Bitcoin Forum

Greetings,

we've designed a Bitcoin miner based on a dual Cyclone V (28 nm) FPGA card, which is configured by, controlled and communicates with a Raspberry Pi (credit card sized Linux computer).  The FPGA card consists of two Cyclone V A9 components (each contains 301K logic cells, for a total of 602K logic cells per FPGA card).  A single Raspberry Pi can work with up to 4 FPGA cards, and each Raspberry Pi system may be networked via ethernet.

The advantages of this system are :
- high performance  (we're looking at about 950-1250 MHash/sec/FPGA card depending on speed grade, PLL settings, etc.)
- low power (Altera claims Cyclone V - 28 nm technology to consume 40% less power than 65 nm technology)
 (Xilinx Spartan 6 - LX150 is 65 nm technology)
- reconfigurable, unlike ASIC's, FPGA's may be reused for other purposes if desired
 (ie: we have not yet tried Litecoin mining with this platform, but we are very interested in what performance could be achieved in that area).
- small size  (each FPGA card is about 3.5 inches x 2.2 inches (89mm x 56mm))
 (a 4 FPGA card unit (8 FPGA's total about 4-5 GHash/sec) is about 5.5 inches x 4.5 inches x 6.5 inches

Since we announced the project, we've received a great deal of interest from the Bitcoin community, and it quickly became apparent that there was a strong demand for this product.  As a result, in about the last month I've personally been meeting with suppliers, distributers, and manufacturers to see if I can manufacture this product, and it looks like we now have all the pieces in place to start a manufacturing run.

The hardest part was to secure significant quantity of FPGA's to meet demand (as gauged by people who registered interest).  We have a great deal of interest, and I don't believe we have enough FPGA to meet everyone's total demand in a single production run.  As a result, I've been rather quiet about saying anything  (I don't want to generate interest if I cannot deliver).  I have been working with Altera and Arrow and numerous personal contacts in Silicon Valley (that's where we are physically located) to obtain FPGA's in quantity.  I believe that I can obtain (in a reasonably short time) about 300 Cyclone V A9 FPGA's.  This is enough to make 150 FPGA cards. I believe that I can secure additional FPGA's for a second production run (I'm still working to get availability and timing on the second run).

To be honest, I was planning to send this email out a little later after I got everything neatly tied up in a bow and perfect, however, it has been very difficult to obtain these FPGA's in quantity.  Altera has other customers who also want these chips.  I have recently received an email indicating that they would like a PO order, or they may have to release these parts to other customers. As a result, I need to start the crowd-funding campaign to purchase these components sooner than I anticipated.

The end result, is that we are opening our web store a little sooner than I would like. 

The crowd funding site will be open on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 9:00 AM Pacific Time.  Units will be reserved on a first-come-first-serve basis.  (I know that this is short notice, but it does provide enough time that everyone will have a chance to read the email, and get an equal chance to be in the first production run). 

The web site for the crowd funding is : http://www.raspberrycoins.com/shop.
Details of how crowd-funding works is at : http://www.raspberrycoins.com/funding.

The first production run is for 150 FPGA cards.  The product (a single unit) consists of one or more FPGA cards (up to 4), a Raspberry Pi (to configure, control, and monitor up to four FPGA cards), power supply cards for the FPGA cards, and miscellaneous parts for the Raspberry Pi to operate (pre-loaded SD cards, USB cables, various cables, external 12V computer power supply, etc), detailed instructions for usage.  Several units may be connected together via ethernet.  Each unit will require a little bit of assembly (screwing together the enclosure, connecting the cables, configuring jumpers, installing the SD card. etc.), and instructions will be provided.  (If you desire pre-assembled units, send me an email, and I'm sure we can work something out).

I expect it will take about 3-6 weeks to manufacture, test, and ship out this product.  Standard shipping within the US will be 3-5 business days, please contact us if you would like expedited shipping.  Expedited shipping does not result in expedited manufacturing.  We will keep everyone informed of the status of this manufacturing run as it progresses.

