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Title: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: grue on February 25, 2012, 05:34:19 PM Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Just want to know if it's custom made, or a mass produced fpga.
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: DeathAndTaxes on February 25, 2012, 05:36:41 PM Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Just want to know if it's custom made, or a mass produced fpga. Nobody knows and BFL isn't telling (even going so far as to remove markings from heat spreader and using epoxy to attach the heatsink. The board does look like it has a JTAG so someone with right tools can query the chip. Based on voltage and wattage my guess is a 65nm (last gen) FPGA however that would mean they obtained a lot at a significant discount to retail pricing. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: marked on February 25, 2012, 06:44:05 PM Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Just want to know if it's custom made, or a mass produced fpga. Nobody knows and BFL isn't telling (even going so far as to remove markings from heat spreader and using epoxy to attach the heatsink. The board does look like it has a JTAG so someone with right tools can query the chip. Based on voltage and wattage my guess is a 65nm (last gen) FPGA however that would mean they obtained a lot at a significant discount to retail pricing. I thought it had been determined that it was a FPGA/ASIC hybrid ie developed on a fpga then hardcoded into a fixed FPGA run (in otherwords it would never be able to run another bitstream.) It's certainly on this board somewhere where the images had been shown of a populated board without a heatsink. I'll search for it, but currently have to go out. Should be about an hour or so... marked Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: cypherdoc on February 25, 2012, 06:55:03 PM is there one or two fpga's in the Single?
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: DeathAndTaxes on February 25, 2012, 07:01:08 PM Two.
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: cypherdoc on February 25, 2012, 07:14:29 PM Two. if they are indeed older chips how do u presume they're getting over twice the Mh/s performance vs. the spartans? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: DeathAndTaxes on February 25, 2012, 07:20:06 PM Two. if they are indeed older chips how do u presume they're getting over twice the Mh/s performance vs. the spartans? Spartan is a small chip. The Spartan 6 LX-150 wasn't chosen because it is the fastest. It was chosen because it is the most economical. It only has 150K LUTs there are FPGAs with 300K, 400K, even 800K LUTs (new 28nm FPGA have up to 2 million LUTs). Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: cypherdoc on February 25, 2012, 07:28:03 PM Two. if they are indeed older chips how do u presume they're getting over twice the Mh/s performance vs. the spartans? Spartan is a small chip. The Spartan 6 LX-150 wasn't chosen because it is the fastest. It was chosen because it is the most economical. It only has 150K LUTs there are FPGAs with 300K, 400K, even 800K LUTs (new 28nm FPGA have up to 2 million LUTs). its probably better just to say they chose the "cheapest". "economical" could be applied to the BFL as in having the highest Mh/$. can't say much about longevity though. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: DeathAndTaxes on February 25, 2012, 07:35:36 PM Two. if they are indeed older chips how do u presume they're getting over twice the Mh/s performance vs. the spartans? Spartan is a small chip. The Spartan 6 LX-150 wasn't chosen because it is the fastest. It was chosen because it is the most economical. It only has 150K LUTs there are FPGAs with 300K, 400K, even 800K LUTs (new 28nm FPGA have up to 2 million LUTs). its probably better just to say they chose the "cheapest". "economical" could be applied to the BFL as in having the highest Mh/$. can't say much about longevity though. Maybe I wasn't clear. With open market prices (no special deals, no close outs) there is no chip available which has a lower cost per LUT and thus lower cost per MH than Spartan-6 LX150. That is why it is used by all 3 other boards. There are plenty of cheaper chips. Hell they make $20 FPGAs but they are less economical. So I suspect BFL obtained some special pricing which allowed them to purchase in bulk chips which retail for $800+ for $200 to $300. That is just my theory though. Since BFL doesn't want anyone to know what chips they are using we won't know until if/when someone probes it with the JTAG header. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: runeks on February 25, 2012, 11:10:31 PM I thought it had been determined that it was a FPGA/ASIC hybrid ie developed on a fpga then hardcoded into a fixed FPGA run (in otherwords it would never be able to run another bitstream.) Nothing has been determined. But much has been speculated.Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: bulanula on February 26, 2012, 12:20:11 AM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit.
