OFFICIAL CGMINER mining software thread for linux/win/osx/mips/arm/r-pi 4.11.1

[-ck]

I'll check but not as far as I'm aware it doesn't.

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[DeathAndTaxes]

I'll check but not as far as I'm aware it doesn't.

AMD

[-ck]

I wish it were only that bad 

AMD:

[-ck]

On the other hand, I may have to eat my words...

A little debugging found this:
[2012-01-28 22:43:25] PLATFORM OpenCL 1.0 ATI-Stream-v2.1 (145)                   

[DeathAndTaxes]

woot woot.  Since SDK has an effect on performance it may be useful to include that in version.

[-ck]

Hmm there's a lot of info in that string and the status line is already fairly cluttered. I'll have to investigate some reasonable compromise if suitable.

Also, it could possibly be used to help choose optimal vectors and worksize. However with the kernels under massive flux at the moment, there's not much point choosing anything at the moment.

I'm thinking adding it to verbose info at startup at least will help diagnose it.

In the git tree, I added it to verbose mode, and also to --ndevs which will allow us to ask people "what does --devs show?"

Something like this:
[2012-01-29 00:37:48] CL Platform vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
[2012-01-29 00:37:48] CL Platform name: ATI Stream
[2012-01-29 00:37:48] CL Platform version: OpenCL 1.0 ATI-Stream-v2.1 (145)
[2012-01-29 00:37:48] 6 GPU devices detected

[ngzhang]

sorry to bother you, but may i know if it's possible to add a support to Icarus mining board? i'm really not good at software coding. here is the protocol:


Icarus communication protocol

this specification is for anyone who want to write their own miner or want to add support for icarus.

this device is designed as  "the simplest is the best" idea.
the FPGAs on board or even in chain mode (under development) , act as a single miner to the uart port. when the board connect to a PC, it recognized as a ttyUSB device, or "COM*" on windows PC.
how to operate:
1, no detection is needed (no special command for this). 
2, sending work data:
  each data packet is 512bit (64 byte) length. the format is : 256bits MIDSTATE + 160bits fill bits(can be any value) + 96bits data (last 12 bytes of block header). over.
3, sending back the results:
  if the fpga found a valid nonce, they will send back the 32bits nonce result immediately. no any query protocol is implemented here.

so a simple work process is described below:

send a work pass the COM port, start a timer and a listener on the COM port.
if any data send back by the COM port, then this is a valid nonce. push a new work to the FPGA and send the result back to the pool.
if no data send back in 11.3 seconds (a full cover time on 32bit nonce range by 380MH/s speed, maybe increase so a shorter time is suggested, like 8s ), send another work.

some point:
1,FPGA will start the calculate when you push a work to them, even they are busy. that means if a block has been found, the miner could push a new immediately to overlap the old work in the fpga.
2,the 2 fpgas on one board will distribute the 32bit nonce to calculate. one will calculate the 0 ~ 7FFFFFFF, and the other will cover the 80000000 ~ FFFFFFFF. so if you want to do any performance measure on this device, please notice this feature.
3,FPGA will stop work when: a valid nonce has been found or 32 bits nonce range is completely calculated. notice that it's possible for 2 FPGA both find valid nonce in the meantime, the 2 valid nonce will all be send back.


here are 2 version of python miner already can work on Icarus.

https://github.com/ngzhang/Icarus/tree/master/miner_software

hope will get your response, and if there are any problem please let me know.

regards.

[Luke-Jr]

sorry to bother you, but may i know if it's possible to add a support to Icarus mining board? i'm really not good at software coding.

I wrote the BitFORCE driver for cgminer. I would be happy to implement Icarus support too if someone sends me one (or can offer a comparable deal to BFL's preorder). Contact me privately, if so. (for reference, I live in the US)

[ngzhang]

sorry to bother you, but may i know if it's possible to add a support to Icarus mining board? i'm really not good at software coding.

I wrote the BitFORCE driver for cgminer. I would be happy to implement Icarus support too if someone sends me one (or can offer a comparable deal to BFL's preorder). Contact me privately, if so. (for reference, I live in the US)

  oh, it looks like i must reserve 1 board for you in the 3rd batch.  the 3rd batch will come out 2-3 weeks later.

is there any known problems on the present simple protocol ?

[Luke-Jr]

is there any known problems on the present simple protocol ?

I think the current protocol is workable, but could be improved...

• Detection via the USB product/device ids is crucial to automatically adding it to cgminer.
• If that's not practical, detection via a probe command (be sure to ignore BFL's!) is second-best, so we can reuse the same -S parameter.
• If the FPGA can send back a "I'm done" message, it would probably make it easier to do more efficiently.
• In case you (or someone else) produces protocol-compatible devices in the future, you may wish to provide a way to probe the number of FPGAs on the board and their speeds.
• It would be good to have the ability to specify exact nonce ranges, so cgminer (or another miner) can support the noncerange extension in the future, or even split up work internally (a single work is sufficient for up to 4 GH/s).
• Reporting temperature/safety measurements can allows cgminer to shut off the FPGA if it gets too hot.