The second production run will commence immediately following the first run, depending on lead times for the Cyclone V FPGA.  I will personally ensure that everyone is informed of the status of this run (and any additional runs we do) as well.

There will be additional production runs as long as there is sufficient demand, and I am able to secure FPGA's.  This entire operation is possible only because of your support, so I will work to ensure that it is as transparent as possible.  Lots of companies make products, but the ones which stand out are the ones which provide excellent customer service - so that is what I will attempt to do with Raspberry Coins.  (I believe that if you are really happy with our product, you will buy more, and/or tell your friends, so I also believe this practice is also good business).

Even after units have shipped, we intend to continue working on optimizing the FPGA design.  There are also some experiments I would like to run on Cyclone V with regards to cooling, tolerances, and clock rates.  If we come up with something better, we will release a new configuration bitstream, and you will have a more effective miner.

I hope to make a product that will exceed your expectations.

Reserved for flaming

Edit: You were going so well until you got to the 'crowdfunding' bit. Oh, and the "3-6 weeks bit". If you were actually controlling/planning the project you'd have a more concrete time more than +/- 25%

His post count beats mine  ;D

I'll be meeting with additional manufacturers tomorrow in Fremont, CA.  We have one or two lined up, and I'll be evaluating quality.  If you have any recommendations (ie: had good experience with) for manufacturers in the Silicon Valley area, I'm willing check them out.  (Keeping things local provides a number of advantages).

The 3-6 weeks is just in case we have a delay in FPGA's shipping, or anything else in the manufacturing run.  If everything works out right, it could be faster, but I want to "sandbag" a little so that I can exceed expectations.

How do you intend to compete with asics on the market?

Don't you think ~10 BTC for ~1 GH/s is a little steep?

Considering i can get 3 of those ASICMINER usb dongles for ~7 BTC which does ~1 GH/s and probably use a lot less power... < 10W including hubs and a pi to mine them with. And this i can get in ~3 days in my hands to mine with.

What is your lead time if you can get them?

http://www.wattminderinstruments.com/enclosure (http://www.wattminderinstruments.com/enclosure)

This site has a similar favicon and has the products pictured, is this your parent company?

I believe (through personal connections) that I can get enough for 150 boards (300 FPGA's) in a production run, however my distributor and Altera cannot hold this amount for me for much longer without a PO.  As a result, we're doing this crowd funding proposition.  I should be able to get some more for a second production run a little later.

FYI : the standard lead time from all distributors will be "out of stock - 19 week lead time" (for the Cyclone V A9's).  (If you know of anyone who has a shorter lead time, let me know, and I'll immediately look into it).  It's only because I used to work at Altera a while back, and via various personal contacts that I'm able to find these chips a bit sooner.  (They have other customers trying to get these chips as well).

Tony

As an aside, when I went to distributors to describe what we were doing, there appeared to be a fair amount of personal interest in Bitcoin (mostly everyone there had not heard of it), and more than a few started to investigate this topic on their own.

Yup - I'm Tony.

I discovered the Raspberry Pi at Wattminder Instruments.  The enclosure is similar (the mounting holes are in different locations, as this is a slightly bigger board).  I friend of mine called me up, about putting together a Bitcoin miner for him (he could not find miners at the time).  I mentioned it to Wattminder Instruments (several times), but management did not want to pursue Bitcoin related activities.  As a result, I and some other guys decided to do this separate from Wattminder Instruments.

You may have met me at a Stanford VLAB event and asked if I was at Wattminder Instruments or at Raspberry Coins.  I do both.  I'm VP Special Projects at Wattminder Instruments, and will continue to represent them in this role (as long as they want me to - I believe in the Wattminder Instruments goals).  I'm also CEO of Raspberry Coins.

Raspberry Coins is a company which is dedicated to making Bitcoin mining hardware, and exploring Litecoin mining as well.  I also believe that Bitcoin can do a great deal of good in the world - (ie: helping people in nations like Argentina escape from the ravages of runaway inflation, etc.), so as a result, I'm a supporter of Bitcoin, and Bitcoin related technologies.  (BTW: I'll be promoting a Stanford VLAB event in Silicon Valley coming up on June 18th (we'll try to have a little demo board there for display), once we get our VLAB marketing finalized - if you're in the Silicon Valley area, try to reserve the date - it should be interesting).