He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ZodiacDragon84 on February 26, 2012, 12:22:27 AM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit. He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? Yah, but what you dont know, is 15% of your hashing power would then end up in a Chinese pool...lol Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: grue on February 26, 2012, 05:10:57 PM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit. He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? Yah, but what you dont know, is 15% of your hashing power would then end up in a Chinese pool...lol Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: Raoul Duke on February 26, 2012, 05:38:54 PM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit. He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? Yah, but what you dont know, is 15% of your hashing power would then end up in a Chinese pool...lol if the net output was better then it wouldn't be a copy... Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: BFL-Engineer on February 27, 2012, 12:38:00 PM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit. He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? I'm sorry to say that a part of every business (include ours) includes trade-secrects which unfortunately cannot be disclosed. We really wished that this would not have turned into a challenge for our users, since our business goal is to deliver high-tech equipment for our targeted industry. JTAG probing will not help either... Regards, Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: drakahn on February 27, 2012, 01:11:13 PM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit. He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? I'm sorry to say that a part of every business (include ours) includes trade-secrects which unfortunately cannot be disclosed. We really wished that this would not have turned into a challenge for our users, since our business goal is to deliver high-tech equipment for our targeted industry. JTAG probing will not help either... Regards, if you're targeted industry is miners than you should know they tend to like transparency, and open sourcedness, and to take things apart to find out what makes them tick :p Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: bulanula on February 27, 2012, 01:14:01 PM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit. He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? I'm sorry to say that a part of every business (include ours) includes trade-secrects which unfortunately cannot be disclosed. We really wished that this would not have turned into a challenge for our users, since our business goal is to deliver high-tech equipment for our targeted industry. JTAG probing will not help either... Regards, I bet ArtForz would disagree. There are ways to make the chips talk just as there are ways to make people talk ;) Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: rjk on February 27, 2012, 01:51:09 PM if you're targeted industry is miners than you should know they tend to like transparency, and open sourcedness, and to take things apart to find out what makes them tick :p My feeling is that Bitcoin mining is just a small stepping stone on their way to greatness. So they probably will not want to make everything open-source at the outset. That's how business work, remember? Even though all of Facebook's datacenter plans are open-source (http://opencompute.org/), they certainly weren't at the initial outset of the project. And that is only one example. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: nelisky on February 27, 2012, 06:22:31 PM What are the chances of this being some ATI GPU or other stripped of everything else, just doing opencl? Kind of makes sense from both a price and performance standpoint ;)
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: vampire on February 27, 2012, 07:39:36 PM What are the chances of this being some ATI GPU or other stripped of everything else, just doing opencl? Kind of makes sense from both a price and performance standpoint ;) Pretty low, the wattage is much lower than a GPU. Looks like an outdated FCPGA chip that was bought in bulk for a dirt cheap price. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: nelisky on February 27, 2012, 08:02:37 PM What are the chances of this being some ATI GPU or other stripped of everything else, just doing opencl? Kind of makes sense from both a price and performance standpoint ;) Pretty low, the wattage is much lower than a GPU. Looks like an outdated FCPGA chip that was bought in bulk for a dirt cheap price. Yeah, when I bother to actually do the math, it becomes clear that you are right. I can take 400MHs out of each of my 5970 cores @ 840MHz, give or take. The full board, with 2 cores, sucks ~250W (RAM downclocked) and I'm sure a lot could be shaved off by removing everything but the bare essencial to mine. That 'not essencial' category will fit a lot of the GPU components, and thus the power draw has a good margin to be reduced, but to 80W from 250W is probably just impossible. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: runeks on February 27, 2012, 08:37:26 PM ^ I think we can rule this out even disregarding the power consumption. It would simply not be possible to do this without too much time and effort (orders of magnitude more).
