If you're selling/testing intel chips why are you posting pictures of the Xilinx boards and listing our hashrates? How can you compare what the hashrates are if you don't even know what our hashrates are? Or maybe you moved over to intel once you realized you wouldn't be able to get the BCU1525?

You can purchase units for pre-order now at $3600/unit at http://squirrelsresearch.com/bcu-1525/ -- This is the only site you should purchase from if you want to be sure you're going to receive your order. We already have the order placed with Xilinx and we're in regular contact / meetings with them to get the boards built and shipped.

These were units that a refund was requested for due to delays in acquiring the components needed for production of the boards.

Sales are open now over at http://squirrelsresearch.com/bcu-1525/

https://epsnews.com/2018/05/23/electronic-component-shortages/
https://www.industryweek.com/leadership/staying-ahead-electronics-component-shortage

It's not limited to this FPGA board. There is a worldwide component shortage. The components that are required are the same components that would be used in a bluetooth speaker for instance.

I think a lot of what you're saying is short-sighted. For instance, you've completely ignored tensority. You're making assumptions that FPGA are unable to compete with ASICs. These FPGA would have greater performance than most ASICs. This increases costs and prevents private ASICs as private asics would be less profitable than the FPGA (this was all covered a couple pages back).

SIA, That's the same group that released a big PR saying how wonderful ASICs would be for their coin -- and then -- wanted to fork once bitmain beat them to the punch on shipping? The same group that's been releasing PR about how PoW is doomed? Sorry if I don't put much stock in what they have to say. Ever since bitmain shipped before them they've had a very defeatist attitude in all publications.

If you think that buying a FPGA is a bad investment, that's fine... Just make sure not to completely distort or ignore the truth (like you did by saying "Fpga's face supply chain issues due to the fact that they are not a widespread tech in the hands of millions of people.").

They weren't / aren't being assembled in china to my knowledge. Also, to my knowledge, none of the component manufacturers are manufacturing in china.

Right now there is a worldwide shortage of components. From what I've gathered it's because of a global increase in production of various electronics. However, the component manufacturers did not / have not ramp production to meet supply requirements for the increase. It's because last time this happened it was followed by a recession and the component manufacturers were left with a bunch of stock they couldn't sell. This time around they didn't ramp production out of fear the ramp would be followed by a recession.

So far everything you said is factually twisted and incorrect. Like I said, FUD.

If you think the boards will lose their value then don't buy them. I definitely remember you from discord. FUD.

So if you reviewed the documentation you would know that the chip can still load unencrypted bitstreams (assuming you use the correct options).

Once the key is loaded, yes, the key cannot be changed.

The ram key is wiped when the board loses power. The board doesn't have a battery.

The key doesn't prevent unencrypted designs from running. Keep in mind, if we didn't do this it would also open an attack vector where a developer could maliciously burn the efuse preventing any designs from operating but their own.

I'm pretty sure you were already told this on discord?

As far as I'm aware none of the components that are being purchased were produced in china or made by Chinese company.

I just processed the paypal refunds -- So far we're looking at about 800 boards that we'll reopen sales on later in the month. (only about 150 of those were refund requests, the others were someone who never paid) If you ordered from fpga.land and would like to request a refund you can send an email to sales@fpga.land requesting it. We'll process them ASAP. If you didn't get a chance to purchase a board you will again be able to. You can register on the website at https://fpga.land/ and we'll send out a mass email when sales reopen. We're waiting for Xilinx to give us firm delivery timelines and we will update everyone when we know more.

SQRL already sent out an email. I believe the email was a little premature. I'm waiting on the outcome of meetings that are happening over the next few days. There will be more information to convey so that customers can get a complete picture of what's going on allowing them to make the best decision possible. Expect an email to all fpga.land customers at the end of the week or over the weekend.

In addition to the refund units we still have one large mine who ordered 665 boards and never paid for them. If you didn't get a chance to purchase in the first round there will be a large number of units available. I'll set the maximum order qty at 4 to give everyone a chance to purchase enough for chaining.

In other news, we're still hard at work on bitstreams. We've had some trouble with the lyra2z but we're slowly moving forward. We received some positive results this week indicating it may be possible to operate the engine as fast as 350mhz without any overclock. This would work out to a hashrate around 35Mh/s on lyra2z (8,8,8 -- not zcoin). We've also begun work on the PHI2 engine. Based on our lyra2z work it appears we should be able to achieve hashrates in the 100-150MH/s range.


1) We should have more information soon; it's still unclear at this point.
2) I discussed this briefly with David. We could fulfill all the small orders (1-8 units) and then some. We were also discussing a lottery. It's a moot point until we know if we will receive partial fulfillment.
3) If you ordered from fpga.land you can send an email to sales@fpga.land to request a refund if you wish.
4) All orders are in USD. If you request a crypto refund you will be sent crypto at USD conversion rate at the time of the refund. (Yes)

We have a number of refund requests we're processing. We'll be reselling those orders later in the month.