Long story short, we're two different companies - with two different goals.  The only thing similar is that we both use a Raspberry Pi, and a similar enclosure  (Since the enclosure is basically two acrylic sheets, and there are similar Raspberry Pi enclosures, there is nothing proprietary about the enclosure).

I hope this project has enough support. I'm pretty interested in these.

those prices are a rip in the ass. good luck with your venture. Ever heard of a bank or credit? schmuck!

I like the concept. The hash per dollar is painful, though.

In the same way that FPGA's have always competed with ASIC's - time to market + flexibiltiy

An ASIC can provide significantly cheaper cost of production for volume quantities than FPGA's.

However, ASIC technology requires significantly more resources and verification than FPGA's (where the underlying digital logic is already pre-verified (ie: DFT/DFM, scan chain insertion, etc.) ).  This brings time-to-market concerns for ASIC technology - and in the case of Bitcoin mining - time = money (or difficulty level).  If you are able to obtain an ASIC in quantity early and in sufficient quantities, then you could do quite well with an ASIC (as far as mining goes).  (ie: you've got the only ASIC miners, and everyone else is using slower technology).

If everyone has the same ASIC technology, then you need faster ASIC technology than anyone else out there to make any inroads - which again requires significant time and resources.

Everyone has compared 65 nm technology FPGA's vs 65 nm technology ASIC.  However, we plan to utilize 28 nm technology FPGA technology, and if we obtain any volume production, then we can get a price decrease, which means we drop our prices.

Altera has recently announced 20nm and 14nm technology products (for mid-range Aria and high-end Stratix lines).  The 28nm Cyclone V was announced in 2011.  Altera announced Cyclone IV in 2009.  Cyclone III was announced in 2007.  If they keep up with their schedule, then is Cyclone VI not far behind?  Will this be 22 or 20nm technology?  How fast and cost effective will this be compared to a 65 nm ASIC?  I don't know. 

I do know that FPGA has gone a lot further than anyone ever thought, and these products follow Moore's law quite well.

The second part of my reply is FLEXIBILITY.  These devices are NOT purpose built-ASIC's.  We are investigating utilizing the 12.4 Mb built-in memory (1,220 M10K blocks) per FPGA (24.8 Mb, 2,440 M10K blocks total) for use in Litecoin mining.  A purpose-built, Bitcoin mining ASIC can never be re-targeted for other uses.  These FPGA's on the other hand are MUCH more flexible.

Product dead on arrival. Who needs expensive fpga miner in the age of asics? Btw, nice job, cool design. I like the aesthetic side of this tiny rig.

Bitcoin gpu and fpga mining will be dead in two months - so forget it. But if you manage to tame the scrypt (LTC)...

I would order one just for supporting this company.
And why not?

We are giving Millions $ to some BFL that hates us and lie to us... and we are so greed that we cant pay for FPGA miner that can mine litecoins?
As i remember everyone was asked to Ltc Fpga Miner???

Just need to get some BTC more, dont want to use own money  :P

What about delivery to Finland?

Reserved

 ::) I love Raspberry Pi.

By the way, why the price is so high? If you are building 300 boards and have inside connection at Altera, single FPGA would cost ~180$, raspberry pi is cheap, enclosure makes another 20$ from some cheap labor country. PCB+passives+power makes another 50$. So your profit is like 500$ from single unit :O Plus mining profits from testing the produced units couple weeks before delivery.  

How is it better than http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/EK-K7-KC705-G.htm
 running it @ 1GH/s or more. And it had potential to mine LTC as well.

I'm interested in seeing why it costs so much as well. You really have to be competitive if you want to stand out.

22K for 22-28ghs?

How much are avalons selling for? (if ever shipped)
How muych $$ would BFL take off you for the hope of get a 30ghs single?
How much are block ejaculator blades selling for?