I actually doubt anyone but AMD employees would be able to do this, in which case it'd probably be illegal because of the NDA agreement they've signed (unless, of course, AMD gave them permission). They'd still need an x86 CPU (the Catalyst driver isn't available compiled for anything else but x86), and either Windows or a Linux distribution running on that CPU (graphics cards don't work without an operating system). They'd need system RAM (for the CPU) and video RAM (for the GPU). They would basically be designing their own x86 motherboard from the ground-up, with embedded graphics and a custom OS running on this motherboard. I think I can safely say that this would simply be too expensive, too time-consuming and too difficult to make. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: qualalol on February 28, 2012, 11:11:57 PM They'd still need an x86 CPU (the Catalyst driver isn't available compiled for anything else but x86), and either Windows or a Linux distribution running on that CPU (graphics cards don't work without an operating system). They'd need system RAM (for the CPU) and video RAM (for the GPU). They would basically be designing their own x86 motherboard from the ground-up, with embedded graphics and a custom OS running on this motherboard. I think I can safely say that this would simply be too expensive, too time-consuming and too difficult to make. Tosh. You would need an OS to use the catalyst drivers -- but you don't necessarily need catalyst to use the chip, and you wouldn't need an OS to directly interface to the chips if you were given their specification (or reverse engineered it) [on this note: do the GPU chips directly implement PCIE, or is there an additional interface chip for this -- I suspect the former, meaning you would simply need a USB to PCIE interfacing chip...] -- which is however highly unlikely since I don't think ATI would publish this sort of data / reverse engineering would be tedious. You would be wasting a lot of time reimplementing what the catalyst drivers already do (although you would only need a small part of the functionality for bitcoin mining) once you had this data as well. In other words it is pointless to do the above, but it is not actually necessary to use an OS.Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: runeks on March 04, 2012, 04:48:22 PM Tosh. You would need an OS to use the catalyst drivers -- but you don't necessarily need catalyst to use the chip, and you wouldn't need an OS to directly interface to the chips if you were given their specification (or reverse engineered it) [on this note: do the GPU chips directly implement PCIE, or is there an additional interface chip for this -- I suspect the former, meaning you would simply need a USB to PCIE interfacing chip...] -- which is however highly unlikely since I don't think ATI would publish this sort of data / reverse engineering would be tedious. You would be wasting a lot of time reimplementing what the catalyst drivers already do (although you would only need a small part of the functionality for bitcoin mining) once you had this data as well. In other words it is pointless to do the above, but it is not actually necessary to use an OS. I didn't say you necessarily need the catalyst driver to utilize the GPUs, but I said it was necessary because writing your own OpenCL implementation for a GPU would make this project go from very, very difficult to insanely difficult. AMD has a team of about 80 developers working full-time on their Catalyst driver (I am not kidding you).The open source Radeon HD driver (which is about four years old) just recently was able to run a proof-of-concept OpenCL application: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?69064-Using-OpenCL-with-the-radeon-driver-to-print-Bitcoins-is-this-posible#post252304 Probably at 1% the speed of the Catalyst driver. Developing an OpenCL implementation isn't that hard, developing a well-performing OpenCL implementation is! Just look at the radeon driver (open source Linux driver for the Radeon HD GPUs). AMD has a man dedicated to work on this full-time, and there are plenty of volunteer developers, and it doesn't support a fraction of the features Catalyst does, and it performs at a fraction of what the Catalyst driver does. Building a custom GPU motherboard and writing a driver that only achieves 50% the performance of the Catalyst driver is hard and a waste of time (and it wouldn't be able to churn out 800 MH/s in this case). Quote In other words it is pointless to do the above, but it is not actually necessary to use an OS. Necessary, no. Necessary if you want a device performing as well as the Catalyst driver without spending 100,000 man hours developing a custom Radeon HD driver with OpenCL capabilites, yes.I'm telling you man, a GPU driver is a lot more complex than most people think. It's basically a small operating system running on the GPU: memory manager and process scheduler are both a necessary part of a GPU driver. It's basically a massive serial-to-parallel compiler (translating a series of Direct3D or OpenGL instructions into tens of thousands of threads with instructions the GPU chip can understand and execute in parallel). It's actually quite fascinating. This covers the very basics of a GPU driver: http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/a-trip-through-the-graphics-pipeline-2011-part-1/ Starting in 2008, AMD released all documentation for some of their GPUs (1) (http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/) (yes, that's about 2500 pages of hardware, firmware and software specification), after the open source Linux community had encouraged them to do so because "if we have the specifications some hacker will come around and develop a much better driver than the proprietary one". Today reads 2012, and the open source driver still isn't really usable for the average gamer (who buys a $200-$800 graphics card and then proceeds to use a driver that only performs at 20% the speed of the Catalyst driver?) Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: Syke on March 05, 2012, 03:33:16 AM I'm sorry to say that a part of every business (include ours) includes trade-secrects which unfortunately cannot be disclosed. We really wished that this would not have turned into a challenge for our users, since our business goal is to deliver high-tech equipment for our targeted industry. JTAG probing will not help either... Regards, A custom chip wouldn't need to be a "trade-secret", because no one would be able to get the same chip anywhere else. So clearly the BFL Single is using an off-the-shelf chip. That's the kind of "secret" that will not stay secret. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: RandyFolds on March 05, 2012, 03:45:05 AM Just wait till ArtForz gets his unit. He will expose the chip in 2 minutes using JTAG probing ;D BFL : all your secrets are belong to us ! Can anyone say Chinese BFL copy in 3 months or less :D ? I'm sorry to say that a part of every business (include ours) includes trade-secrects which unfortunately cannot be disclosed. We really wished that this would not have turned into a challenge for our users, since our business goal is to deliver high-tech equipment for our targeted industry. JTAG probing will not help either... Regards, I thought that your bitcoin products were just incidental overlap with your real business of government-contracted supercomputers and medical imaging devices... BTW, when will those imaging drivers be available? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on March 20, 2012, 07:54:35 AM He is probably right with JTAG Probing, modern FPGAs include pretty good bitstream encryption.
