Why aren’t all cars on the road lambos?

PCIe 3.0 Chips are significantly more expensive, this is the right place on the cost/value curve today. But it is being worked on.

I have to admit jumping back to this thread after spending so much time in the discord is very interesting, since most of these topics have been covered many times there as well as more granular insight into all the projects going on.

As to legitimacy of my self/company, I’ve done about all I think I can do there at this point. Regarding the Acorn, the legitimacy of that specific project  is set to come soon, but I will remind you we aren’t taking anyone’s money right now either.

If I wanted to scam people I probably would be more anxious to start taking money instead of missing a few of my ambitious deadlines while striving to make sure everything was done the right way.

Production planning has been a major endevour. Interest is higher than we initially thought, and securing all those individual components up front so we can be confident on timelines  is a tremendous effort. Little things happen -  a oscillator chip you were promised in volume for July delivery gets updated as backordered till October and you have to find an Alt, etc. We have solved most of those problems now.

Website going up next week, pre-orders a few days after to avoid the “no time to read” problem. Our goal is to meet demand within Q3.

I don’t think I’ve dodged any questions, but people sure do like to make up their own answers. That’s why I’ve been careful to not release a bunch of partial information that gets misconstrued. Let me hit the big ones though.

1. Lift is algorithm specific (some coins have a 512bit state and some have a 256bit state). Each Acorn can provide a MAX of around 30MH of lift to algorithms with a 512bit state, and 60MH for algorithms with a 256 bit state. That is irrespective of the number of GPUs. Power consumption of Acorn at peak is 15W. The limit is PCIe bandwidth, which for this generation of Acorn is PCIe 2.0 x4 = 20Gbps nominal, which yields an effective rate of 16Gbps after accounting for overhead. That math will then get you to the 33MH @ 512bit state, less 10% for safety and underpromising.

2. The number of GPUs to Acorn is extremely GPU and algorithm dependent. X16R  is good with 1:1, or even 1:2 on high end cards if your GPU is in x8. ETH is typically more GPUs per Acorn.

3. The important thing is your PCIe bandwidth has to add up. You can’t use an Acorn in an M.2 slot @ 20Gbps to effectively accelerate one GPU in a PCIe 1.0 riser at x1 (2.5Gbps).


Edit: I also want to clarify that while Tom (@senseless) and I have collaborated on the 1525 and are generally doing some work together regarding FPGAs, he and AllMine have no involvement in the Acorn project, which is entirely a SQRL (Squirrels Research Labs) project. I’ve noticed some confusion around that.

I tore the actual Z9 chip down. Definitely not an FPGA.

Keccak specifically @ 17 is about 350W

That is not a legitimate site..

FPGAs are not GPUs.At all. They are completely different.  Every board design requires essentially its own miner to be specially created for it. You basically need to get one of the ones the community is focused around or have the resources to develop your own. Every miner will run at some unique clock speed and power envelope. The FPGA does not have a native clock speed.

With that said, specs are usually on the AC & DC Switching Characteristics datasheets. Generally useful comparison points are the number of LUTs, or sometimes easier the number of Logic Elements, amount of Block Ram, amount of Distributed Ram, amount of Ultraram (keep in mind all memory sizes are usually specified in bits, not bytes, so divide by 8 to get numbers you’re used to), speed rating, temperature rating, family (Kintex vs Virtex), process (45nm, 28nm, 16nm - usually results in higher maximum clock speed or lower power). What hardblocks(PCIe, memory controllers, DSPs) are included, maximum power capacity. Mounting size. 

In short it is very complicated and the selection of a specific chip for a new board or project is a whole project in and of itself.

Having torn down a Z9 Mini Chip. No

Wow lots of activity over here - sorry for not being more attentive to the forum post.

As some have mentioned, there is an extremely active (> 2500 members?) discord focused on FPGAs and a ton of information and updates have been flowing there. Let me try to address the bullet points.

1. Acorn development is deep underway, specifically the production work. A lot of you want these, and I want to make sure you can have them. The good news is that any delay in opening pre-orders hasn’t delayed actual product production. That means at best a shorter wait (and hopefully better crypto market prices) once they do open.