[BCMan]

 Ok, I'm running 2.1 SDK now, but most of gpu stats (like temp, clocks, voltage, etc)  isn't showing in gpu menu.   However yesterday with 2.1.2 and 2.5 it worked fine. Using  2.2.0 now.



 And phatk is used by default or phatk2? Looks like phatk. Have lesser mhashes, than in phoenix, with same intensity/aggression - 222 vs 219.

 UPD: oops, looks, like missing "[C]hange settings" option in 2.2.0.

[ngzhang]

is there any known problems on the present simple protocol ?

I think the current protocol is workable, but could be improved...

• 1,Detection via the USB product/device ids is crucial to automatically adding it to cgminer.
• 2,If that's not practical, detection via a probe command (be sure to ignore BFL's!) is second-best, so we can reuse the same -S parameter.
• 3,If the FPGA can send back a "I'm done" message, it would probably make it easier to do more efficiently.
• 4,In case you (or someone else) produces protocol-compatible devices in the future, you may wish to provide a way to probe the number of FPGAs on the board and their speeds.
• 5,It would be good to have the ability to specify exact nonce ranges, so cgminer (or another miner) can support the noncerange extension in the future, or even split up work internally (a single work is sufficient for up to 4 GH/s).
• 6,Reporting temperature/safety measurements can allows cgminer to shut off the FPGA if it gets too hot.

OK, i understood perfectly.

by present product, 1 is hard to realize. 2, 3, 4 will easy to achieve . 5 can be done but need bigger changes on the HDL code. 6 needs additional hardware, but we notice that the normal error rate is less than 0.1%, if the error rate goes high, that means something goes wrong.

is there any reference docs about "noncerange extension" feature? 

[-ck]

Ok, I'm running 2.1 SDK now, but most of gpu stats (like temp, clocks, voltage, etc)  isn't showing in gpu menu.   However yesterday with 2.1.2 and 2.5 it worked fine. Using  2.2.0 now.



 And phatk is used by default or phatk2? Looks like phatk. Have lesser mhashes, than in phoenix, with same intensity/aggression - 222 vs 219.

 UPD: oops, looks, like missing "[C]hange settings" option in 2.2.0.

You need sdk 2.4+ for full hardware monitoring support. It's called phatk for simplicity but really it's phatk2.1.

[BCMan]

Ok, I'm running 2.1 SDK now, but most of gpu stats (like temp, clocks, voltage, etc)  isn't showing in gpu menu.   However yesterday with 2.1.2 and 2.5 it worked fine. Using  2.2.0 now.



 And phatk is used by default or phatk2? Looks like phatk. Have lesser mhashes, than in phoenix, with same intensity/aggression - 222 vs 219.

 UPD: oops, looks, like missing "[C]hange settings" option in 2.2.0.

You need sdk 2.4+ for full hardware monitoring support. It's called phatk for simplicity but really it's phatk2.1.

I've 2.1 sdk installed only currently and hardware monitoring support is working in 2.1.2. Plus I can't use any sdk higher than 2.1, because of cpu bug.

And why not phatk2.2? It's faster.

[-ck]

Ok, I'm running 2.1 SDK now, but most of gpu stats (like temp, clocks, voltage, etc)  isn't showing in gpu menu.   However yesterday with 2.1.2 and 2.5 it worked fine. Using  2.2.0 now.



 And phatk is used by default or phatk2? Looks like phatk. Have lesser mhashes, than in phoenix, with same intensity/aggression - 222 vs 219.

 UPD: oops, looks, like missing "[C]hange settings" option in 2.2.0.

You need sdk 2.4+ for full hardware monitoring support. It's called phatk for simplicity but really it's phatk2.1.

I've 2.1 sdk installed only currently and hardware monitoring support is working in 2.1.2. Plus I can't use any sdk higher than 2.1, because of cpu bug.

And why not phatk2.2? It's faster.

Let's call it 2.3 then.

EDIT: No one has worked on cgminer's kernel in a while. For some reason everyone wants to work on something else. Ironically I'm not a cl kernel expert so have made no progress in the kernel area since the last time someone did something for cgminer.

[-ck]

Plus I can't use any sdk higher than 2.1, because of cpu bug.

By the way, "cpu bug" has nothing to do with SDK, only the ATI driver does.

[kano]

is there any known problems on the present simple protocol ?

I think the current protocol is workable, but could be improved...

• 1,Detection via the USB product/device ids is crucial to automatically adding it to cgminer.
• 2,If that's not practical, detection via a probe command (be sure to ignore BFL's!) is second-best, so we can reuse the same -S parameter.
• 3,If the FPGA can send back a "I'm done" message, it would probably make it easier to do more efficiently.
• 4,In case you (or someone else) produces protocol-compatible devices in the future, you may wish to provide a way to probe the number of FPGAs on the board and their speeds.
• 5,It would be good to have the ability to specify exact nonce ranges, so cgminer (or another miner) can support the noncerange extension in the future, or even split up work internally (a single work is sufficient for up to 4 GH/s).
• 6,Reporting temperature/safety measurements can allows cgminer to shut off the FPGA if it gets too hot.