But it is as with any DRM, futile for the long run. just one example: http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/21/1753217/fpga-bitstream-security-broken The nice thing about it: It's perfectly legal to do it, basically the same thing as jailbreaking a phone. Now sharing the bitstream would be another story. So BFL is safe as long as nobody with access to a decent lab comes along. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: mrb on March 20, 2012, 08:50:20 AM As discussed, they are almost certainly using a cheap source of old-gen 65nm FPGAs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66314.msg769355#msg769355
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: DeathAndTaxes on March 20, 2012, 12:36:05 PM He is probably right with JTAG Probing, modern FPGAs include pretty good bitstream encryption. But it is as with any DRM, futile for the long run. just one example: http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/21/1753217/fpga-bitstream-security-broken The nice thing about it: It's perfectly legal to do it, basically the same thing as jailbreaking a phone. Now sharing the bitstream would be another story. So BFL is safe as long as nobody with access to a decent lab comes along. Well sadly in the US it would be illegal. DMCA makes circumventing encryption for ANY REASON even a legit one a crime. Granted the law is an abomination and should be repealed but as of today it is on the books. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: abeaulieu on March 20, 2012, 01:47:53 PM I think once one of these singles gets into the right hands someone will find some meaningful data from the bitstream that will indicate what the chip is. The bitstream itself isn't really that important to most of us (I don't particularly care about the programming of the chip, but perhaps some of the hxc programmers around here might).
I'm curious if this project was sired by someone among us that spun off a project from an idea(s) on this forum. I remember seeing some pretty cool FPGA implementation ideas and the manual logic placement optimizations. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on March 20, 2012, 03:54:26 PM He is probably right with JTAG Probing, modern FPGAs include pretty good bitstream encryption. But it is as with any DRM, futile for the long run. just one example: http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/21/1753217/fpga-bitstream-security-broken The nice thing about it: It's perfectly legal to do it, basically the same thing as jailbreaking a phone. Now sharing the bitstream would be another story. So BFL is safe as long as nobody with access to a decent lab comes along. Well sadly in the US it would be illegal. DMCA makes circumventing encryption for ANY REASON even a legit one a crime. Granted the law is an abomination and should be repealed but as of today it is on the books. As I recall there is a EU equivalent to DCMA too, probably not as restrictive, but at least it enabled the researchers (they are in Germany) to do what they are doing. I think once one of these singles gets into the right hands someone will find some meaningful data from the bitstream that will indicate what the chip is. The bitstream itself isn't really that important to most of us (I don't particularly care about the programming of the chip, but perhaps some of the hxc programmers around here might). I'm curious if this project was sired by someone among us that spun off a project from an idea(s) on this forum. I remember seeing some pretty cool FPGA implementation ideas and the manual logic placement optimizations. Right, we may not even need to go as far. Is there some chips identifiable as a flashrom (SPI, I2C, etcc..) on the boards? As I recall most high performance FPGAs don't include flash rom. So it could be possible to find out which chip it is just by knowing from which pins the bitstream is loaded. There also is a AVR32 on there which I can make out from the pictures available, that could be also used to store the bitstream. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on March 20, 2012, 08:41:21 PM I thought more about it and I think BFL uses some kind of SOC device, you know those FPGAs with integrated uC among other things. At first it seems counter intuitive, but if you really look at what these devices are capable of you start to re-think it.
