Bitcoin Forum

I have 6 spartan6x150's in the mail headed my way to do some testing with.  I have the PCI-e board sketched up on KiCad, and am going to contact a PCB manufacture tomorrow about getting a few made. If all goes well, I'll post the board schematics on here for public use.

For those intrested, DigiKey is selling spartan6x150 singles for $158/chip and $170/chip (same chip, just 2 different batches), just search for "XC6SLX150".

My current board design is PCI-e x16, double wide to fit a wide heatsink and fan in.

I'm also in contact with a rep from Achronix, hoping for a low-ish estimate on their HD1000 series of FPGAs (sub $1,500/chip), but I doubt it.

Thoughts, ideas, opinions?

what if free power?

I don't understand.  If your asking about specs, I won't know until the chips come in, but I imagine they will be close to fpgaminers specs, as they used the same chip.

Of course everything is a little bit of a gamble with BTC - but since fpga's seem to still have some value based on the current price (which as we all know is subject to change) it is probably not a bad idea.

I don't think i personally could put one together but the idea has legs - possible if ram could be added it could also be flexible enough to do litecoin..

I know enterpoint had at one point produced a card with a number of spartans on it.. would have to look up the exact amount.. but they dont sell it anymore and it was like 6 grand for like 20 chips.

If you can put 6 - would 8 be just as easy?  

I suspect people would want to buy them if you could produce them.  I wish i had the knowledge to go from schematic to actual board myself..

Anyway - assuming one of the developers could be bribed into creating a driver/bitstream for it - i think there would be interest.

The designs I have now are 2 chips per card (I'm build 3 cards to start).  The designs are based heavily off fpgaminers system.  As for the driver, I'll have that covered, TheSeven gave me a great place to start.  I'm actually a developer who is dabbling in hardware as a hobby.

As for people wanting to buy them, I don't think I want that kind of pressure.  I'm fine opensourceing my board, but I'm a rather lazy guy.

Why pci-e? You dont need such fast communication, and the cooling is worse than the stand alone pcbs.

I don't see the point.  USB-based FPGA miners already work well.

Putting them on a PCIe card just limits scalability to the number of PCIe slots in the system, and you'll have to fit the whole thing with cooling into a 20mm wide slot (40mm if you're gonna occupy 2 slot widths).

Now if you're going for a board to mine Scrypt, using host memory, well OK...

Just to see if I can.  I'm not doing this because I'm trying to make a product or anything, I'm just a bored dev who has a mobo laying around with 6 pci-e x16 slots. Besides, the PCI-e will come in handy if BitSyncom ever gets around to selling ASIC chips.  The board will have to be completely redone, and the cooling situation tackled (I'm thinking closed-loop liquid), but it would be fun.

Can't say i blame you on that!

I would be interested in this board as well. Let me know if you need help testing, etc.

Looking for group buy Stratix V boards to reduce price.

I have to ask... are you on drugs?

While the Stratix V chips are nice, and the MH/s/$ is higher for them, your looking at a $4,515/chip starting point, as opposed to the $170/chip starting point for Spartans.

We are all on drugs, we don't eat good, we don't drink good. All thing contains drugs.

The card costs $4000 for one, so more cards are bought, lower is the price. And probably the hashrate is not poor.

I don't think you understand.  I'm saying the cost for just the CHIP is $4,515/chip.  That doesn't include PCB manufacturing, additional parts, etc.  The lowest price anyone could make these for right now is around the $4,750/card range, if your looking at single chip cards.

I understand everything. I get little lower prices, so no problem I will buy and build a little rig. But It will stay powered off, because I don't have any bitstram,...

I think I'm being troll'd.

intersested as well :)
My 990FXA UD7 would be pleased with FPGA miners!

Probably because a USB design requires an internal µ-controller as a master. If he uses the PCI-e, he'll use the PC as a master saving some HW design.

I'm interested in this project and may be able to help. Can we see your KiCad sketches?

Also very interested. Keen to see your KiCad work - maybe chuck it up on github or something? If you don't want to do that, even a screenshot would be good for now.

Are you thinking of adding (s)RAM as well?

Sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you, I just passed out last night.

I'm working on a compiled library of the modules right now (Having to make them all from scratch, as I can't find any pre-made for KiCad, go figure)

I'll upload everything to github as soon as I'm done.

I'd be interest in a board. I'll keep an eye on this thread.

A.J.

There are PCI - e FPGA cards are there not already?


http://www.knjn.com/FPGA-PCIe.html

There are, however, they cost $600 for a card with a single Spartan 6.  They card design I have now has 2 Spartan 6's, and is costing me about $450 to make.

You need the LXT version for PCIe, just making sure you know that since you mentioned XC6SLX150 and not XC6SLX150T.

The PCIe core on the Spartan 6 is one lane only, so no need to use all 16 fingers.  You'll also need to ensure that your PCB stackup can handle 2.5 ghz pcie gen 1 speeds.  A lot of trouble to just push a few bits around :D

... I'm really boggling at why someone would be constructing an S6-LX150 based miner right now when the 28nm FPGAs are shipping in volume now.

Buying the previous generation of silicon usually is a nice balancing point between price and performance. Sure the 7 series will be faster, but they're also significantly more expensive. Note, I'm just talking about public pricing, if you get in touch with xilinx sales they might be willing to cut you a deal if you've got enough volume which would make the 7 series more competitive.

You can simply use a serial port with a cheap FTDI uart to USB device next to the FPGA. The bandwidth required for mining is nada, PCIe is overkill. You can then use the FTDI driver to access it rather than writing a small PCIe driver.

Last time I gave the Stratix V a run through Quartus the performance of Stratix IV was better than the Stratix V. I should try again with a more recent version of Quartus though.

How many cores will you fit in the Stratix V?

That's a lot! Which Stratix V is that?

Did anybody make a chart of #cores/$ and hashrate/$ for the different FPGA's? The Stratix V must be pretty far down on that list.

good  luck with your project :) .