2. I’m not in the business of trying to sell things or push things on people. We’re building things we think are going to be very useful and helpful in the community, and getting all of the information out there before taking anyone’s money is much more important to me than tossing out half-baked hashrates or collecting FOMO money. This information is being gathered now, and includes performance stats tested against a number of host configurations, as well as most GPUs that are out there, across quite a few coins. It also includes full supply chain sourcing so we can have concrete slip-free production dates and batch sizes. As you can imagine this is a lot of work, but we’re getting close and moving as fast as we can!

3. Others have detailed the BCU-1525 project, but the logistics and support effort involved to make sure these are a success for everyone have been pretty extreme. This has had an effect of delaying information (but not production!) for Acorn. We will keep working to get everyone the details they crave.

4. My company (Squirrels, and our hardware/crypto division Squirrels Research) is working closely with a number of great people in the community to make sure all this hardware is as beneficial and well supported as possible. We stand behind everything we’re involved in, and that means working with great people to ensure all that long term support is there. Senseless/AllMine have been working very hard alongside us on the 1525 project, and are bringing a great shell + bitstreams and open development code to the community. We’ve also teamed up with OhGodAGirl (Kristy) and Mineority to help make sure all of these FPGAs are available to those that may have export restrictions or expensive power or are otherwise unable to host themselves. In addition we are sponsoring numerous developers in the community through grants and development hardware/software access to ensure there will eventually be GPU level miner and algorithm support, enabling choice in the community.

5. The BCU-1525 was limited by complete supply chain constraints, as I said early on. We are even right now working extremely hard to meet the targets we have in place.  Even with market pressure those constraints are unlikely to be relieved until late Fall. I would be extremely skeptical of anyone who suggests that they will be bringing a board to market comparable with the 1525 anytime soon, and if they do I would expect significantly lower production volumes. For reference, even building the Acorn accelerator involves massive world-wide efforts to source parts and alternatives that are in some cases fully committed until next June in factory batches.

Everything is progressing, a lot of the chatter moved to the discord so it has been pretty quiet here!

If you’re still using 28nm, should be able to have the biggest...

Ah yes - the exit strategy.

Not that anyone has told me. Mineority would certainly be able to do that if they wanted.

Redundant, but following up to what Tom has said.

All sales through sales@squirrelsresearch.com inquiries, fpga.land payment portal web purchases, and Mineority.io are being coordinated together. All current and future FPGA sales through all channels are eligible to be hosted within Mineority, and we will be in contact today on how to add hosting instead of shipping for existing orders  - please do NOT email us to cancel an order you already placed to move it to Mineority hosting, this is a huge drain on our resources and unnecessary.

If you want to pay in fiat instead of crypto for a Mineority card and have your card hosted through Mineority, please contact sales@squirrelsresearch.com to do this directly. We are working to make this easier in the near future.

Thanks!
David

I can’t confirm the exact amount of cards Mineority has available currently, but they did reserve stock early to go through their system and support even more FPGA miners who can’t host the cards themselves. We’ve had some back and forth on when and where stock went to make sure it went to as many people as possible. When sales initially opened they went so quick we opened some of the reserved stock back up to give more people a chance. Now even more people have access through Mineority.

Mineority stock plus direct fpga.land purchases is the full batch - not additional to.

The issue is both of those boards are drastically weaker than the 1525. The $975 board is less than 25% of the logic on a -1 (slowest) speed chip, with no ultraram and built on 20nm instead of 16. That means that while it is 3x the cost the 1525 is more like 6x the performance. Similarly the Nexus Video Board is < 10% of performance on the algorithms it can handle (not many limited bram) and closer to 15% of the cost.

This coupled with only a few bitstreams and no developer focus generally means those boards are going to be a waste vs. the “standard” of the 1525

Having just spent an entire day with all of the Xilinx team for this - all I can say is beware of scams.

No one that I know of is planning to release the source for CN, what was released was the source for older algorithms as examples to help more developers build

~ 500MH by the looks of the algo, 7-8GH on 1525

Yes, sales have closed!

Email sales@squirrelsresearch.com (quickly) to be put on first waiting list for any cancellations.

Also good news guys - all BCU-1525 orders are coming with risers specifically designed and validated for us for these boards!

If you’re not using them with risers that’s fine, but if you are we’d prefer you have ones that won’t blow up

We’re working to offer great prices on board to board cables - more on that soon.

Actually lots of published miners and algorithms were released for developers over the last few days. They aren’t plug and play for non-technical users, but they exist.

FPGAs are not consumer hardware. “List” price on a chip is as much as 50x what a big buyer pays.