Some of those have SIMD and/or MIMD instruction sets, in some way similar to GPUs. Mining can only partially benefit from discrete logic and many cases can probably be done more efficient with the right ALU. Those present in the Spartan-6 we ruled all pretty much out but there could very well be a device which could be very well suited. The market is large and there are lots of players involved, but I am almost certain that there lurks a device, lets call it a hybrid between a FPGA and a GPGPU (shift instructions!) which would match the performance of the BFL devices. Look at those Altera APEX devices... aren't those like the thing I talked about? In case I have been right, BFL, hate me ;D :P Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: cablepair on March 20, 2012, 10:21:24 PM I think SOC is a good possibility, could also be some kind of older powerhouse FPGA that they got a really good deal on from a closed out design shop or something
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: PulsedMedia on March 23, 2012, 05:18:57 AM As I recall there is a EU equivalent to DCMA too, probably not as restrictive, but at least it enabled the researchers (they are in Germany) to do what they are doing. It's actually sensible, very little known, single paragraph in a single directive. It puts the effort of proof illegality to the claimee, and emphasizes that it may not cause extra costs for ISPs, or make them responsible for proactive monitoring, or to break laws (privacy usually) to cooperate with those. In a case of movie for example, MediaSentry has to send in not only what was copied, but they have to also proof it was illegal for the user, which is almost impossible to know as certain countries allow private copies, other countries allow copying for backup purposes (afaik from any sources). etc. You can check the EU ecommerce directive article 14 about this. It's actually quite hard to understand due to the wording, and some small companies opt to translate it to the worst possible, even worse than SOPA (blanket full censored rights to any party for any reason, without any kind of prejudice. Including your own logos etc.) Obviously those outlets are simply morons. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: runeks on March 25, 2012, 08:58:43 PM ^ Are we talking about the same thing here?
As far as I can tell, the DMCA reference refers to its prohibition of breaking a copy-prevention mechanism in a piece of electronic equipment that you own. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: eldentyrell on April 22, 2012, 09:50:45 PM He is probably right with JTAG Probing, modern FPGAs include pretty good bitstream encryption. These are totally unrelated. The JTAG interface lets you ask the chip "what chip are you" -- IDCODE. All Xilinx chips have this capability, and it cannot be disabled. I don't know about altera, but I suspect it's the same deal. This has nothing to do with the bitstream/firmware. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on April 22, 2012, 10:45:17 PM He is probably right with JTAG Probing, modern FPGAs include pretty good bitstream encryption. These are totally unrelated. The JTAG interface lets you ask the chip "what chip are you" -- IDCODE. All Xilinx chips have this capability, and it cannot be disabled. I don't know about altera, but I suspect it's the same deal. This has nothing to do with the bitstream/firmware. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: abeaulieu on April 22, 2012, 10:57:39 PM He is probably right with JTAG Probing, modern FPGAs include pretty good bitstream encryption. These are totally unrelated. The JTAG interface lets you ask the chip "what chip are you" -- IDCODE. All Xilinx chips have this capability, and it cannot be disabled. I don't know about altera, but I suspect it's the same deal. This has nothing to do with the bitstream/firmware. I would be surprised if the JTAG pins were not already broken out to a header (populated or unpopulated) on the board somewhere. This is very standard for any programmable device layout. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: Inspector 2211 on April 23, 2012, 12:36:02 AM He is probably right with JTAG Probing, modern FPGAs include pretty good bitstream encryption. These are totally unrelated. The JTAG interface lets you ask the chip "what chip are you" -- IDCODE. All Xilinx chips have this capability, and it cannot be disabled. I don't know about altera, but I suspect it's the same deal. This has nothing to do with the bitstream/firmware. I would be surprised if the JTAG pins were not already broken out to a header (populated or unpopulated) on the board somewhere. This is very standard for any programmable device layout. The Single has a JTAG connector, but BFL have said on this forum that using JTAG won't help in any way in finding out which chip it is. Which leads me to suspect that it is a programmable custom ASIC, originally intended for supercomputing / cryptography. Something like a custom FPGA or a large array of microcontrollers. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: eldentyrell on April 23, 2012, 02:25:42 AM The Single has a JTAG connector, but BFL have said on this forum that using JTAG won't help in any way in finding out which chip it is. I think that's just them trying to discourage people from trying. I'll still pay the 5BTC bounty for an IDCODE readout, even if the two "big chips" aren't on the chain. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: abeaulieu on April 23, 2012, 01:40:03 PM The Single has a JTAG connector, but BFL have said on this forum that using JTAG won't help in any way in finding out which chip it is. Which leads me to suspect that it is a programmable custom ASIC, originally intended for supercomputing / cryptography. Something like a custom FPGA or a large array of microcontrollers. I highly doubt that it is an ASIC. If you look at their website you'll see that they removed an mention of designing with ASIC's. Several months ago this was written right on their homepage. The relatively high power consumption also suggests that it's not an ASIC. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: bulanula on April 23, 2012, 08:35:54 PM The Single has a JTAG connector, but BFL have said on this forum that using JTAG won't help in any way in finding out which chip it is. Which leads me to suspect that it is a programmable custom ASIC, originally intended for supercomputing / cryptography. Something like a custom FPGA or a large array of microcontrollers. LOL at the people still thinking it is an ASIC. ASIC in the bitcoin world is long way away folks. Largecoin or BFL is NOT ASIC just custom HardCopy solution maybe. Nobody is stupid enough to invest $1 million into mining equipment like ASIC would require. Maybe the GOV ;D Let us be realistic now ... Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: BR0KK on April 23, 2012, 09:17:34 PM Why hasn't someone done these x-Ray images like one big website (the do it to chips like the 7970, before that they sanded the top of. Don't remember who it was :() does it?
