Baikal Giant N - Cryptonight, Cryptonight-lite FPGA/ASIC miner

[lbegiashvili]

just received mail from Bitmain 

We are proud and happy to announce that we are launching the all-new Antminer X3, a new Antminer model for mining cryptocurrencies based on the hashing algorithm CryptoNight.

The Antminer X3 delivers a minmum hashrate of 220KH/s while consuming 550W of total power.

To prevent hoarding by certain users or resellers and to ensure that more individual miners in different time zones around the world are able to order this new ASIC miner, we have made some changes:

There is a limit of one miner per user for all orders in the current (two) batches.
We will release both these batches with an equal stock thrice today: at 3PM, 6pm and 9PM (15 March, GMT+8). >

[laroz]

New Miner from Bitmain

Antminer X3, 200KH/s with only 550W usage

Baikal can stop selling 

[jedimindtrix]

just received mail from Bitmain  

We are proud and happy to announce that we are launching the all-new Antminer X3, a new Antminer model for mining cryptocurrencies based on the hashing algorithm CryptoNight.

The Antminer X3 delivers a minmum hashrate of 220KH/s while consuming 550W of total power.

To prevent hoarding by certain users or resellers and to ensure that more individual miners in different time zones around the world are able to order this new ASIC miner, we have made some changes:

There is a limit of one miner per user for all orders in the current (two) batches.
We will release both these batches with an equal stock thrice today: at 3PM, 6pm and 9PM (15 March, GMT+8). >

But it's $12000 USD for the first batch. Holly Crap! But, payback in 61 days at current rates. Which I'm sure will drop once they start hitting the network.

[crypto4pizza]

just received mail from Bitmain  

We are proud and happy to announce that we are launching the all-new Antminer X3, a new Antminer model for mining cryptocurrencies based on the hashing algorithm CryptoNight.

The Antminer X3 delivers a minmum hashrate of 220KH/s while consuming 550W of total power.

To prevent hoarding by certain users or resellers and to ensure that more individual miners in different time zones around the world are able to order this new ASIC miner, we have made some changes:

There is a limit of one miner per user for all orders in the current (two) batches.
We will release both these batches with an equal stock thrice today: at 3PM, 6pm and 9PM (15 March, GMT+8). >

But it's $12000 USD for the first batch. Holly Crap! But, payback in 61 days at current rates. Which I'm sure will drop once they start hitting the network.

Someone would have to be smoking some really good stuff to buy that @ 12k with all the upcoming changes to CN algo....Oh with a mid/late May delivery too 

[pikachuy]

And just like that, Baikal Giant N is obsolete now.

They have a MOQ of 6, so...

6 x $3600 each = $21,600 total

6 x 20kH/s each = 120kH/s total

Ships in 7 days.



Now Antminer X3, 200kH/s for $12,000. Shipping 15-31 May.

That's a little over $10,000 difference and half of the hash rate.


Now if you think the Baikal Giant N will make $10,000+ between now and 15-31 May, then I guess Baikal Giant N will make sense, but sense that's just a unicorn dream. There will be absolutely no reason anymore to buy the Baikal Giant N.

Their greed shot themselves in the foot with their overpricing and MOQ.


So who ever did buy the Giant N, ouch...

[floppydisk]

New Miner from Bitmain

Antminer X3, 200KH/s with only 550W usage

Baikal can stop selling 

X3 would have great advantage over Baikal-N
Electricity 53% of Baikal-N per equitable hash rate
Capital $ 31% of Baikal-N per equitable hash rate

However,
Min lot cost of USD11999 vs USD21600 (6 unit of Baikal-N) - (don't forget the plus of shipping & import taxes)

Drawback is, single X3 is very expansive and Baikal-N have min lot of 6 for pre-orders.

[shaninium]

I really wish people would stop calling FPGA's ASICs.  Baikal (so far) has only made FPGA mining rigs.  There is a huge difference between an FPGA and an ASIC.  An FPGA is not that much different from a GPU.  Anyone can get one.  Anyone can buy a Zynq FPGA board from digikey for $89-$199, or a higher end one for more money, and if you take a little while to learn how to program it, you can hash any algorithm except equihash & ethash.  Furthermore, your ROI will be better than a GPU in almost every case, in some cases dramatically better (as Baikal showed with the X10 and Giant-B).

Are you really sure that Baikals X10/B are FPGA? (Which FPGA, by the way?) While it is enterely possible, technical characteristics of these products are not typical for FPGA. Especially the low power consumption.

As for ROI I wouldn't expect good ROI from entry and mid-range FPGA boards because of their weak power supplys. We need propertly designed professional grade DC/DC for core voltage, that is rarely seen in practice.

