IMO the upper limit for 6s150 -3 is around 200MH/s w/o overclocking. ArtForz was claiming ~193MH/s with his design; closest I've gotten is ~156MH/s. And getting that to build through ISE was quite a challenge. If you can reach 250M/s in -2, you are probably one of the top 10 FPGA designers in the world and should be working for the finance sector or govt/military instead of wasting time on bitcoin.  -rph yeah, I think so. |
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through hole capacitors .....  |
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Hi guys. What's up with this development? Nothing has happened in a few weeks, is it dead? ngzhang: Your miner board is very interesting! Do you have any real-world performance data? Is the board stable? What's the current consumption on the FPGAs? I'm looking forward to the schematics and other files on that board.  These days, I fixed some bugs on the hardware and relayout the PCB. Another 10 boards are under manufacturing. Coming out soon. On the firmware side: With a single FPGA running LX150_makomk_Test's code, a speed of 120MH/s perFPGA has been reached. looks very stable. We only use a -2 device. with ourselves' UART communication mining code, a test version could mining @ 50MH/s and not very stable, maybe there are some P&R problems. Because lack of time, we just checked the function, it works. Now we are testing the the FPGA mining chain, this part is still under coding. The mining core is the most important part of this project, so after finish the mining chain architecture, we will put 100% efforts on this core. Correct makomk's core use SLR16s to save resources, but this cause a terrible P&R difficulty. But if don't use the SLR_16s, there are not enough registers. Solve this conflict will lead a single FPGA to 250MH/s at least. |
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My version is still under development...
Wow. 184 MH/s. Awesome. Do you have a thread about this, these pictures trigger many questions in my head: do you sell this, etc..  Wait, what? Isn't that a single FPGA? Or is that just what you got for those lucky 5 minutes? If so, that's a little misleading, no? It's a LUCKY 5min, haha. 120MH/s average, a single FPGA. But please look carefully, on the right of the pic are statistics of past servel blocks, approx. 120MH/s. Instead of using a platform cable, a simple USB interface is implemented in this design. And a mining chain(numbers of FPGA connect in a daisy chain and sharing a single USB connection) will coming soon. |
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usually, high speed signal are organized in differential pairs, and these pair groups are in (approx.) same length. So "squiggly traces" is a method to guarantee the length.
You can find them in most high speed designs, maybe on your motherboard or GPU cards.
I take it each of those pairs of lines is connected to an associated pair of differential pins on one of the FPGAs then? That sounds like it could make the boards rather more versatile. Certainly. The DIMM has 22 pairs on each FPGA. (44 total) And another 10 pairs each FPGA on the top.(20 total, using a tyco connector). also 8LEDs and 8 DIP switchs. |
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What's up with those squiggly traces, ngzhang? Never seen that before
usually, high speed signal are organized in differential pairs, and these pair groups are in (approx.) same length. So "squiggly traces" is a method to guarantee the length. You can find them in most high speed designs, maybe on your motherboard or GPU cards. |
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hi, znort987. Are you interested in FPGA mining systems? If so, at least how much MH/s pre $ will let you determine to buy them?
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Hi ngzhang
I would even prefere information about your current " buggy" version over waiting for some weeks.
As you will be aware we in this thread are highly in need for some feedback and second views onto the hardware side.
So i would appreciate it if you could give us some more details.
Here is the final structure chart.  You know there are competitors. So the detail schematics WILL release a few weeks later. |
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Nice to see you making such huge progress ngzhang.
Seems your outrunning us in development.
How do you intend to go on with this board ?
Will you share some details or is it not to be published or inbound to our project ?
There are full of bugs on this board. now. But it could work and mining @ 100MHs/each FPGA based on Mokamk's code. I'm thinking over is or isn't to keep the DIMM golden finger. It really make a high cost on PCB manufacture(50%+ cost). And some other electrical modifications are needed. All these things will be done in 2 weeks, and we will see the 2nd generation. On the other side, our mining code on it is still under development, maybe release in 2 weeks. It will be like to reach a higher performance. After these work , BEFORE commercial release of this board, all schematic of this board and mining code of standard performance will post on this forum. |
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 Too tired these days, go to sleep after this pic. |
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Well, there is always piracy  Damn you xilinx, I would buy it if it were affordable but their prices are just plain ridiculous. But to be honest this makes me loose interest in their products, and the more I read about the technology involved I think it would be best if bitcoin miners were developed with the help of the underdog competition. I have to research this further but there seems to be alot of designs which utilize parallel processing new to the market which also provide foss toolchains. I apologize, but why not just search the internet, find a full license , download and use it? I'm sorry, ngzhang, but there are valid objections to this. While I do not have strong objections against piracy, I believe that supporting a more open supplier will do good in general, especially in the long run. Also, imagine Torvalds and Stallman had thought in this way. I know this idealistic thinking might not be easily applicable in this case, but I just had to add my opinion here. Maybe there are some different comprehension there, haha. Usually, the FAEs are very happy to give you there software license, because either XILINX or Altera or some others are semiconductor corps. Their profit based on chips selling. They also sell softwares in high cost just because there are lots of technical assistance cost. When I attend a XILINX conference for New Products, they present ISE license as a gift, I'm just a PH.d student. I have a friend working for Altera as a FAE, when I tell him I'm thinking over to use XILINX or Altera FPGAs for bitcoin mining platform, a Quartus II with license in a DVD just ship to me for free. They really don't care about this. My opinion is, DO NOT let the best 2 of FPGA venders out just because the lack of development software license. Other products are far behind. Just find a FAE, email him, make friends with him, and let him give you a license for free. If you have some contact with college, it will even easier. Another way is ask the sells, in my country, sells also can solve your software license problems, XILINX give them a Volume License for all there costumers. These are all legal ways to get a full license. |
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Well, there is always piracy Damn you xilinx, I would buy it if it were affordable but their prices are just plain ridiculous. But to be honest this makes me loose interest in their products, and the more I read about the technology involved I think it would be best if bitcoin miners were developed with the help of the underdog competition. I have to research this further but there seems to be alot of designs which utilize parallel processing new to the market which also provide foss toolchains. I apologize, but why not just search the internet, find a full license , download and use it? |
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That's surprising actually. PC motherboards and graphics cards have similar power supply requirements, and they're definitely available for below $200...
