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first, an Anonymous send me a broken BFL single for free. thank you!

i disassemble the box and start a JTAG probing on JTAG2.
the board act the same as  this post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66244.msg870733#msg870733

but by the component size (29X29mm, 780pin), Flash memory size (64Mbit), i nearly to be certain it's a altera atratix3 FPGA. 99% possibility is a EP3SL150F780.
so i scraped the VIA under the chip, probe the JTAG pins, and finally find they bread the TDO line by remove the R36 resister.

by soldering the 0R resister back, I can detect the FPGAs by the JTAG normally.

so now is the result:


it's  a EP3SL150.

you can check the ID cords here:

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stx3/stx3_siii51013.pdf

page 16.

ADD:

i also check the price of this chip.
on digikey, it's about 2000-3000USD,
http://www.digikey.cn/product-search/zh/integrated-circuits-ics/embedded-fpgas-field-programmable-gate-array/2556262?k=EP3SL150

but this old chip is about 200-300USD in China market for a new one, and about 50-60 USD for a used one. i discussed with my supplier about the strange price, they said because nearly no one use this stuff, so the price is like a " markdown sale", so there are no large quantity of this chip in the market, maybe only a few hundreds (both new and used one).

all above is only personal viewpoint, I shall not accept any responsibility.

I'm not surprised...
Good work, how about Lancelot?

please don't lead this topic to off topic....  ;D

i will announce Lancelot at another thread.

Well this is good news , others my develop cheaper FPGA boards using these chips.

hope you can deal with the huge power consume. (40A pre core)

It would be cool to see a open sourced bfl clone. Possibly for even cheaper.

Others will not. Chip costs over 2k$ in small quantities. Not to mention that is worthless without bitstream. BFL don't publish bitstream, and that one in Singles is propably encrypted.

notice that it's really illegal if use their bitsteam.

Just wondering what part is broken if you can still determine the chip they used.
Or did you solder the chip off so you can do tests?

that broken one still in operate (but not normally), so the FPGAs still can be probed.

Interesting find. But people need to remember. Its not just what chip is used, but the software driving through it :)

So which one is in the single ? the 2000-3000 or 200-300 USD chip ?

Is the same chip :)) at 50$  and 2k$

I see this as both good a bad news. The bad news is that they probably only have a limited quantity of this chip available. Either they will have to raise the price, or redesign their product using a Spartan or something else more modern.

I just came across this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=34181;sa=showPosts
the guy is saying he programmed one of these chips to do 250mhs without any effort.

Well their mini rig is faster per chip and consumes less power, so they already have some new chip now ?

$2k - $3k is the retail price for it however since its old and nobody uses them anymore you can get them for cheaper from companies that have leftovers just laying around collecting dust because theres such low demand for them.

Based on power quotes and speed the mini rig matches spartan 6 efficiency. I think they're using Spartan 6's

Yes, is likely, I suppose 128 spartan6
Each spartan about 200MH/s, 128 x 200= 25.6GH/s
Each spartan about 10Watt, 128 x 10= 1280W

Theoretically is correct  ::)
The strange is the price... 15k$ for 128 spartan, about 120$ for each... the while cost for each chip in this moment is double

ngzhang, based on the specs for the chip, would you say that BFL is overdriving this chip, or is it comfortably within it's specs?

They use around 20 modules with 2 CPU each, so around 40 chips. Not 128 :)

Nice detective work, ngzhang and xaxik.  I really did not expect with this type of community that the BFL would stay shrouded in mystery for too long.

Maybe if their overdriving the chip and there second hand $50 chips that's why they only have six months of warranty?

the answer is, FPGAs include mass of possibility. if it can hold the Tj under the rated absolute maximum, i must say there is no over-driving at all.

Nice catch, watching closeley.

Gimme some of what your smoking  ;D

Spartan 6's do not go for $240 even at retail more like $175 retail

have you ever heard of getting things cheaper in bulk?  :P

I imagine you could get them $100 ea or cheaper in QTY

How many chips would you have to buy? IDK I figure if your buying thousands you can get a pretty sweet deal though

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/ep3sl150.html

This is awesome, lets buy them up before BFL gets them.

Mwhahahaha I can already see there is much drama potential in this as soon as the supply is dried up  :P

That is a very strange warranty period for something that is considered a long term (> 1year) investment.

Gonna be interesting what affect this has on singles ...

Likely: Nil.

It's better than no warranty at all that some other products offer.

And worse than the longer warranty that some other products offer.

Very interesting find. Subscribing to thread.

True, true. But at what point does the additional cost cover the extended warranty?

Nice job, ngzhang!

I've been offering a 10BTC bounty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49971.msg810315#msg810315) to whoever did this; I've sent you twice that in recognition of your thoroughness.

But how can they get so high mh/s compared to a $200 Spartan-6 chip?

Because Stratix is more awesome than Spartan.

