Alternate FPGA mining hardware

[Peek]

Hi,

I have 4x PCIe Pika Technologies ( http://www.pikatechnologies.com/english/View.asp?x=657 ) T1 / E1 (HMP) boards, which I noticed are fitted with Altera Cyclone II chips.

Having ONLY configured said boards for Asterisk installations, I can only but ponder if they can be utilized in some custom setup as FPGA miners ? Would this be possible or is it mandatory that FPGA development kits be used ?

If someone can please bump this query to the Custom Hardware threads, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[evilscoop]

cyclone iv gets about 80mh/s
most fpga's in bitcoins are using 4x spartan-6lx150 boards

see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9047.0
for more info on this sort of thing ...

worth a play with if you got em for free.....

[lightenup]

I have 4x PCIe Pika Technologies ( http://www.pikatechnologies.com/english/View.asp?x=657 ) T1 / E1 (HMP) boards, which I noticed are fitted with Altera Cyclone II chips.

Even if they put the largest Altera Cyclone2 device on this card (EP2C70) then you can at most expect about 25 to 50 MHashes/s
That is also only if you can directly configure/program and interface the FPGA device.

or is it mandatory that FPGA development kits be used ?

I'd advice to buy something cheap first and play around: e.g.,

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?No=502  (try to get the academic discount)

fpgaminer has some designs for this board:
https://github.com/fpgaminer/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner

and with some cooling you get about 100 to 110 MHashes/s out of it.

btw: FPGA mining might be not profitable anymore in a couple of months... but I am sure you already heard the story about ASICs

[Peek]

Got the cards only laying around, being brand new.

I currently have no idea how to go about to "directly programming/configuring and/or interface with the FPGA" taken into consideration it's mounted on a board of which the main intention is telephony.

As mentioned regarding ASIC miners, would it rather be best to save the cards (and time) for their original design ?

[hughperman]

I ordered one of these guys: http://www.xess.com/prods/prod055.php (Xula2) to try implement a few parallel hashing blocks. 384MHz max (or something like that) with 2 to 4 parallel blocks (I have no idea how many I can actually implement til I get it, but 2 to 4 would be good, more even better), at (pessimistic estimate) 100 cycles per hash (I've seen designs for 63 cycles per hash) would only give me 7 to 14MH/s, at an estimate of less than 10W TDP. Not ASIC (or profitable) level but fun still!

[evilscoop]

thats dinky and looks fun...


See if you can get http://www.tricone-mining.com/ to run on it, might push the mh/s up a bit...

[lightenup]

it's mounted on a board of which the main intention is telephony.

Deployed FPGA devices (aka no kits intended for development) usually get their configuration via bitstream from a flash device.
Also, usually, those flash devices can be somehow updated by the user; but how this upgrade process is realized is probably not published by the vendor and it could require a lot of effort finding just that out.
Another issue is to get work to the FPGA device and get results out.. The existing open source fpga miners for Altera devices need JTAG access to the FPGA device which will probably be not available on your card. 
But at least on Cyclone II devices you don't have to worry about encrypted bitstreams.. so there are at least some good news

As mentioned regarding ASIC miners, would it rather be best to save the cards (and time) for their original design ?

Save the cards and your time. If the cards use a EP2C70 Cyclone-II *and* you have lots of free time: it's as good as any target/goal to start with FPGAs... if you really get the card bitcoin mining you certainly have acquired a good basis in digital design

[hughperman]

thats dinky and looks fun...


See if you can get http://www.tricone-mining.com/ to run on it, might push the mh/s up a bit...

It should arrive by next week I'll give it a go!

[JoaoG]

I guess it's too late to invest in FPGA hardware.

[balcksilver]

Yeah agree. FPGA is kinda outdated. =p

[evilscoop]

I dont...
Im still buying fpga's atm...and hoping that more will come when asic owners dump theirs

its similar to gpu miners stopping....some wont...many are/have
but for me, fpga's are still viable, @~840mh/s per board (ztex 1.15y) there still fun to play with as a hobby operation.
That said, im looking at driving the cluster from raspberry pi atm, rather than a laptop

[Peek]

Sooo, for someone with no past digital design experience, it would be best to rather acquire a development kit for starters.

Thanks

[Hei_]

cyclone iv gets about 80mh/s
most fpga's in bitcoins are using 4x spartan-6lx150 boards

see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9047.0
for more info on this sort of thing ...

worth a play with if you got em for free.....

yep

[Slix313]

seems a bit expensive. its fpga setups worth the initial investment?

[Peek]

Which has me wonder .... 

Isn't there any ASIC development kits to start with ? (Or is it only the complete systems from Butterflylabs etc that's available)

[evilscoop]

more so than gpu....but asics will over power them (if they ship)

If your out to make a profit and roi, id say not worth it
If your doing this for kicks n giggles, sure its worth it

Cairnsmore1 is about 600 gbp + vat atm
modminerquad is 1065 usd
ztex 1.15y (if you can find one for sale) about 600 euro (second hand)


To answer the asic one, avalon I believe are releasing chips, so we'll see over next few months

dont forget, there are other coins to mine with fpga and convert to btc