*IF* any asic supplier were actually shipping anything consistently you have to say the prices are too high.
That said I wouldn't order at that price to get in the first 150 chips, but could be interested in batch 2 if prices come down.

Also I'd really like to buy boards without the RPi and run from the computer hardware I already have, and that computer can support far more than 4 boards.

$22,200 for 22-28 GH/s
$22,200 / 200 = 111 * .3 = 33.3 GH/s via USB miners

Not to mention you have it in-hand within a couple days. Not relying on a company that may or may not be able to achieve their goal.

Look, it's a cool idea, but it's far too expensive per Gh, even if it was available today. Given the timeline and the risks, this is near-hopeless - but I genuinely hope I'm wrong.

Do something interesting, prove it can run scrypt efficiently, then we can talk. :)

+1

I like it, but not at this price.

stop deluding yourself. this guy is just another c*** looking to get rich off the BTC crazy by lining his own pockets and selling wildly overpriced equipment that will be worth nothing by the time he ships if he ever does...

USB ASIC miners are overpriced as it is already BUT at least they are a real tangible good that exists now. These Ris-poos are more expensive  $/Ghz and have not even been made yet. There is no point arguing "oh well if someone else can ship a ASIC in 6 wks time as these speeds then..." because we just don't know if this guy will by shipping be then too. Good idea man but come back when you have something to sell and the attitude might be more receptive.

Excellent question.

That is a single board for $1695 which contains a single Xilinx XC7K325T-2FFG900C (326K logic cells total) + lots of additional circuitry (ethernet, flash memory, DDR SDRAM, LCD display, lots of connectors, etc.)

The Raspberry Coins - CM-1 board contains two Cyclone V-A9 devices (301K logic cells each), for a total of 602K logic cells.  The interface is via Raspberry Pi (SPI port).  So, CM-1 board is significantly simpler, and you get much more logic cells per dollar.

Both the Kintex-7 and the Cyclone V are 28 nm technology.

Cool, thanks for the clarification. Makes sense. Altera seems much for value for money. Any idea about the power draw of the V-A9 FPGAs while hashing?

~15 W for 1 GH/s btc hashing.

Question for the FPGA experts. Is this really enough memory for scrypt mining. Its on-die and wide bandwidth, so beats external memory, but what performance could be expected? I understand scrypt uses a 100kB lookup table, so does 24.8Mb (3MByte) equate to ~30   threads, or not? How will it compare with GPU?

so expensive.i really do not know who need this?

I think you have missed the boat, bad timing bro!!

I don't think anyone can accurately answer that without testing first. Just like ASIC's, tests are showing up different than theories.

One can very accurately answer the question by looking in the ltc mining code. There is a nice long loop, what makes FPGA miners useless.

Yeah, but there are guys posting on the fpgaminer thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9047.0 who are using the big Xilinx Kintex-7 chips , I just wondered if they had had any insight to the feasability of scrypt with only this much onboard ram.

Whoa, I didn't even know about that thread. The last I heard was from the people looking to crowd-source ASIC's/FPGA's. Thanks for the heads-up!

You know CM-1 already exists, right? Cairnsmore-1 ?

Cairnsmore-1 is based on Four (4) Xilinx Spartan 6 - LX150's (with a total of about 600K LC).  The LX150 is 65nm technology and when fully pipelined and overclocked runs up to 200 MHz.  (This is in the 800 MHash/sec area) It requires an external computer to drive it via the USB port.  The Cairnsmore-1 requires USB hubs and USB cables to connect and control, and obtain status.  It is from a totally different company.

The Raspberry Coins - Coin Miner 1 (CM-1) is based on Two (2) Altera Cyclone V-A9's (with a total of 602K LC).  The Cyclone V A9 is 28 nm technology.  When fully pipelined, the -8 (slow) speed grade, has restricted fmax of 240 MHz (around 960 MHash/sec area), and an unrestricted fmax in the range of 380+ MHz (which is potentially in the 1500+ MHash/sec area).  The CM-1 is connected to the (included) Raspberry Pi, and is capable of standalone (does not require another computer) for control or status.  The Raspberry Coins - CM1 units may be connected together using a simple ethernet hub/switch.  It is from Raspberry Coins.

