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September 16, 2017, 03:37:16 PM |
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I find it profoundly unlikely that you can achieve your goal of performing better on a $/hash basis with an FPGA.
When FPGAs became competitive for SHA-256 it was on Watts / hash, not $ / hash. Cost of the hardware per hash was 4-5x GPU. But power efficiency was 20x better than GPU, which made it a slam dunk investment (if you understood that ASICs weren't going to be delivered on the timelines promised by certain hucksters on this site).
The odds are good that there will be a custom ASIC or a SOC solution for ETH within the next year. The cash flow from mining supports it, and ETH is likely to fork at least once more which expands the customer base.
To restate what I just said, FPGA competes on total cost of ownership, not initial costs. To be profitable you need enough time to recover the hardware costs through lower power expenses. I seriously doubt there is enough time to design, build and deploy a custom FPGA solution before custom silicon arrives and eats your lunch.
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