how do fpga/asic work?

[xunknownx]

hi,

i work in IT as a system admin so i'm pretty technical but never encounter fpga or asic.  i'm new to mining and apparently these devices are pretty efficient when it comes to mining.  i emailed 3 different vendors but neither have replied back to me and its been several days.  i'm hoping i can get some questions answered in this newbie forum. 

so before i slap a few thousand dollars down on an asic board, i need to understand how it works and if i would get my money back.  so from researching, i understand that i plug in a power supply to the board and from the board, i plug in a usb cable to my lower power laptop.  launch my mining software (i use guiminer on windows 7) and i can just leave my laptop on 24/7 to let it mine at around 20-60 G/ hash.  around 100x faster than my current GPU (AMD 6870 @ 270 mhash/s)

and if i do decide to get a few of these, does that mean i can solo mine without any issues?

[PandaMiner]

Try reading threads that talk about the "BFL" (butterfly labs) equipment and stuff. Also, try youtube. I learned how FPGAs and ASICs work in theory.

As far as making your money back, it also depends on other variables, such as: how many other ASICs are going to start mining and push up the network rate?, the blocks are going to go from 50 coins to 25 coins (in december 2012)... plus others I imagine.

I am thinking of buying one of BFL's "Jalepeño" ASIC and seeing how that goes. They are stackable so I can expand later if I deem it profitable.

[max in montreal]

Right now the around 20-60 G/ hash is great and will bring in lots of money. The problem is once you get the unit, so will everyone else, and the difficulty will sky rocket, so the numbers will deffinatly not be as good as they seem now...

[xunknownx]

i understand difficulty rate will go up and i've read up on alot of the BFL threads.  thats why finding an ASIC board that will ship to me sooner than later is very important.  i'm thinking of going with the bASIC board since that seems to be the one shipping first if i were to order now.  i think theres a long waitlist for the BFL one. 

aside from that, am i correct as to how a ASIC board works?  just connect power and usb and leave it on 24/7?

[max in montreal]

there are some settings that need to be put in software wise, but yes its that simple.

no one is delivering them just yet, they all have huge waiting lists. good luck!

Max

[FrogBBQ]

I think that a main difference between FPGA and ASIC is their price point. To me, and I may be wrong obviously, FPGA appears to be a transitional equipment that does more or less the same MH/s/$ than GPU rigs with the single main advantage of using way, I mean way less energy (~800MH/s @ 80W) than graphics cards. However, ASIC will simply blow away whatever is out there where for ~$1.0-2.0K anybody will get a 30-60GH/s rig using a fraction of the electricity an equivalent GPU rig would require.

The immediate consequence being that it will increase the difficulty level to 10, 20, 30 million and counting. It is not that it will make the ASIC pointless since it will become the only way to mine. The main point is that GPU and FPGA mining will have no much reason to exist any more. Even an amortize equipment (GPU rig that is) will not even be able to cover the electricity bill. By the end of 2013, at the latest, there will be no more GPU miner. As of FPGA miner they will have upgraded to ASIC.

In effect, the difficulty level will have set itself to the new normal since 2016 blocks (at half the bitcoin number) will still be mined every 2 weeks. Will they be a small adjustment window where some could profit a bit more than others, sure but this will be marginal in my opinion.

One important issue to consider is will more people join the mining effort from the current ~30,000 or will they be a mining fatigue. As always, time will tell.


 

[PandaMiner]

Another difference is that FPGA (field programmable [logic] gate arrays) can be retooled to do something else (by professionals) and hold their worth in some respect.  ASICs, (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) on the other hand, are hard programmed to do one thing, and do it well.  But if the "bubble bursts" on the whole bitcoin mining phenomena, then they are worthless.

If sh*t hits the fan, ASICs are worthless, where as FPGAs are not so worthless.

So, we are speculating that "mining" bitcoins will not go belly-up anyways, so why not ASIC.

Look what I found on google:
http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-asic-and-fpga/

[FrogBBQ]

This is very true, an ASIC rig, down the line, will have very little resale value bitcoin or no bitcoin. But by then it should have been amortized many times over.