

Read More

Glass XE14 Delayed Until It's Ready, Promises Big Changes And A Move To KitKat

After the rollout of XE12 in mid-December and the announcement that January would not bring an update, Glass Explorers have been anxiously awaiting the release of XE14, originally due in February. As it turns out, they were to be disappointed. In a posting to the private Glass Community forum late yesterday, Teresa Z explained that XE14 had missed its February deadline. The reason: it simply wasn't ready to be released. Unfortunately, no details were given with regard to the timeline for the next update.

The post went on to express the development team's enthusiasm and rapid progress, and to announce one exciting detail: the Explorer Edition will finally leave behind Ice Cream Sandwich and jump straight to Kit Kat! We can probably expect the upgrade to incorporate the advantages of Project Butter and Project Svelte, effectively lowering the demands on the system and battery life while also improving framerates and overall performance. Naturally, the upgrade will also bring with it 2 years worth of improvements including: Bluetooth Low Energy, OpenGL ES 3.0, better security, a richer API, and so much more. It's too early to be sure if an architecture-dependent feature like ART will make it in, but we will have to wait and see. Again, it's not clear when this upgrade will be rolling out or if it's even coming in the next release.
While Teresa emphasized that the Glass team still intends to maintain regular updates, the monthly schedule might be a thing of the past. This is the result of more ambitious goals, like revamping the Glass Boutique (app store) and building out the Glass Development Kit (GDK). The statement also suggests that developers will have a lot to look forward to in the next release, but gives no details. In the meantime, there is a reminder for users that they can now share directly from Glass to Google+ communities.

The February Update
‎02-28-2014 05:19 PM
OK, before you read any further, make sure you’re sitting down. Are you sitting down now? Good.
We know that a lot of you have been patiently waiting for the next release. In fact, your excitement and anticipation for our upcoming releases always pushes us to come up with something that’s worth the wait. It needs to be good. And what we had planned for February just isn’t ready for primetime yet. So... we’ve decided to hold off for now.
[Go ahead, feel free to take a moment of silence to honor the fallen updates.]
I know this might be a disappointment to some of you. But it’s all part of the Explorer program. We’re trying a lot of things. Most of them work out great, and some of them need a little more polish. In this case, we’d rather wait to get it right, than release something that isn’t up to snuff.
Now the good news. We’re still moving extremely quickly. Since the first Explorers got their Glass less than a year ago, we’ve already been through eight updates – nine if you count last year’s hardware revision. The pace isn’t changing and we're still committed to regular updates for Glass – even if they’re not monthly anymore, because bigger updates just take more time. In fact, we’re working to move Glass from Ice Cream Sandwich to Kit Kat to make the Glass experience smoother and just plain better. This change will make it easier for us to bring you more useful updates and it’s something we’re really excited about. Developers, we know you’re gonna be excited, too. But it’s also something that we don’t want to send to you all until it’s just right. (We did flip on sharing to Google+ communities, which was originally slated for this month’s updates – and something we know you’ve been waiting for.)
Now off we go to bake a little more awesome into the sauce.

At least the Glass team isn't compromising software quality simply to deliver updates on time. However, speaking on behalf of Glass Explorers everywhere, it would have been nice to know this a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, I suppose we can officially write off XE14 as vaporware and begin watching for XE15.

Read More