I'm sorry but they manufacture motherboards and other stuffs in millions quantity. If we can build our mining boards in this quantity, we even can build them with ASIC, which 10 times cheaper than fpga, and 10 times faster than fpga, and the power consuming is 10 times lower than fpga, all these features are provided on a single board. |
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Do you know if the code will run/fit on a Spartan XC2S30? I have a ProxMark3 (RFID hacking tool) that I've been playing with the FPGA on, wondering if its capable of mining.. I can deal with the ARM code to interface between the FPGA and USB.
I'm very sad to say, it is impossible... the LX150 we used has approx. 150,000 logic-cells, but the XC2S30 has less than 1,000 of them. in addition, the logic-cells in spartan6 is far enhanced than spartan2. |
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I was just wondering ... why does a 6.8W FPGA need a fan?
A cheap 40mm fan is like 0.07Amps so about 0.8Watts - an increase is power of about 12% - 12% is a lot.
My 6950's I set to not run the fan when they are under 60degress.
At 350Mh/s they stay over 60degress, but a drop to something like 250-300Mh/s and they will stay under the 60degrees and not even need the fans on.
... and we are talking over 100Watts (350Mh/s is about 180Watts)
Just wondering about the decision to bother to put a fan on it all ...
It is because the FG484 chip is about 28mmx28mm, plastic packaging. Only a 28X28mm heatsink can add to the chip. So a small fan is needed. |
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PL2303HXD USB2UART chip is a good choice for send data in and out the FPGAs. The RS232 like interface can handle voltage level from 1.8V to 3.3V. the baud rate is form 75bps to 15Mbps. The BOM costs are less than 1$.
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It does make things easier with a UART port, maybe with a USB to TTL converter instead of a MAX232, however we'd now need to add an SPI flash to load the bitstream initially. I was thinking more of a custom Jtag to USB solution using FTDI chips for eg.
Add one SPI flash may become a good alter on your next board, I think. An WINBOND W25Q64CV chip is only about 1$. So the mining board will not need to be re-config every time on the power up. Best wishes EDIT: Why not start another thread in " Development & Technical Discussion". I apologized about disturbing your selling thread. |
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Well can you hook us up with an insider price? Maybe you could help us design an on-board alternative? Man I love the global connections of bitcoin Remember, GPU mining may or may not be profitable 2 months from now. An FPGA miner should be profitable for years to come The on board jtag cable's SCH is public. Xilinx open source of it in SP605 Development Board follow this link: http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/boards_and_kits/xtp067_sp605_schematics.pdfon page 32. But what I want to say is: would you like to implement a more universe interface for the FPGA? For example, an UART port. This protocol is very easy to achieve in FPGA logic, and easy to use. It's only needs a MAX232 chip for voltage level translator. Have A Nice Day |
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it seems all xilinx platform cables I can find on ebay.de (german site) are shipped from hongkong... maybe you could even get one for me and include it to save a little on shipping? I'd have to shell out $57 incl. shipping to get one myself. Here's where we stand... if you buy a Platform cable on eBay, it will take 2 weeks to ship to you. We could buy it for you, but then we just have to ship it twice and there's no cost/time savings. We are working on a design now to eliminate the Platform cable. If that ever comes to fruition, it will lower the board cost quite a bit. Also, with future bulk orders, price will go down more. So, we need to cover our costs now. We want to get some boards out in the community for evaluation. At the same time, we don't want to screw our first buyers by charging a ridiculous amount, then undercutting that price by $50 or so in a month's time. Here's the best solution I can come up with, molecular-- $440+shipping for the board. Buy your own Platform cable on eBay (it is a knockoff, but we use them- they work). If you ever decide to buy from us again, you get 10% off. This offer stands for our first 4 buyers. Essentially, you trade a high cost right now for a much better bargain in the future. What do you think? Here's a link to the absolute cheapest Platform cable- http://cgi.ebay.com/Xilinx-FPGA-CPLD-USB-download-Cable-JTAG-programmer-new-/250831239457?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a66b4f921#ht_2447wt_993OMG..... When I followed your link to eBay, then I do a search on it using key words:"Xilinx FPGA USB Cable". I found there more than half of them are designed and produced by me, at least they use my product pictures for advertisement... I sell more then 2000 pcs of this staff in China, on TAOBAO.com, and some for middle man. In the past year.... |
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