FPGA Devices

[atomicswan27]

Tell me what you know about FPGA devices. The best ones out there produce about 850 mh/s but they cost close to $1000. What are your thoughts on them. Check out the stats about FPGA on the bottom of this page:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Would you use them? Why? Are they worth it?
Any feedback would be nice

[cwerdna]

Generally FPGA = generally significantly lower power consumption than high end/OCd GPU per MHash

Probably little resale value in FPGA compared to GPU - you can always sell an old GPU to gamers. Only miners/specialists interested in fpga.

Do your research on fpga - its a growing area and at least one apparently promising supplier seems as a minimum to be contentious at least.

[Unacceptable]

Uh,all you got to do is read,I'll get you started:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=76.0

 

[Nancarrow]

Tell me what you know about FPGA devices. The best ones out there produce about 850 mh/s but they cost close to $1000. What are your thoughts on them. Check out the stats about FPGA on the bottom of this page:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Would you use them? Why? Are they worth it?
Any feedback would be nice
-Sasha

As others have said, they have a very high startup cost compared to GPUs, and little to no resale value, unlike GPUs. However their power requirements are *very* low compared to GPUs. This makes them a good idea for people who are confident that Bitcoins are going to hang around for quite a while.
o.
The scuttlebutt is basically that the mining community is gradually switching from GPUs to FPGAs, and it may not be a good idea to start building any new rigs with GPUs. Having said that, I've got too many GPUs and am waiting for another rig to put them on. I'm sticking with GPUs to the bitter end, but I may well be succumbing to the 'sunk costs' fallacy. Time will tell.

ETA: just realised you posted the other noob mining thread I responded to. To tie back into that: if you're going to build GPU mining rigs, BAMT is great. If you're going to build FPGA rigs, BAMT currently has nothing to offer on that score AFAIK. Not sure if the author's looking into it or not.

[hakock]

I use linuxcoin from a stick and bitminter to mine with GPU and shortly with a BitForce Single.
All running very well.
I just ordered a Mini Rig from BFLabs, too.
I think it's FPGA is the only way to make mining worth it. At least if you have to pay for electricity...

[LazyOtto]

Tell me what you know about FPGA devices. The best ones out there produce about 850 mh/s but they cost close to $1000. What are your thoughts on them. Check out the stats about FPGA on the bottom of this page:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Would you use them? Why? Are they worth it?
Any feedback would be nice
-Sasha

Plenty of info available at this very site.

"The best ones out there"

Depends on what you call "best". Seems to me the best ones out there cost over $15,000 USD.

Basically,
- Go with GPUs if you don't care about cost of electricity, heat, cubic meters or noise.

- Go with FPGAs if you want something which might still be able to mine at better than what the electricity costs over the long haul. Oh, and also to reduce those other three issues. (Solar powered is even possible if you want to really get operating cost stingy.)

FPGA caveat: Not yet a mature market / set of suppliers. (Flip side of this is that unit costs might increase after all the design, components procurement and manufacturing issues get shaken out.)

[LazyOtto]

I can't post there yet so I'll post here.
The topic is: "864 mh/s firmware release - Butterfly Labs"

This is somewhat concerning:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80497.msg893196#msg893196
"This happens if during the firmware upload something goes wrong ( power failure, device disconnect, etc).
Once this happens, the unit must be re-flashed."

There was no substantial follow-up to this.
Does it mean that:
1) Just "re-flash" again with the software locally,
or
2) Unit must be sent back to Butterfly for a 'factory re-flash'?