FPGA mining - lazy person wants a guide

[Schrankwand]

Hi everyone,


let me make it quick. I am thinking about building an FPGA rig. I am not completely stupid, able to build my own computer and so on.

I am thinking about building an FPGA rig, for fun. Just with one or two units at first. Maybe more later. This is more for me getting into this than being super profitable at first.

So, does anyone have an answer to:

What you need to start? The packages and variations confuse me.

How does a really good demo look like? Do you have a system set up that is paraded on the net where one can learn about every part necessary, from ground up? Maybe a video where someone assembles a rig from the start?

This is nerd heaven for me, so I would be totally grateful for someone pointing to one of these. I have taken my stabs at vendor sites (Enterpoint to Ztex), some blogs and youtube videos. But I don't yet get it. While I ordered an ASICs miner from BFL and am praying that they ship one day, the whole "Build your own electronics supercomputing rig" is kind of more fun to me... Nothing against lazy hashing, but, the whole "mining" feeling comes better with building rigs, I think

[minernb]

Hi everyone,


let me make it quick. I am thinking about building an FPGA rig. I am not completely stupid, able to build my own computer and so on.

I am thinking about building an FPGA rig, for fun. Just with one or two units at first. Maybe more later. This is more for me getting into this than being super profitable at first.

So, does anyone have an answer to:

What you need to start? The packages and variations confuse me.

How does a really good demo look like? Do you have a system set up that is paraded on the net where one can learn about every part necessary, from ground up? Maybe a video where someone assembles a rig from the start?

This is nerd heaven for me, so I would be totally grateful for someone pointing to one of these. I have taken my stabs at vendor sites (Enterpoint to Ztex), some blogs and youtube videos. But I don't yet get it. While I ordered an ASICs miner from BFL and am praying that they ship one day, the whole "Build your own electronics supercomputing rig" is kind of more fun to me... Nothing against lazy hashing, but, the whole "mining" feeling comes better with building rigs, I think

Hi,

What do you intend to do? Buy a ready-to-go FPGA miner? Or try using a development kit?

A just started using the second option, since I already have two boards from other hobbies, so I can learn a bit and understand how it works.

If you check https://github.com/fpgaminer  you will see there is an opensource fpga miner.
The easier way to go is buy one of the supported boards by this fpga miner (such as DE2-11) and load the compiled project. Easy.

Other way to go is buy a cheaper board that you know will works with the fpga miner, and make the required changes in the code.
I started using by DE1. It is showing something like 3.10 MH/s.

Hope this helps a bit.
Cheers.

[Schrankwand]

Thanks for answering!


To be honest, my problem isn't with software and programming, it would be with assembly.
So, let us say I buy a development board, load firmwares and miners. What is missing? How do I power it, how does the assembly work?
So, my questions, put in a better variant would be:


I have the dev board, how do I connect it to power?
I have the dev board, how do I connect it to the computer?
I have multiple boards, like ZTEX or Cairnsmore, how does that change the setup?
Basically, I think i am missing something. Like a few steps of how to building a rig actually works....

[Stephan_st]

In the "custom hardware" subforum there is quite a lot of useful info on this

[Schrankwand]

In the "custom hardware" subforum there is quite a lot of useful info on this

Well, some posts, some more hours, and I will able to post there.

Thanks a lot for the guidance, I have totally missed it!

[evilscoop]

You need a control machine, this could Evan be a raspberry pi, which actually runs the mining software and sends the work to the fpga's

Al you need past this is power and a usb hub really, and how ever many boards you want

see
http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/
http://enterpoint.co.uk/products/spartan-6-development-boards/cairnsmore-1/

[minernb]

Once you get a Dev Board, and the miner (like the one I mentioned above) to load in the board, you are all set.

The dev boards comes with usb and power adapter.
The software to program the board comes along in a CD on you can download the latest versions, that is not an issue.

If you are going for fun and to discover new things, even one DE1 is enough (although it can do only 3.10 MH/s). But you can learn things.

I was able to compile an optimized version, which runs at 12MH/s but all works are rejected, so I am no sure how much can this little boards give back.

[relisher]

Honestly, for the price of an FPGA miner you could get a good ASIC miner, which gets many more MHashes/s.
Look at this:
https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/5-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html

[minernb]

Honestly, for the price of an FPGA miner you could get a good ASIC miner, which gets many more MHashes/s.
Look at this:
https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/5-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html

At this time, I see such products as a "promise", which is always delayed for whatever reason. I read a few posts in this forum about people who bought products "in development" and are still waiting.

[Signus]

Hi everyone,


let me make it quick. I am thinking about building an FPGA rig. I am not completely stupid, able to build my own computer and so on.

I am thinking about building an FPGA rig, for fun. Just with one or two units at first. Maybe more later. This is more for me getting into this than being super profitable at first.

So, does anyone have an answer to:

What you need to start? The packages and variations confuse me.

How does a really good demo look like? Do you have a system set up that is paraded on the net where one can learn about every part necessary, from ground up? Maybe a video where someone assembles a rig from the start?

This is nerd heaven for me, so I would be totally grateful for someone pointing to one of these. I have taken my stabs at vendor sites (Enterpoint to Ztex), some blogs and youtube videos. But I don't yet get it. While I ordered an ASICs miner from BFL and am praying that they ship one day, the whole "Build your own electronics supercomputing rig" is kind of more fun to me... Nothing against lazy hashing, but, the whole "mining" feeling comes better with building rigs, I think

Do you want to buy a pre-built rig, or do you want to use an open source project to order parts and build your own?