Perhaps we should not have chosen the CM-1 as the name of our product.  I did not realize that somebody else had used those particular letters and numerals.  Oh well, we'll probably have to change the name to the full name (Coin Miner 1) vs the shortened name (CM-1).  (We always called our product the CM-1 internally).

Tony, sorry for this kind of question, but you really think, that your miner (if I will consider lead time) will meet ROI? I know about difficulty raise but still..

one thing is cool idea, open source HW and super cool design, but other is costs. I was really interested about this project from the start, but you simply miss a train.

I somebody will buy this device, it is just for support an idea and for your great work, but definitely not for make a profit.

good luck

Good info and good thread - we could probably throw the Raspberry Coins CM-1 miner into the bunch of boards that are running the open-source code (might need to make some minor adjustments for the Raspberry Pi - SPI interface).

... So what makes Litecoin mining interesting is :
  - scrypt runs the SHA256 in a loop (1024 times)
  - uses about 128K of memory

... the end result is that scrypt rates are  slower (in the range of 1000+ KHash/sec) while bitcoin (using straight SHA256) is in the (1000+) MHash/sec areas.   As a result, the difficulty level should be lower for scrypt.  In addition, the Cyclone V appears to have more than enough memory to run scrypt without going external.  This makes mining Litecoin (and running scrypt) appear promising to me.

NO! You are making big mistake. Scrypt runs 4096 iterations of salsa20_8 for calculation of ONE hash.

Well, you're going to have some competition (as a little googling would have shown) http://www.litecoinfpga.com/ (yes funny pic, but very serious dev guy, click on "you can ask here" for the forum).

This is actually correct amazingly from the 11 post person lol.

https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/blob/master/src/scrypt.c

Rows: 277 and 282

And from a quick scan of that thread I come across a fantastically detailed post https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,2702.msg30526.html#msg30526

... in summary it looks like a couple of hundred kHask/sec scrypt for your board (the money quote is 55kHash/sec from 11 threads on an XC7K160T). So it doesn't look good using just the internal memory.

[Edit] ... except Jasinlee then goes and kyboshes it a few posts later https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,2702.msg30697.html#msg30697

Hmm, this site goes in my bookmarks, will need to get some popcorn  ;D

Oh, hi Jasinlee. THIS is the litecoin FPGA dev guy BTW!

interested in a Litecoin FPGA instead  :)

Ya think?

What I'm hearing here is that you did not bother to fully research the existing market before jumping into this.

IMO you are offering an unproven product at premium prices.

-- edit

Now, it may well be that you can't feasibly offer this at a substantially lower price. That doesn't make it a good deal, though.

The competition, all currently in stock and therefore available for delivery within a week is:

Raspberry Pi, power adapter and USB cable: $45 + $5 + $2 = $52
ASICMiner USB Block Eruptor * 3 = 6.3btc ~= $700
USB Hub = ~ $20

A total of roughly $772 for 1gh/s. (known / proven / delivered in a week)
In hand and hashing at about the next difficulty change.

(And, IMO, even that is a poor buy since those USB Block Eruptors might well never hit break-even at the 2btc each price point.)


Yes, you can tout the theoretical flexibility of FPGA reprogramming. But that is a very non-trivial effort and if you don't intend / expect to take advantage of that aspect you'll be paying for an unrealized benefit.

Lol sorry didnt mean to squash your point >.<

No problem (I don't really understand all this stuff, but its interesting). Nice to hear your input, and good luck with the project.

Reading through this... it's confusing me.

Is the selling point of this the BTC hashing or Scrypt hashing?

There's a few tangents here about Scrypt, but that's not what this is actually being sold for, right? If it is, and it works, then I think the price is more justified. If not, I stand by my previous statement that you might as well get USB ASIC's now, have them in 2-3 days, and get 30% more hash rate for the same money.

Thanks for this link it made me think a bit...

