KryptMiner - 20th/s @ 800w (a new magical miner / scam?)

[VRobb]

<snip>
Before the first ASICs, FPGAs were the way to go for btc mining. Since that time, ASICs have gotten much faster, much better, much more powerful. FPGAs were left behind by the btc community. But not by everybody. They continued to evolve, just as ASICs did. They also became better, stronger, faster, more powerful. Maybe it's time someone revisited them. I'm not willing to dismiss them out of hand.

Nope.
FPGA=tricycle
ASIC=motorcycle
I'll race your trike against my Harley any day...  

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[The Demon Slick]

FPGAs are embedded now, even a small 5K LUTs can have 1000 inputs and 1000 outputs with data rates of >500MHz in 28nm or more in 16/14nm. That wipes out the old PCIe bus limitations buy using the silicon instead of the board connection. This is not the same as the traditional FPGAs like Xilnix.  FPGAs can be integrated into a multi chip package. They don't have to be all FPGA chips or all processors. They're seeing great advancements in the field of machine learning, and it's driving the tech. Harvard is using embedded FPGAs into thier new machine learning project 16nm chips. Microsoft’s Project Catapult, Microsoft’s Azure SmartNIC and Amazon EC2 F1 are all using the newer tech embedded FPGAs in thier data center projects. Baysands "mcFPGA" chip is converting from traditional FPGAs to embedded. I think the technology is feasable, at least theoretically. It's in use already, just not for this. The feasability of the technology is an interesting debate. I plan to read more about it. They had a symposium in October, lots of papers came out of it, but it's dry tech reading, hard to get through.

[alh]

Before the first ASICs, FPGAs were the way to go for btc mining. Since that time, ASICs have gotten much faster, much better, much more powerful. FPGAs were left behind by the btc community. But not by everybody. They continued to evolve, just as ASICs did. They also became better, stronger, faster, more powerful. Maybe it's time someone revisited them. I'm not willing to dismiss them out of hand.

Could you describe in what way this relates to the topic at hand (i.e. the KryptMiner)?

Yes, FPGA's are wonderful for what they do (i.e. allow rapid changing and prototyping). For something that is well understood (i.e.the SHA-256 algorithm), they have no compelling reason to be used in Bitcoin mining. They lose on speed, and efficiency. To suggest otherwise makes you look foolish (IMHO).

If on the other hand you want to a "generic miner" that can be programmed to do SHA-256 for the morning and re-programmed to do X11 in the afternoon, then that's a different story. There just isn't much of a market for such a device.

[The Demon Slick]

He's leasing miner centers by appointment now. Seems like a pretty elaborate scam for just cc #s, you can just buy those things by the ton. You're all probably right,  but I'm still going to let it ride.

[VRobb]

No, we're all actually right, and per your sig you get the prize: /ignore

[The Demon Slick]

So I think I located the board, I believe it's this opal Kelly xem7310-200. I'd be interested in feedback on the board itself. It's incorporating an xilnis artix-7 fpga.

https://www.opalkelly.com/products/xem7310/

[dlezama]

Artix? That is their "faster than ASIC board"?   Head to the Xilinx site... Also, a board with a single FPGA? What is that? The controller? Anyway...

[The Demon Slick]

Artix? That is their "faster than ASIC board"?   Head to the Xilinx site... Also, a board with a single FPGA? What is that? The controller? Anyway...

I don't think it's possible with that board. However, it might be with the achronix speedcore. I'm still reading.

[The Demon Slick]

I have not had any contact with kryptmine since the email reply I received and posted earlier in this thread. Today I received the following email:

Hi Rick,


We've gone ahead and issued a full refund back to you because we don't want to hold your money. Once your order is ready to ship I'll get back in contact with you to make payment then. Sorry for inconvenience.

Regards,

Glenn


Now a couple of things struck me about this, the English is not as perfect as the previous email ("make payment then", "Sorry for inconvenience") The syntax indicates probably Chinese, but not 100%. Also, I never asked for a refund. Odd, that. Now the refund address for kryptminer llc was NOT in Long Beach, across the street from Towerjazz semiconductor, one of the few foundrys in the US, instead it was 3195 spectrum st, in Irvine, Ca. Looks like a townhouse or condo. I checked the kryptminer website again, it's still taking orders, and still says shipping in early February.