OK, i understood perfectly.

by present product, 1 is hard to realize. 2, 3, 4 will easy to achieve . 5 can be done but need bigger changes on the HDL code. 6 needs additional hardware, but we notice that the normal error rate is less than 0.1%, if the error rate goes high, that means something goes wrong.

is there any reference docs about "noncerange extension" feature?  

I'm at a loss as to why option 6 needs to be requested for these FPGA's
(Yeah this is the 2nd one to be mentioned here in the cgminer thread and also the 2nd time the question had to be asked)
Do all the companies who make these things believe that their device will never have heat problems?

Fans stop, rooms get hot, some countries even have summer every year
If it works fine for 24 hours straight without causing any damage when you put it in an oven at 50 degrees Celsius without a fan running on the FPGA, then OK yep knowing the temp may not be necessary
Otherwise ... temp monitoring is necessary.
(Fan rate would be good too but not mandatory: temp will go up if the fan dies anyway)

[BCMan]

Plus I can't use any sdk higher than 2.1, because of cpu bug.

By the way, "cpu bug" has nothing to do with SDK, only the ATI driver does.

Others saying that cpu bug is in SDK, not in drivers. Plus, I've 11.12 installed (tested 11.6 as well) and I don't have this bug with 2.1 sdk, but with just switching to 2.3/2.4/2.5/2.6 the bug "suddenly" appear on W7 x64.
 Can you fix 2.2.0 version so I can use hardware monitoring with 2.1 sdk? It's working in 2.1.2, so why not in 2.2.0?
 Btw can I change for example phatk110817.cl on phatk 2.2 kernel from Phoenix, by just renaming it's kernel.cl to phatk110817.cl and replace the default one? It will work that way?

[-ck]

Plus I can't use any sdk higher than 2.1, because of cpu bug.

By the way, "cpu bug" has nothing to do with SDK, only the ATI driver does.

Others saying that cpu bug is in SDK, not in drivers. Plus, I've 11.12 installed (tested 11.6 as well) and I don't have this bug with 2.1 sdk, but with just switching to 2.3/2.4/2.5/2.6 the bug "suddenly" appear on W7 x64.
 Can you fix 2.2.0 version so I can use hardware monitoring with 2.1 sdk? It's working in 2.1.2, so why not in 2.2.0?
 Btw can I change for example phatk110817.cl on phatk 2.2 kernel from Phoenix, by just renaming it's kernel.cl to phatk110817.cl and replace the default one? It will work that way?

Mystery. That does not make any sense about the SDK using CPU. I suspect you are actually having conflict issues with the files on your installation rather than anything to do with the SDK itself. I hear that putting the .dlls into the cgminer directory on windows will allow you to run it with whatever sdk you want.

No I cannot fix it to work with 2.1 sdk because I suspect the extra features in cgminer 2.2.0 are breaking with that older sdk.

No you cannot use a .cl from any other project in cgminer. The Application Programming Interface is different on all of them.

I suggest you treat any "reported" speeds from phoenix and guiminer with caution as they're allegedly not reliable...

[BCMan]

Plus I can't use any sdk higher than 2.1, because of cpu bug.

By the way, "cpu bug" has nothing to do with SDK, only the ATI driver does.

Others saying that cpu bug is in SDK, not in drivers. Plus, I've 11.12 installed (tested 11.6 as well) and I don't have this bug with 2.1 sdk, but with just switching to 2.3/2.4/2.5/2.6 the bug "suddenly" appear on W7 x64.
 Can you fix 2.2.0 version so I can use hardware monitoring with 2.1 sdk? It's working in 2.1.2, so why not in 2.2.0?
 Btw can I change for example phatk110817.cl on phatk 2.2 kernel from Phoenix, by just renaming it's kernel.cl to phatk110817.cl and replace the default one? It will work that way?

Mystery. That does not make any sense about the SDK using CPU. I suspect you are actually having conflict issues with the files on your installation rather than anything to do with the SDK itself.

Nope. I'm deleting from Win32 and SysWOW64 folders all sdk dlls (amdocl.dll, amdoclcl.dll, OpenCL.dll) all the time after sdk deinstallation and removing all remaining ati dlls and registry crap with Driver Sweeper. Maybe it's somehow related to enabled integrated gpu HD4250 on motherboard? Btw I don't have this bug with 11.6/2.4/2.1, 11.12/2.5/2.4/2.1, on WinXP (32 or 64 bit). But only 11.12/2.1 combo is working for me with Win7x64. And not only for me.
 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61340.0
 

I hear that putting the .dlls into the cgminer directory on windows will allow you to run it with whatever sdk you want.]I hear that putting the .dlls into the cgminer directory on windows will allow you to run it with whatever sdk you want.

If no other OpenCL.dll is installed into Windows folder.