There is nothing suspicious about the Giant-N.  I was already working on an FPGA cryptonight miner before the Giant-N was announced (and obviously I am now focusing on other algorithms).  The power of 60W is realistic for one FPGA accessing many external SRAM's.  Unlike DRAM, SRAM consumes very little power.  The fundamental nature of Cryptonight is that it uses almost no number crunching (by design).  A single FPGA just accesses many parallel SRAM's and these memory accesses do not consume a great deal of power.  FPGA's consume way less power than other mining devices already.  Consider the X10 burns 250-500W and makes the same amount per day as a 2000W GPU rig.  Some algorithms burn more, some burn less, and algorithms that have no number crunching (like Cryptonight) burn the least.  The reason a Vega 56/64 burns so much power on cryptonight is because it is using high bandwidth external memory, a totally different approach than using many SRAM's in parallel.

FPGA's can be reconfigured very quickly.  It is true that certain PCB designs and part selections are better at some algorithms than others.  But it doesn't matter if Monero does a hard fork, you can still just use an FPGA to mine the new algorithm, ad infinitum.  As I mentioned before, only Ethash is truly resistant to FPGA's.  As Baikal has more and more FPGA miners on the market with different types of FPGA's and RAM (Giant-B, X10, Giant-N), a coin which 'forks' would have to know the exact internal configuration of every FPGA mining rig on the market to 'avoid' a new algorithm which could be efficiently mined by them.  To give an example, there is a decent chance that Monero's new algorithm could be (accidentally) mineable by the Giant-B or Giant-X10 or Giant-N, and all Baikal has to do is release new bitstreams (firmware for the SD card) that would update those rigs to mine the new algorithm.

As the number of different FPGA rigs on the market continues to increase, it would be very difficult to fork to an algorithm that would be immune to those rigs, unless you pick an Ethash style algorithm.  Furthermore if you add in all the cheap FPGA boards available from companies like Digikey, Avnet, Xilinx and Intel, then there is ALREADY a mass produced FPGA board that can do any algorithm efficiently except Ethash.

FYI the Monero ASIC statement is specific to ASIC's.  They specifically say they want to avoid ASICs mining their coin (they speak of FPGA's more favorably, and separately from ASICs).  Since the Giant-N is an FPGA rig, it doesn't actually fall into the category of something they would fork away from.  Furthermore, the Giant-N hash rate is not devastating to GPU's.  It has a slightly better ROI than Vega's, but in no way do Vega's become obsolete.  Baikal would have to ship out 100,000 Giant-N's to truly disrupt the Cryptonight networks, which is unlikely.

(BTW I bought 2 Giant-N from a local reseller in Vancouver.  The units are supposed to arrive on Monday.)

If the Baikal Giant N is an FPGA that could resynthesize from a hardware update and be effective after the V7 Fork, then why are Baikal only selling them for $3600 per unit? And why are they no longer marketing them as being compatible with Monero? Is the public sale of these units weeks before the V7 fork just a coincidence? For DIY setups like you're talking about then FPGA is the only viable option, however, if you have millions to invest into mass production then the cost per unit to produce an ASIC is going to be much less than an FPGA.  Baikal have their own propriety development, they don't just make FPGAs, they make multi algo ASICS. 

Also, from the  2018-03-04 Dev meeting:

12:22 PM <knifeofpi> somebody made an FPGA
12:22 PM <knifeofpi> but ASICs...?
12:22 PM <@fluffypony> somebody taped out an ASIC
12:22 PM <knifeofpi> when did this happen?
12:22 PM <medusa_> the reddit post you mean ?
12:22 PM <rehrar> link?
12:22 PM <@fluffypony> sidechannelled to me, not public
12:22 PM <@fluffypony> a handful of others have had similar confirmation via via
12:22 PM <psychocrypt> @fluffypony: are this ASICS or FPGAs?
12:23 PM <@fluffypony> were it just me I would find it suspicious
12:23 PM <@fluffypony> psychocrypt: ASICs, not FPGAs

Months ago i read about baikal buying a lot of asic chips i guess it was right. Not many believed the story cause it said baikal was a russian company when its chinese. Maybe they just got that bit wrong.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/12/22/samsung-baikal-bitcoin/

[wudafuxup]

And just like that, Baikal Giant N is obsolete now.

They have a MOQ of 6, so...

6 x $3600 each = $21,600 total

6 x 20kH/s each = 120kH/s total

Ships in 7 days.



Now Antminer X3, 200kH/s for $12,000. Shipping 15-31 May.

That's a little over $10,000 difference and half of the hash rate.


Now if you think the Baikal Giant N will make $10,000+ between now and 15-31 May, then I guess Baikal Giant N will make sense, but sense that's just a unicorn dream. There will be absolutely no reason anymore to buy the Baikal Giant N.

Their greed shot themselves in the foot with their overpricing and MOQ.