When I talked about the next batch I always said 2019. It's not clear at all what the actual time frames would be. There's also the bittware board which is sometime in 2018 but as of present it's not clear if we're going to be selling that board. I'm still waiting on meetings with Bittware.

The next batch will not be the same board.

..

I'm still pushing Xilinx for an August delivery date even if it's just a partial delivery.

We offered worldwide delivery with our batch. If you missed out you'll need to wait for the next batch.

The only people receiving BCU-1525 are Allmine/Squirrels. Mineority is getting their boards from us. I don't know where these other shops are getting their boards. At least one of them (those EU sellers/resellers) placed orders with us but never paid for them.

One of our engineers is testing on PCI-E 2.0, but we have no idea how it will behave in mass deployment or with variations of motherboards.

What are the hardware requirements for FPGA mining?

Currently there are no known specific hardware requirements for FPGA mining beyond basic requirements for GPUs. That is, a basic CPU, minimal ram, minimal disk, and x1 PCI-E 3.0 connectivity. There may be other hardware needs in the future for specific bitstreams. Some developers may opt to use the PCI-E bandwidth to communicate between cards or offload some processing from the FPGA to the CPU. In these instances, those developers will make known these hardware requirements. You may opt to upgrade or change your infrastructure then to support those bitstreams. The FPGA present a new way of doing things and there are countless possibilities for how various resources could be used in mining. Because this is an open but new development environment it will take some time for things to mature and the most efficient way of doing things to become evident.

What operating systems are supported for FPGA operations?

At launch we are planning only Linux support. When you're mining, even in windows, all that's really necessary is for you to be able to edit a file and run a command line interface application. We do not see using linux as a blocking point for the operation for miners. Detailed setup and installation instructions will be provided. We're also planning integration into some mining-specific linux distributions which will allow easy web interface management. However, even without the web management it should not be difficult for someone who's operated a GPU miner or ASIC miner to also operate a FPGA miner.

Can the FPGA multi-mine?

Yes! The FPGA can use resources however is needed for the developer to achieve their goal. It would be possible to mine several different algorithms at the same time on these devices. There are situations where some resources are more optimally used for one thing than another. Using the FPGA it's possible to mix and match algorithms and designs to achieve the best mix of resource utilization for profitability. An example of this, CN7 has a better hashrate using blockram. It would be possible to use CN7 on blockram, Lyra2z on the ultraram and using the rest of the logic space for a small tribus or other logic algo mix. Going forward with future generations of devices as they become larger I'd expect even greater variation of mining. It's becoming clear that the most profitable bitstreams will be multi-algo bitstreams.

What is "the shell" and why do I need it?

"The Shell" fundamentally is a wrapper around any mining bitstream that will run on your FPGA. The wrapper provides a common set of communication and programming functionality to allow anyone's bitstream or design to operate on your FPGA without re-programming the FPGA using the USB cable. We're able to provide this because we've burned an encryption key onto every FPGA shipped. This encryption key is what enables the creation of our secure shell environment. Some examples of functionality that the shell provides are:

    Hardware Management (Temperature, Power (Voltage/Amperage), Clock sources, PCI-E, Programming / Reprogramming)
    Bitstream Management (Bitstream distribution, developer fee collection)
    Mining Software (Bitstream management, Algo management, common communications platform for all bitstreams)

For Developers:

It allows developers an easier time to get started without needing to build their own software, communications, or worry about secure their development fee. They can focus solely on producing the best possible bitstream designs for maximum profitability. Due to the secure nature of the bitstreams it will enable developers who previously may have not released their designs, to release their designs, as they won't fear people attempting to cut out the developer fee and diminish their work.

For Miners:

Miners will get a wider selection of bitstreams, an easier and faster way to switch between them (over pci-e instead of USB), and easier management of their miners with our online config builder and management system. As of now, if you want to switch from one bitstream to another it would take possibly hours of reprogramming depending on the number of FPGA you have. Using our shell it will take seconds to switch bitstreams and starting mining a new one. This creates a better environment for profit switching and increased gains.

In addition, the shell and software provide user side control of clocking and overclocking. The user can define their own parameters for what they find to be desirable for voltage, clock, temperature, etc. Or, if desired, tell the software to overclock to the maximum of the safety limits.

Are you even one of the orders?

There are only a handful of orders from the EU. Of those orders, a good percentage are companies with VAT IDs that didn't pay any vat at all to begin with. It seems like the only people who are in an uproar over this are people who aren't customers. I think the number of people who were vat paying EU orders that also had mineority hosting were 2. 3 pages of posts here and endless chatter on discord..... over... 2 orders...