This is a Xilinx device with 325K LC and yet it achieves about 1GHash/sec.  This implies 500 MHz (internal) sustained operation (2 SHA256 cores running @500 MHz == 1 GHash/sec).

I was quoting about 960-1200 MHash/sec based on a restricted fmax of 240 MHz, so why should Cyclone V be significantly slower than Kintex?  It is possible that the restricted fmax has to do an M10K.  According to the electrical specs for Cyclone V from Altera, it appears that we should be able to get to around 480MHz (for the -8 (slow) speed grade).

At 480 MHz operation for 4 SHA256 cores (150K LC each - (two Cyclone V-A9's = 602K LC)), we should be able to get to approximately 1920 GHash/sec.  (At those clock rates, we'll be running fans (we've got some holes pre-drilled in the PCB - just in case) - fortunately our power supply options allow us to get to 12A per FPGA if needed)

... So, I'm going to do a bit of playing around in Quartus, and do a bit of looking at some timing paths, ...

Thanks for the link :D    --- It made me think, and it might be possible that I could significantly increase the fmax of the Raspberry Coins Coin Miner 1 (CM-1) (possibly to 1920 GHash/sec)  as a result.  ---  (since the Cyclone V Raspberry Coins - CM1 is 28nm technology like the Kintex demo board, but with almost twice the logic cells)

So, I did some playing around with Quartus, and looking at speeds...

We were previously running at a 240 MHz clock rate, on Cyclone V.  We can boost the clock frequency up to about 500MHz on the -8 (slow speed grade) parts.  Since we're running 2 SHA-256 cores per FPGA, that's 1000 MHash/sec/FPGA.  We have two FPGA's on the card, which means that each Coin Miner-1 card is running at 2000 MHash/sec.

From a pricing point, each Coin-Miner-1, FPGA card is going for $900 (there's an additional overhead of $100 for a single raspberry pi which can support up to 4 Coin-Miner-1 FPGA cards, but I'm not including that yet in this calculation), which translates to $0.45/MHash/sec.

With USB-ASIC miners selling on Ebay typically around $300 for 300 MHash/sec, that means these 28 nm FPGA miners http://www.raspberrycoins.com (http://www.raspberrycoins.com) are now more cost effective than that ASIC solution.

Oh what sweet tongue'd self praise. You chose to compare your product against the most expensive ASIC product on the general market (relative to ROI), and you come out better. Give it up. 28nm FPGA's will never compete with realistically priced ASICs (and they will come to market, sooner or later, there is just so much profit being made by the manufacturers right now that real competition is bound to kick in, and soon).

pretty impressive people always bash new toys but im pretty interested in this and im sure alot of people will go crawling under the rocks again if you can get similar results on scrypt mining :)

the post has been book marked and will be watched closely :D

No.

It means they are theoretically more cost effective.

Have you built and tested / verified on a prototype unit yet?

-- edit

So far you have only talked about Quartus results.

No hard realities.

Shall we talk about BFL?

Tony it's good to see you're putting effort but i'm afraid you'll be wasting most of it by the time your product is ready... i know it feels like you're almost there but then you get pulled back... ;D you're aware that there's a trainload of avalon diy miners coming onto market sometime in aug and sept right that will send difficulty to insane levels...soon 5gh/s klondike 16 boards will become a norm instead of FPGAs... IMHO you still have time to turn around and map a better venture... if i were you i'd plan about assembling miners from Avalon and BFL chips since you're already making contacts with those chip assembly companies...
 

I look forward to seeing what you can bring to the table, however you are a bit late and will have to think about pricing more closely. Even overpaying for a BFL Jalapeno 5GH/s @ $2500 right now is still a better deal; and once BFL catches up to sales (which is going fast now), they are only $274 for 5GH/s!

Your only hope is to build a litecoin fpga miner (and I'm in if you do so).

please don't waste your time.  you won't deliver anything cost effective anytime soon.  you have no idea what's coming to the market shortly.  ;D

And what, pray tell, is coming to the market shortly?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Are we there yet?

Obviously not... Any comment from Raspberry Coins on how long the pre-order will take? The shop has been removed from the homepage - hummm