So who ever did buy the Giant N, ouch...

You guys all realize they are selling this crap because they know Monero along with other CryptoNight coins are forking against ASICs soon right? These idiots have most likely been mining with them for months prior to releasing them "to the public". There's a reason the net hash of ETN went up from like 50Mh/s to 400Mh/s+ and Monero from 290Mh/s to 1.1Gh/s in a matter of 2 months (and no, RX vegas didn't cause this). The devs knew this was an obnoxious net hash increase and began talks about ASICs. These ASIC idiots know the miners will be obselete once forked and are trying to squeeze a bit more money out of oblivious idiots willing to pay for them.

It all seems oddly coincidental all these "CryptoNight ASICs" are being released out of the blue as the CryptoNight POW algorithm is about to change doesn't it ahaha  

[Prelude]

And just like that, Baikal Giant N is obsolete now.

They have a MOQ of 6, so...

6 x $3600 each = $21,600 total

6 x 20kH/s each = 120kH/s total

Ships in 7 days.



Now Antminer X3, 200kH/s for $12,000. Shipping 15-31 May.

That's a little over $10,000 difference and half of the hash rate.


Now if you think the Baikal Giant N will make $10,000+ between now and 15-31 May, then I guess Baikal Giant N will make sense, but sense that's just a unicorn dream. There will be absolutely no reason anymore to buy the Baikal Giant N.

Their greed shot themselves in the foot with their overpricing and MOQ.


So who ever did buy the Giant N, ouch...

You guys all realize they are selling this crap because they know Monero along with other CryptoNight coins are forking against ASICs soon right? These idiots have most likely been mining with them for months prior to releasing them "to the public". There's a reason the net hash of ETN went up from like 50Mh/s to 400Mh/s+ and Monero from 290Mh/s to 1.1Gh/s in a matter of 2 months (and no, RX vegas didn't cause this). The devs knew this was an obnoxious net hash increase and began talks about ASICs. These ASIC idiots know the miners will be obselete once forked and are trying to squeeze a bit more money out of oblivious idiots willing to pay for them.

It all seems oddly coincidental all these "CryptoNight ASICs" are being released out of the blue as the CryptoNight POW algorithm is about to change doesn't it ahaha  

This. 100% correct. Dead on arrival paper weights. You'd have to be retarded to buy one of these ASICs.

[bitcoinexplorer]

Now do you remember what i predicated in my previous post that Giant N is not Multi Algo and risks killing competition from Bitmain and here it comes.


"We are proud and happy to announce that we are launching the all-new Antminer X3, a new Antminer model for mining cryptocurrencies based on the hashing algorithm CryptoNight.

The Antminer X3 delivers a minmum hashrate of 220KH/s while consuming 550W of total power.

To prevent hoarding by certain users or resellers and to ensure that more individual miners in different time zones around the world are able to order this new ASIC miner, we have made some changes:

There is a limit of one miner per user for all orders in the current (two) batches.
We will release both these batches with an equal stock thrice today: at 3PM, 6pm and 9PM (15 March, GMT+8)."

[QuintLeo]

60w... is this some kind of joke?

I would take it serious coming from them.  They are here to conpete with the likes of bitmain they best keep producing asic for all algos.  Just because something isn’t cost efficient when you run your numbers doesn’t mean it doesn’t work out for someone else.  

BR

Come on, it is little hard to believe that ASIC type machine consumes only 60w.

Gridseed Blade units were about 40 watts a side in actual usage, even though they were "officially" rated for quite a bit more.

Bitmain's announcement of the X3 mentions 550 watts for over 10 times the hashrate, so the "watts per hash" is in a reasonable ballpark.

Baikal is NOT a Chinese company - but their not Russian either.
Belorussia is NOT part of Russia, though it used to be part of the Soviet Union.


I suspect all of these are going to be expensive paperweights quickly, since the Monero folks have specifically stated they plan to hard fork soon to change their algorithm to kill ASIC's for cryptonight.

https://getmonero.org/2018/02/11/PoW-change-and-key-reuse.html for anyone that might have missed it.

[QuintLeo]

Monero POW is changing to CryptoNightV7 in about 15 days, so I don't think you can sell this as a monero miner..

Just saying 

I'm not sure that minor changes in hash algorithm can help to avoid asics, cause they probably can update/reprogramming their FPGA

You can't reprogram a FPGA - and Bitmain AFAIK has never made a FPGA-based miner for sale (they may have used FPGA as part of their "validation" process for their ASIC-based miners though, that's a standard industry practice).

[QuintLeo]

With Cryptonight ASICs on the horizon, when (if) Ethereum does go to POS, it's starting to look like AMD based miners are in for a shit-show.

Ancient news.
AMD Polaris cards can mine stuff like ZEC effectively, but profitability on EVERYTHING is going to drop a lot when ETH goes POS and those 10 million OR MORE GPUs currently mining it go looking for new homes.

