Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Mining software (miners) => Topic started by: intron on May 24, 2013, 08:21:19 AM



Title: - embedded miner -
Post by: intron on May 24, 2013, 08:21:19 AM
Just new on this: is there an open source embedded miner?

So just running on a small ARM or PIC and with no external
memory, getting work from a mining pool itself without an
intermediate PC present.

intron


Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: wire on May 24, 2013, 11:10:55 AM
PIC is WAY too slow for doing the cryprographic functions and has not enough mem.

ARM is still way too slow for getting good hashrates


Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: intron on May 24, 2013, 12:18:49 PM
PIC is WAY too slow for doing the cryprographic functions and has not enough mem.

ARM is still way too slow for getting good hashrates


It's not doing the hashes, it's getting the work from the mining
pool to some FPGAs/ASIC that wil do the hashing. And when
a golden nonce is found the ARM will send it to mining pool.

So the processor is only doing the I/O to and from the mining
pool.

Can that be done?

intron


Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: HellDiverUK on May 24, 2013, 01:02:39 PM
Just run a mining proxy on a RaspPi.


Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: intron on May 24, 2013, 01:31:25 PM
Just run a mining proxy on a RaspPi.

Want it even smaller: ARM + Ethernet PHY + ASICs + power. That's all.

Is Raspberry Pi code open source? I should ask Mineforeman for that I guess...:)

intron


Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: turtle83 on May 25, 2013, 09:06:09 PM
Just run a mining proxy on a RaspPi.

Want it even smaller: ARM + Ethernet PHY + ASICs + power. That's all.

Is Raspberry Pi code open source? I should ask Mineforeman for that I guess...:)

intron

Just go with a raspi with some USB based ASIC.. Otherwise it would be too much work putting together a package with arm. Not worth it unless you are doing it for academic curiosity.

Raspberry pi (> $35) is opensource. Firmware and OS (Raspbian - debian based) . I think power usage is ~ 2.5 Watt max. (standard USB powered)
Cgminer runs on it which is open source.

Beaglebone black (> $45) is another alternative.

Im sure itll cost you a lot more to make your own PCB with arm. Whats the goal or your project?


Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: intron on May 26, 2013, 03:20:25 PM
Just run a mining proxy on a RaspPi.

Want it even smaller: ARM + Ethernet PHY + ASICs + power. That's all.

Is Raspberry Pi code open source? I should ask Mineforeman for that I guess...:)

intron

Just go with a raspi with some USB based ASIC.. Otherwise it would be too much work putting together a package with arm. Not worth it unless you are doing it for academic curiosity.

Raspberry pi (> $35) is opensource. Firmware and OS (Raspbian - debian based) . I think power usage is ~ 2.5 Watt max. (standard USB powered)
Cgminer runs on it which is open source.

Beaglebone black (> $45) is another alternative.

Im sure itll cost you a lot more to make your own PCB with arm. Whats the goal or your project?

Thinking about making a miner with 16 Avalon chips that can be directly
connected to the net using Ethernet. So no PC/Raspberry/etc. running
gcminer in between, just a single PCB getting the work from a mining pool,
make the ASICs to do there work and send the found nonces back.

I think it should be possible. And you are right, it's a bit academic:)

intron







Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: BadBitcoin (James Sutton) on May 30, 2013, 04:01:33 PM
PIC is WAY too slow for doing the cryprographic functions and has not enough mem.

ARM is still way too slow for getting good hashrates


It's not doing the hashes, it's getting the work from the mining
pool to some FPGAs/ASIC that wil do the hashing. And when
a golden nonce is found the ARM will send it to mining pool.

So the processor is only doing the I/O to and from the mining
pool.

Can that be done?

intron

its possible, not actually much work to program if you just want it to act as a "thinker" for the ASICs brute force, I don't believe such a setup exists however it should not be insurmountable, if I have some time in the next few days I will play around with some UART code for TI stellaris launchpad.


Title: Re: - embedded miner -
Post by: intron on May 30, 2013, 04:08:07 PM
PIC is WAY too slow for doing the cryprographic functions and has not enough mem.

ARM is still way too slow for getting good hashrates


It's not doing the hashes, it's getting the work from the mining
pool to some FPGAs/ASIC that wil do the hashing. And when
a golden nonce is found the ARM will send it to mining pool.

So the processor is only doing the I/O to and from the mining
pool.

Can that be done?

intron

its possible, not actually much work to program if you just want it to act as a "thinker" for the ASICs brute force, I don't believe such a setup exists however it should not be insurmountable, if I have some time in the next few days I will play around with some UART code for TI stellaris launchpad.

And do you have pointers to examples/code to get work from a mining pool and
send back the results? Should porting 'libblkmaker.c' to the MCU be sufficient?

intron