And FYI, building your own computer is not a credible skill to build a FPGA, sorry. You need to develop skills in electronics. If you want to learn, there are plenty of open source projects. I suggest Icarus or its follower - Lancelot or just search for FPGA projects on GitHub.

If you want to jump right in and buy a unit or two, then that is something a majority of people here on these forums can explain to you. That is simply software configuration and the like.

I know that bitcoin is getting some crazy, but there is no easy jump in. If you want to mine, or even just learn, there's some amount of necessary investment.

[Schrankwand]

Thanks Signus,

I didn't mean to say I want to "design" a new form of FPGA miner.

The right way would be: I want to buy a board with chip and fans and stick some cables together

[knedle]

Short answer is: don't do that.

Long answer is: don't do that because it's more costly than mining on gpus and once everyone will get their asics, it will also be useless, if you want to make a miner yourself, you could buy some avalon asic chips, solder them, put the firmware onto the board (some kind of microcontroler for that), and it will cost you something around costs of fpga, but give you significantly higher hashrate, asic design will be also open sourced, so all you will need to do, is just copy what they put on the internet.

[Schrankwand]

Short answer is: don't do that.

Long answer is: don't do that because it's more costly than mining on gpus and once everyone will get their asics, it will also be useless, if you want to make a miner yourself, you could buy some avalon asic chips, solder them, put the firmware onto the board (some kind of microcontroler for that), and it will cost you something around costs of fpga, but give you significantly higher hashrate, asic design will be also open sourced, so all you will need to do, is just copy what they put on the internet.

I am doing that already.

I want to purchase 20 avalon chips and get them stuck on a board by burnin here in Germany.

However, I am trying to get into the group buy and am waiting to find someone selling me 2BTC.
Since I am a "total noob" in terms of trustworthiness, that has been harder than I thought, if i want to make it in time.

[knedle]

I know what you mean, every chip I'm buying with the group buy is paid with bitcoins that I mined, because it's easier than buying them from someone, however you can try buying bitcoins here: https://localbitcoins.com/

Since it's local, you can meet with someone, give him cash and get bitcoins for that.

[Schrankwand]

I know what you mean, every chip I'm buying with the group buy is paid with bitcoins that I mined, because it's easier than buying them from someone, however you can try buying bitcoins here: https://localbitcoins.com/

Since it's local, you can meet with someone, give him cash and get bitcoins for that.

I sent some offers today, at the highest gox price and let them open, no one wanted to meet with me... this needs to get more widespread, id have paid premium price tpday at 127€ per coin. Then the Gox crash came and it went down to to around 115 and i said "F* that"

[Signus]

Well burnin I believe is working on that service for when the DIY ASIC is formed, which is a open source, open community project. You might be waiting some time. Plus that is not FPGA, it's ASIC.

[Schrankwand]

Well burnin I believe is working on that service for when the DIY ASIC is formed, which is a open source, open community project. You might be waiting some time. Plus that is not FPGA, it's ASIC.

Yeah. I have figured that the most likely most intelligent route is to diversify my assets.

ASICs have the strongest computing power, but their delivery date is largely uncertain.
I have put my eyes on DIY Avalons and BFL. I bet they will ship, some day...

FPGAs are the smartest variation when it comes to the compromise between availability, computing power and electricity consumption.
Got my eyes on the new Lancelot.

And I got myself a 7970 and put it to litecoin mining, will probably get myself two further cards and build a second rig simply to mine litecoins.

So, i am definitely mining, I am definitely getting something out of it, however the whole return is a little smaller, since I am paying a little premium price for graphics and FPGA. Although the FPGA price is really fair.

[brandnewx]

So what actually prevent FPGA from working on LTC mining?

[Schrankwand]

So what actually prevent FPGA from working on LTC mining?

RAM requirements. I have talked about this with some people, theoretically it is possible to fit an FPGA with additional DDR3 or GDDR5 ram and have it specifically designed to mine litecoin.

The main problem would be adoption (price) and that to get ridiculous rates of hashign power, you would need ridiculous amounts of RAM.

I believe this to be a good thing. Even if ASIC or FPGA mining for Scrypt Algorhithms are designed, thanks to the RAM requirements the increase in hashing power will be less dramatic than 60gh/s avalons.

Some people argued that every 7970 in their systems adds 1.5gb ram in usage on their systems. Considering that, the average 7970 comes with 3gb VRAM. Let us take 4gb RAM necessary for 700kh/s peak power output. A 5mh/s FPGA or ASIC design would have to come with around 32 gigs of RAM on the board, with over half of that GDDR5. So, even if one of these is built they will be expensive. And they will be far less dramatic than other systems. They might "Only" reduce power costs.

[Signus]

FPGAs are the smartest variation when it comes to the compromise between availability, computing power and electricity consumption.
Got my eyes on the new Lancelot.

The Lancelot isn't a new project. I'm basing my current design off of the Lancelot.

RAM requirements. I have talked about this with some people, theoretically it is possible to fit an FPGA with additional DDR3 or GDDR5 ram and have it specifically designed to mine litecoin.

The main problem would be adoption (price) and that to get ridiculous rates of hashign power, you would need ridiculous amounts of RAM.

It does not require extensive amounts of RAM. I am trying to implement a DDR3 controller to my FPGA design. A little tricky because I have to have the system check the amount of RAM at each reset so that it can allocate the blocks correctly. But an FPGA with 4-8GB of RAM is still fairly cheap. Plus if I got a working design I would produce a large amount of it so that the cost per board is not extensive.

We'll see once I get further.