[QuintLeo]

i will bail out on this one, to expensive, 1250$ would be a good price, but they will find enough sheeps who buy that miner...

Hopefully they won't. But the uninformed masses never cease to amaze me. This thing is dead on arrival. I'd love to see baikal lose millions with this ASIC due to all the major coins switching algos (Monero and IPBC confirmed so far) but they've probably already made their investment back by mining with these for a few months before announcing them, unfortunately.

They can change algos as many times they like, if it stays below or at 1mb requirement you will be able to mine it with asic

After the months of lead time and the VERY EXPENSIVE costs to redesign and re-qualify the design, sure you can.

[QuintLeo]

Monero POW is changing to CryptoNightV7 in about 15 days, so I don't think you can sell this as a monero miner..

Just saying 

That's great news. If these ASICs are real and are being sold, then they've been used for mining for a long time now, and they're only selling them in order to dump them because they'll soon be scrap.  And if Monero changes, most/all of the other cryptonight coins will surely follow pretty quickly.  I'd like to hope for a revival in cpu/vega mining.

On the sad side, if these ASICS are real, and their specs are real, then it could be a trivial task for someone to make new ASICs for the new algo. Is it a trivial task?

Trivial or not, it won't make sense financially since Monero will be modifying the algorithm every 6 months. It's not feasible to make an ASIC for that.

AT LEAST every 6 months - they also stated they were willing to do "emergency forks" to kill ASIC mining.

[Prelude]

Monero POW is changing to CryptoNightV7 in about 15 days, so I don't think you can sell this as a monero miner..

Just saying 

That's great news. If these ASICs are real and are being sold, then they've been used for mining for a long time now, and they're only selling them in order to dump them because they'll soon be scrap.  And if Monero changes, most/all of the other cryptonight coins will surely follow pretty quickly.  I'd like to hope for a revival in cpu/vega mining.

On the sad side, if these ASICS are real, and their specs are real, then it could be a trivial task for someone to make new ASICs for the new algo. Is it a trivial task?

Trivial or not, it won't make sense financially since Monero will be modifying the algorithm every 6 months. It's not feasible to make an ASIC for that.

AT LEAST every 6 months - they also stated they were willing to do "emergency forks" to kill ASIC mining.

Utterly fantastic. I need to buy more Monero. Fuck you bitmain & baikal. 

[wudafuxup]

Monero POW is changing to CryptoNightV7 in about 15 days, so I don't think you can sell this as a monero miner..

Just saying 

That's great news. If these ASICs are real and are being sold, then they've been used for mining for a long time now, and they're only selling them in order to dump them because they'll soon be scrap.  And if Monero changes, most/all of the other cryptonight coins will surely follow pretty quickly.  I'd like to hope for a revival in cpu/vega mining.

On the sad side, if these ASICS are real, and their specs are real, then it could be a trivial task for someone to make new ASICs for the new algo. Is it a trivial task?

Trivial or not, it won't make sense financially since Monero will be modifying the algorithm every 6 months. It's not feasible to make an ASIC for that.

AT LEAST every 6 months - they also stated they were willing to do "emergency forks" to kill ASIC mining.

Utterly fantastic. I need to buy more Monero. Fuck you bitmain & baikal. 

Yea that's excellent. Awesome they are breaking the monopolization/centralization of that bitmain garbage.

[QuintLeo]

No.. If you bought vega 56s at launch (like I did). You would have 10X vega 56 = 4000USD @ 18kh/s. Vega 56s can easily hit 150W @ 2kh/s. His statement is fairly accurate. Hashing wise it's not that impressive. It's the power consumption where there's a big difference.

Lowest I ever saw the Vega 56 at was $450 - on a brief sale shortly before the stock on them disappeared due to Monero miners finding out about their performance.
Still the economics aren't all that much better - but the POWER USAGE is a ton better.

[Atomicc]

Those ASIC producers always has a weird business model, selling in advance, publishing nowdays profitability, ask for payments in advance, delivery in "batches" after 1,2 or 3 months while they mined with those units with extra profitability. When You receive it, You will have very looooong ROI. Difficulty skyrocket, specially on small algos.
Warranty only 6 months, low quality support (or no support). If You have non working unit, even in warranty, You has to sent it to factory on Your own costs (for delivery, for custom...).
They try always to make extra profit: Baikal now asks minimum 21600USD, Bitmain 12000USD investment. For what? After the antiASIC forks, those units can be only doorstops, not even a heaters like D3 from Bitmain.

[GD199]

people dont buy ASICS for this algos.
i am sure devs will pull the plug and fork every coin.
Only bitmain will create coins that are minable (like BCH) so they can mine it.
Stay away stay decentralized