Ther has to be some kind of labeling underneath the metal shield hidden in the Silicium? found it: http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/recent-teardowns/2012/02/inside-the-asus-amd-7970-graphics-card-tsmc-28-nm/ When i trust my eyes i can see some Names beneath the AMD Logo (CHIP Corner). I think every proud Dev puts an ester egg in his baby :D Why not funding a BFL and ask Chipwork to do the job :P Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: antirack on April 27, 2012, 04:00:44 AM After a little bit of reading, I found that protecting the JTAG port of an Altera FPGA seems to be a standard feature.
Anyway, since I had the chance to lay my hands on some BFL singles, here is the result of some JTAG probing. JTAG1 Code: jtag> detect JTAG2 Code: jtag> detect Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: mem on April 27, 2012, 04:06:00 AM now its getting interesting - subscribing.
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: Garr255 on April 27, 2012, 04:29:49 AM Indeed it is. I'll be following this.
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: tgmarks on April 27, 2012, 08:12:59 AM I'm in also.
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: abeaulieu on April 27, 2012, 10:54:04 AM How do you know you're probing the TDO pin?
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on April 27, 2012, 12:58:44 PM After a little bit of reading, I found that protecting the JTAG port of an Altera FPGA seems to be a standard feature. You wouldn't happen to be trolling? maybe? ::) Anyway the only chip which would be offered by atmel which would have the capabilities are their cell asics, which shouldn't even have a jtag port in the first place. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: antirack on April 27, 2012, 01:15:41 PM After a little bit of reading, I found that protecting the JTAG port of an Altera FPGA seems to be a standard feature. You wouldn't happen to be trolling? maybe? ::) Anyway the only chip which would be offered by atmel which would have the capabilities are their cell asics, which shouldn't even have a jtag port in the first place. Altera: Quote JTAG Threats Another type of threat makes use of the JTAG port. Although the port is meant for board connectivity and basic system-functionality testing, the flexibility of JTAG can be misused to determine the configuration of the FPGA. Because in most FPGAs, JTAG is always enabled, uses dedicated pins, and overrides any other configuration mechanism, it can be used to exercise the design systematically to reverse engineer the functionality, thereby stealing the design. However, like timing analysis on an FPGA, this is an extremely laborious, time consuming, and rote process, though it requires no specialized equipment. JTAG-Port Protection Solution Recognizing the susceptibility of JTAG, Cyclone III LS FPGAs take extra precautions by restricting access to the JTAG port. Traditionally, the JTAG port always was enabled on FPGAs, and any instructions received on the JTAG I/O pins would execute immediately. In Cyclone III LS FPGAs, the native state of JTAG is restricted to only those instructions required for compliance to the IEEE specification. The JTAG port can be reset to accept the full instruction set. However, resetting the JTAG port causes the Cyclone III LS FPGA automatically to erase all configuration within itself (including the volatile AES key, if used), before allowing full access on the JTAG pins. Therefore, a user cannot use the JTAG port to test or modify the design in any way. If it's a standard feature of the Cyclone III LS FPGAs, I assume it's available on other Altera devices too (but what do I know?). And no, I am not trolling. But as I have already pointed out earlier, they may have just switched the pins around on JTAG2. Who knows. If it would be me trying to protect my design, I'd do that too. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: rjk on April 27, 2012, 08:50:51 PM Don't forget to email eldentyrell and ask for your 5 BTC. :D
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on April 28, 2012, 07:44:01 PM It's ATMEL not altera, read it dammit'. I said nothing about FPGAs, so maybe Atmel cell asics have some diagnostics jtag port.