:) True - but also at what point does the lost BTC from waiting for your device to arrive cover the lower price.
i.e. if you spend 10 weeks waiting for a paid for 830MH/s device - that's currently 0.55338097BTC x 70 = ~38.7BTC or currently ~$193
So if you can get a similar device that mines at 830MH/s today now, then you could effectively cut $193 off the price before comparing.
You can of course make that time frame longer or shorter depending on how long a BFL really takes to get (longer) or shorter by subtracting the time another device takes to get :)

Thanks for confirming, ngzhang. It is not too surprising of a discovery, as the Stratix III EP3SL150 was one of xaxik's reverse engineering guesses: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53530.msg720365#msg720365

The most surprising, for me, is to learn that used units of these FPGAs sell for $50-60 in China. Two chips per Singles, plus $50-80 for the remaining components, means that the BOM cost for a BFL Single (with used FPGAs) is ~$150-200. This means anyone with a chinese source of used FPGAs could manufacture BFL Single clones producing about 5 Mh/s per dollar(!), making it by far the most economical mining platform.

Yeah, anyone who can write a firmware for it to work :)

but the main question as i said, these "second hand" chips are really cheap because NO BODY USE IT. that means, if you want to buy them in bulk, will cause 2 effects:

1, there are only hundreds of them. there are no followup because they are second handed.
2, the seller will soon increase the price several times because they realize somebody "REALLY NEED THEM".

Yes, multiple people in this community are capable of designing (or have designed) a 400 Mh/s mining core on the EP3SL200, and I believe are capable of shrinking it to fit on the EP3SL150.

oh, that's really generous man. thank you!  ;D

Some of those resellers on alibaba only accept 100 unit minimum orders and state they can supply 10000 units (per day) . Like this one:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/427677808/EP3SL150.html
Sounds like they have boatloads of these on shelves.

Don't put too much trust in what a Chinese seller on Alibaba puts in an ad. Sometimes the people that makes the ads and fills in the form don't even speak English. They just copy and paste what others have written. In the link you provided, the seller also states they can sell the FPGA:s for 0.1 USD/piece, provided you buy a big enough quantity. Do you think that's possible?

Why debate? Just send a message to 2-3 vendors asking them specific details and see what's true and what not!

Then make a FPGA miner that does 3/4 the MH/s with 1/2 the power and 1/2 the price :)

if you really ask them, they will start to search the market (they have nothing in their hand), and tell you the actual price and supply ability.
 i have some friends do this job at past :D

As long as they deliver it at a good price i don't see any problem if they don't have it in hand.

Edit: ...if BFL hasn't aquired all of them :D

Exactly that might just be the problem. BFL are using EP3SL150's, and they are buying every chip they can find for less than a certain threshold. This makes the market price increase, and is probably also one of the reasons why BFL singles have so long waiting times - BFL can't buy enough FPGA's.

Bingo! Mystery solved!!! Now BFL is not a SCAM, not a CON, just lack of production supplies.

How ridiculous can a human look, when he is so jealous, that he can not afford himself to accept a simple fact...

Well he is least guilty of shady business tactics.
If he played by the rules he would have come forward straight ahead with the real, not inflated specs, the fact that there will be a limited supply and what hardware he is gonna be using. I would have bought one if I knew what I get.
Instead he decided to claim he is using a custom chip and stated the product will have 120% the performance and 60% the power requirements it actually turned out to be.
Lots of people are feeling the same way.

He fucked up, he could have secured himself a cutting edge position in the market with a innovative idea. Now BFL will probably end up as a side note alas:
'First closed source mining implementation using discount pro-grade fpgas'

And BTW: This could very well still turn out to be a scam.
What do you think will happen if there aren't enough EP3SL150 available for cheap to actually build the rig boxes people ordered?

Either you are wrong or ngzhang is lying.

Different chips in the rig box.

Ah, yes that could be the case.
But since BFL hasn't come forward with any information either that is pure speculation.

Will someone be able to produce free software for it ?

Nice job!

Designing an 80watt board is not as easy as designing a 40watt (8watt per chip) board. And obviously whoever designs it will be interested on making a decent profit on it. So maybe it won't be less than $500 USD.

Well at least I got a meaningful update to my FIT data question (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/3469/). Not that any FPGA would be the weak point in those calcs anyway...

The nice thing about VHDL / Verilog is that it can be compiled for every FPGA.
Optimizations for the specific device can be done so it probably wouldn't get BFLs performance initially but would most likely surpass it considering how many more people are involved.

I am pretty sure they are using different chips for the boxes.

What I really do think is, that BFL use new chips in their products, that they are improving their products and they are far more competitive than any other FPGA mining hardware developer today. It is just a speculation, that they use used chips in their products, just to rationalize a silly MH per $ of an own product.

The fact is, that guys from BFL are the only players on this field, who put some real money in their business and they start to dominate in mining hardware market. I am more than sure, that they will use improved chips in their newer products and they will offer something even better in the near future.

I have made this conclusion from reading almost 200 pages half off-topic threads about BFL...

Hopefully I managed to answer adequately to your question.

LOL about the post above :)

Anyway - the most important part about this thread for people WITH a BFL is the obvious:
Anyone got a bitstream that they can modify to run on the chip and we can then start making these things perform better?
(and of course the software to update the bitstream)

Since, of course, I'd be more than willing to update the BFL support in cgminer to support a better bitstream :)

ngzhang, can you probe the device to see if anything at all has been loaded into the firmware? its still a possibility that there is a very good reason someone already has a "broken" bfl single, that is to say they may all be "broken," ie no firmware.