I replied:

"Glenn, I don't understand, I didn't ask for a refund, I wanted the machine. Early February is next week. Has there been some kind of delay?"

I don't expect to hear back, but you never know. I conclude vaporware. However, I still think it's theoretically possible to use an achronix speedcore eFPGA as a hardware accelerator in a combined chipset ASIC. People are doing it in machine learning projects, just not for btc miners. That debate will apparently remain theoretical for now. On the plus side, I'm relieved that Chinese mining conglomerates are not in fact buying kryptminer powerservers capable of 2,560 T/hs when fully stacked.

My card has already been refunded, meaning he did it at least 24 hours before sending the email. I have never known a refund to that card occurring sooner than 24 hours, it's generally 48-72 hours.

And that's all I got. No penguins or tarantulas were harmed during the making of this thread.

[dlezama]

Thanks for point out the absolutely obvious fact that this is a scam. Next time just open a thread in scam accusations

[The Demon Slick]

It's funny because I've seen more senior members take a flyer on new miners that might not exist, and people said how awesome it was they were checking it out for everybody.

[krisgt30]

It's funny because I've seen more senior members take a flyer on new miners that might not exist, and people said how awesome it was they were checking it out for everybody.

Like the other obvious scam in this subtopic that is only still ticking because some legendaries got duped into believing they are real or are shilling for the product themselves?

[The Demon Slick]

It's funny because I've seen more senior members take a flyer on new miners that might not exist, and people said how awesome it was they were checking it out for everybody.

Like the other obvious scam in this subtopic that is only still ticking because some legendaries got duped into believing they are real or are shilling for the product themselves?

I just don't get all the hostility. I get you don't want people getting scammed, you want to warn them,and people did, that's awesome. And I get you don't want anyone shilling for a fraudster, that's cool. But I haven't done that, and I totally acknowledged that it was prolly a scam. I'm not selling anything. I don't even have a big stupid campaign sig.
To be honest I'm still not sure what their game is. Now they've changed payment processing from square to PayPal. It says that the payment goes to oussha@aol.com. That's a name, Oussha Shlaimane, she's a hot milf with a book out on living a healthy lifestyle. Weirder and weirder. They don't even take btc.

Edit - found this from 2014 - http://shockermichaelmooreflsfordivorce.blogspot.com/2014/04/white-collared-mining-technologies-vs.html?m=1

[The Demon Slick]

Oddest scam ever. A 51 year old smoke show female bodybuilder selling fake miners.

http://contests.npcnewsonline.com/contests/2017/npc_fit_world_pro/oussha_shlaimoun/

[The Demon Slick]

She answered:

Your order hasn’t been cancelled and as soon as we have a unit ready to ship, I will get back in contact with you to collect money 😊. Till then I'd rather the money stays in your wallet.


Whatever. They can't charge that card again. I wonder if they're going to hit me up later for a "urgent" btc only payment or something. If that happens I'll let you know. Other than that I'm done with it.

[Par Avion]

Funk the haters, I appreciate you trying. Big ups for the home miners.

[danielyap]

Good try bro...seriously fuck all the weird haters in this thread...You clearly mentioned you're gonna go ahead and try this out, not promoting it. As far as I'm concerned you did us all a favour by going in head on. We have an outcome which really saved all of us the hassle. You did well, cheers!

[Druiz287]

Thanks for making the attempt.  We need more people willing to take the risk so that others may not have to.  Solid move and you have my respect for trying it out!!

[HagssFIN]

We need more people willing to take the risk so that others may not have to.  

I disagree.

We need more proof and transparency when a new manufacturer enters the market, so it will be less risky from the very beginning.

Even though Bitmain is not the most likable manufacturer at the moment,  they are still a good example entering the market as a new manufacturer  with a solid discussion thread here at the forum with the Antminer S1 back in the 2013  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=330665.0

[jeecom]

I went to their checkout page today.  They are currently processing credit cards through GoDaddy (mysimplestore.com).  It is highly suspect that they are changing credit card merchants so quickly.

At this point, my vote is this is a scam.