That's the only explanation. That or the whole thing is made up on the spot, upto the point of someone actually receiving a BFL single. (Yeah I am siding with mem here.) Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: antirack on April 29, 2012, 12:43:45 AM The Atmel chip on the board is not a secret. It's the big chips that most of us were wondering.
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on April 29, 2012, 12:48:36 AM So you posted the response of the microcontroller first? Who wanna know that, it even has a intact silkscreen.
If the second quote is from the "big chip" this means absolutely nothing, you could have connected it to a power pin and would have gotten the same response. I still think you are trolling. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: mem on April 29, 2012, 03:36:28 AM That or the whole thing is made up on the spot, upto the point of someone actually receiving a BFL single. (Yeah I am siding with mem here.) Better put your flame suite on mate, questioning the almighty BFL will get you burned as a witch in these parts ;) Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: antirack on April 29, 2012, 11:29:08 AM And back on topic.
I noticed something strange with the JTAG header in this photo from BFL (original here (http://www.butterflylabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BFL-Single-Production_Unit_mining.jpg)): http://image.bayimg.com/oaoolaade.jpg Look at the left JTAG header (JTAG2). Is it just me or did they trim some of the pins? It would seem that pins 3, 5, 7 and 9 are longer. Could that be it? Also note how the LCD port has a header in this PCB. I know it's a bit far fetched, but does 5 pins for an LCD seem usual? It's a bit blurry but it looks like a Rev C. The ones I have are Rev E. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on April 29, 2012, 11:57:27 AM That or the whole thing is made up on the spot, upto the point of someone actually receiving a BFL single. (Yeah I am siding with mem here.) Better put your flame suite on mate, questioning the almighty BFL will get you burned as a witch in these parts ;) Pretty hilarious. And back on topic. I noticed something strange with the JTAG header in this photo from BFL (original here (http://www.butterflylabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BFL-Single-Production_Unit_mining.jpg)): http://image.bayimg.com/oaoolaade.jpg Look at the left JTAG header (JTAG2). Is it just me or did they trim some of the pins? Do you have a BFL or not? Are your pins trimmed? That wouldn't stop anyone equipped with a soldering iron (about anybody who would even know what jtag is) Which brings me to the next issue: How do you know it's a jtag port in the first place? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: antirack on April 29, 2012, 12:27:27 PM Come on. Of course I have a single otherwise how could I connect a JTAG cable? JTAG1 and JTAG2 is written right next to them. And if it wouldn't be a JTAG header I guess the Atmel MCU wouldn't be talking to it. And no, my pins are not trimmed, on any of my 10 units (you can directly look at the JTAG headers through the "grill")
If you have nothing to add to this thread, could you please move on? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ElectricMucus on April 29, 2012, 12:35:28 PM Well then did you check if too short pins were an issue in your case? Did you check the right orientation? Did you use a logic analyzer to get more information?
But if you are capable (which we assume) that shouldn't even be part of the discussion. So you are right we should move on. Still you didn't answer my question: Are your pins trimmed? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: antirack on April 29, 2012, 12:38:55 PM Pins not trimmed, orientation correct. And I'll leave the logic analyzer part to the pros such as yourself.
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: eldentyrell on April 29, 2012, 08:41:51 PM After a little bit of reading, I found that protecting the JTAG port of an Altera FPGA seems to be a standard feature. In Cyclone III LS FPGAs, the native state of JTAG is restricted to only those instructions required for compliance to the IEEE specification. IDCODE is "required for compliance to the IEEE specification" so this won't affect it. Warning: TDO seems to be stuck at 1 Try setting the TCK frequency to something absurdly low ("frequency 1000" in urjtag). If nothing changes, then you're probably right that: they may have just switched the pins around on JTAG2. Who knows. If it would be me trying to protect my design, I'd do that too. You'll have to try different pin hookups, but it's not as bad as it sounds. The first step is to find out which (if any) of the 10 pins has a driver on it; that's TDO. Then, for each of the remaining nine pins try wiggling them one at a time to figure out which one is TCK. Then all you need is TMS. You can get the IDCODE readout without TDI. Don't forget to email eldentyrell and ask for your 5 BTC. :D I'll definitely pay up if/when he posts an IDCODE readout from the JTAG2 chain; right now all we know is that the board isn't hooked up properly (which might be due to BFL choosing a funky pinout). Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: bulanula on April 30, 2012, 07:39:14 AM Come on, we all know ATMEL is not the FPGA chip that does the hashings but just a side ASIC used for USB or something ...
