"Efficient Bitcoin Miner System Implemented on Zynq SoC"

[ztex]

Here is an interesting article about an "Efficient Bitcoin Miner System Implemented on Zynq SoC": http://www.xilinx.com/publications/archives/xcell/Xcell84.pdf

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[pixl8tr]

Interesting article.  Seems that they were able to get up to 3.8 Mh/s with a single core implemented.  I didn't see any mention of how much headroom they had left on the SOC to implement additional cores. Maybe its only one core per chip.  You need a lot more cores though to make it viable in today's world.  Wonder if Scrypt could be made to work on the ZedBoard?

[dogie]

It would never be 1 core per chip. That's about 15 years ago in processor design time.

[pixl8tr]

It would never be 1 core per chip. That's about 15 years ago in processor design time.

Thanks for your history lesson, but I am referring to the "soft" mining core in the Programmable logic block of the Zynq-7000 discussed in the article.  Not hard-wired CPU cores.

They referenced utilizing multiple mining cores connected to the embedded bitcoind node, but they did not expand on if they were able to create multiple soft cores on a single Zynq-7000. 

Just a curiosity.  As it would need about a 100 cores just to equal the hashing power of a USB block erupter. hahaha!

[gingernuts]

It is an interesting article but IMHO not a very good result! The high-level synthesis tool they used made their life easier, but their hasher is nowhere near as fast as it should be...

As for the Zedboard - it is cool, once you get over the learning curve of handling both the CPU/Linux and FPGA flow, but unfortunately the board seems to be lacking a bit in the PSU department - I managed 38MH/s on mine but while there was more room for hashers, adding anymore would brown it out!

[neslekkim]

The article only mentioned speed and such for spartan 3 and spartan 6, the main point with the article, the Zync, was not mentioned at all?, would be more interresting to see what they accomplished on that platform..