Also, did the box have a return address label from Kansas City, Missouri?

sorry, i just returned the box to the owner....  :(

Still looks like a scam to me, lying about custom chips, lying about delivery, lying about availability, possibly using 2nd hand parts.
The BFL company is like a rotting sheep carcass in the sun, the more time goes by the more it stinks.

WE GET IT, YOU THINK IT'S A SCAM.

You really need to take a second, dust off that brain of yours and start using it before you post.  

Definition of scam:  a confidence game or other fraudulent scheme, especially for making a quick profit; swindle.

They've been selling their unit for months now and are still shipping product every day.  This is the de facto antithesis of scam.  I'm not going to waste my time re-iterating the invalidity of your claims (aside from shipping since you're correct).  It's never not going to look like a scam to you, that much is obvious so quit trolling BFL threads with your useless rhetoric.  They use EOL chips, SURPRISE.  This isn't some brilliant new discovery for you to now harp on about.

I generally pride myself in being a tolerant person, but for once I'm going to have to swallow it (my pride).  Welcome to my ignore list.

WE GET IT, YOU THINK IT'S _NOT_ A SCAM.


its unfortunate some people are fairly ignorant of scams, bitcoin users are frequently hit by them.

It simple, I sell <item>. I accept 1000 orders with only 100 items available. I sell 100 then laugh at the other 900.

STFU, both of you.

Thanks, tips.

mmffmmfffhhhhmmffppphhh

http://i49.tinypic.com/qyx3ed.png

Angry neighborhood bastard mod here.

All of you, knock it off.

scam is probably not the best definition.  if they are indeed lying about a custom chip, and if they are using previously in service parts, its at the very least misleading and unscrupulous.

I think its very odd that whenever someone makes a negative post about BFL, a bunch of low post count users either attack, or bump the positive BFL posts in the forum.

Even stranger is that these posters typically have a very low ratio of useful posts to complete garbage if you review their history. Most of their posts are promoting the BFL "product" for lack of a better term.

BFL promotional posts types-

1) 'tech support' questions about supposed operational BFL units

2) claims of having received a BFL unit in the mail

3) making a post asking if the BFL is a scam, replying to the negative with another account

etc.

If only we could harness and direct this creativity to a more productive activity, like ngzhang has.

Aren't you a low post person as well? You accused BFL of sending DOA devices based on 1 "broken" device that zhang managed to probe. My god you sound like paid trolls the way you attack the slightest weakness like it's a gaping wound. STFU and contribute. There have been 100+ working units without a peep of failure and you sit there accusing BFL of shipping broken units. I think that would have been a forum topic you stupid coont.

Feel free to keep checking BFL. As someone who has a 5k order out, i appreciate the scrutiny. Instead of doing that job, you're becoming the hannity/beck of the forum. STFU until you have something of value. Jeez, you're driving sane people away.

His argument doesn't make sense anyhow. I'm a high count poster, a forum mod, author of DiabloMiner, owner of Diablo Mining Company, one of the first 100 Bitcoin users, and a very big advocate of Bitcoin usage, and I have made only positive posts about BFL. In fact, unless 28nm hardware comes out and its cheaper mh/$ than BFL MiniRigs, I want those to become the backbone of DMC (which, incidentally, would make me the biggest BFL user in the world).

BFL shill, low count poster. No doubt BFL is behind this conspiracy.

Good Luck.

Have you ever seen a BFL product in person?

I imagine very few people have. Are they all shills?

So your business plan is to issue counterfeit securities and use the proceeds to acquire capital in the form of a product you aren't sure actually exists or not?

Good luck.

Yawn, this forum is full of trolls, you're not bringing anything unique to the table.

http://173.212.223.134/ <--- Look at the row with 18 devices. 18 BFL singles mining away... Drool you bastard!

I'm clearly not a fan of BFL ... but I have one :)

Spartan 6-150 in CSG 484-2I i buy for 74 € + tax(19%) at my Supplier. It is a price for 84 peaces.
I think in the moment it is the cheapest 150, that you can get.

so does this mean the competitor will be able to catch up?

I do hope so.. :D

necro much?

sorry not my intention...

:(

i just followed ngzhang posts and got to this thread..

hehe.

to answer your question. It would not do any good to help a competitor. BFL's biggest advantage with using these chips for their singles was/is their ability to source them at a price that would be very difficult for any competitor to find them at.

if they cant even design an FPGA chip and need to import a ready made chip. then their so called research and development costs are not that large.

secondly an ASIC is designed specifically for one task only.

good luck in them trying to design a fresh new concept if they cant even design a FPGA.

 :o You nailed em again ;D

In another thread franky1 has shown he didn't differentiate processor (device) from CPU/GPU (chip), he didn't differentiate boards and chips, he didn't know the FPGA chips are bought and programmed by miner device producers, not designed and made by them.
So, his "nailing" is quite worthless.

Uh,Sarcasm,heard of it much  ??? ;D