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: seriouscoin on May 01, 2012, 08:24:33 PM Come on, we all know ATMEL is not the FPGA chip that does the hashings but just a side ASIC used for USB or something ... Just Shut the fck up and get out of this forum. Loser Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ||bit on May 02, 2012, 03:41:29 PM Does anyone here understand what is delivered by Amtel with this service or product? An FPGA chip or a kind of hybrid? http://www.atmel.com/products/Other/fpga_conversion_ulc/default.aspx Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: abeaulieu on May 02, 2012, 06:31:19 PM Does anyone here understand what is delivered by Amtel with this service or product? An FPGA chip or a kind of hybrid? http://www.atmel.com/products/Other/fpga_conversion_ulc/default.aspx Interesting. Sounds like the product is more similar to an ASIC. Probably VERY costly though since the design/conversion is handled entirely by Atmel. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ionbasa on May 02, 2012, 06:44:04 PM http://www.atmel.com/products/Wireless/wifi/avr_xmega.aspx
hmm, how many pins are on the chips in the bfl single? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: rjk on May 02, 2012, 06:52:41 PM Does anyone here understand what is delivered by Amtel with this service or product? An FPGA chip or a kind of hybrid? http://www.atmel.com/products/Other/fpga_conversion_ulc/default.aspx Interesting. Sounds like the product is more similar to an ASIC. Probably VERY costly though since the design/conversion is handled entirely by Atmel. Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: bombo999 on May 02, 2012, 06:58:33 PM http://www.atmel.com/products/Wireless/wifi/avr_xmega.aspx hmm, how many pins are on the chips in the bfl single? If you have your own single, just look yourself. If you don't have your own single, why do you care? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: enmaku on May 02, 2012, 07:16:42 PM As discussed, they are almost certainly using a cheap source of old-gen 65nm FPGAs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66314.msg769355#msg769355 Assuming this topic is correct, does anyone happen to have a source of MTBF/MTTF/FIT data for those chips? It's rough trying to factor cost of replacement into operating costs when you have zero data on how often they'll need replaced :P Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: rjk on May 02, 2012, 07:50:02 PM As discussed, they are almost certainly using a cheap source of old-gen 65nm FPGAs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66314.msg769355#msg769355 Assuming this topic is correct, does anyone happen to have a source of MTBF/MTTF/FIT data for those chips? It's rough trying to factor cost of replacement into operating costs when you have zero data on how often they'll need replaced :P Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: ionbasa on May 02, 2012, 09:52:51 PM http://www.atmel.com/products/Wireless/wifi/avr_xmega.aspx hmm, how many pins are on the chips in the bfl single? If you have your own single, just look yourself. If you don't have your own single, why do you care? Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: enmaku on May 02, 2012, 11:55:16 PM As discussed, they are almost certainly using a cheap source of old-gen 65nm FPGAs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66314.msg769355#msg769355 Assuming this topic is correct, does anyone happen to have a source of MTBF/MTTF/FIT data for those chips? It's rough trying to factor cost of replacement into operating costs when you have zero data on how often they'll need replaced :P Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: rjk on May 02, 2012, 11:59:48 PM As discussed, they are almost certainly using a cheap source of old-gen 65nm FPGAs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66314.msg769355#msg769355 Assuming this topic is correct, does anyone happen to have a source of MTBF/MTTF/FIT data for those chips? It's rough trying to factor cost of replacement into operating costs when you have zero data on how often they'll need replaced :P Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: abeaulieu on May 03, 2012, 12:58:24 AM As discussed, they are almost certainly using a cheap source of old-gen 65nm FPGAs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66314.msg769355#msg769355 Assuming this topic is correct, does anyone happen to have a source of MTBF/MTTF/FIT data for those chips? It's rough trying to factor cost of replacement into operating costs when you have zero data on how often they'll need replaced :P Time-to-failure data on these chips would be quite difficult considering that bitcoin mining is typically an around-the-clock activity. I don't know how you would simulate this wear on the chips other than just running them and waiting until one fails, which hopefully won't be soon... Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: terrytibbs on May 06, 2012, 12:27:29 PM https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79825.0
Title: Re: Can anyone tell me what chip is used in BFL single? Post by: eldentyrell on May 07, 2012, 03:15:54 AM I'll definitely pay up if/when he posts an IDCODE readout from the JTAG2 chain; right now all we know is that the board isn't hooked up properly (which might be due to BFL choosing a funky pinout). The IDCODE readout has been found and the bounty has been paid: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79825.msg886013#msg886013 |