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

[Wananavu99]

I don't think it's worth it.  I mean this is insane but at the same time too expensive.  Looks like they're compacting GPU chips into one miner.  I'm going to wait for the Nvidia 2000 series. 

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[CryptoPicknAxe]

one of the main idea behind crypto is decentralization . and if one company or even two control the mining , then that basic principle is destroyed
what i like about monero is that it can be mined using GPU , CPU . so AMD and Nividia cant control it .

i will quit buying or trading on Monero if they went to ASIC .

How do 1 or 2 companies own mining exactly?  Using your argument you could say that Nvidia and AMD control all of GPU mining.  Producing products to mine does not equal centralization.

Producing products to mine doesn't equal centralization. The road to centralization starts with the large capital investment that's required when ASICs enter the picture. We've all seen this play out before.

Personally, I'm going to support projects that actually back up their words with actions. We don't have to roll over and just take this shit.  

[Goool]

BAIKAL doesn't have so much success cashing out with BAIKAL N doorstops,
28th of March Monero will fork ....expect to see BAIKAL N selling for free ...

People and Investors woke up and not buying

[Oakey22]

Nobody is buying these, the algos are changing soon so will make this an expensive doorstop. Not good news for Baikal, maybe they didn't know about it.

[Searing]

Nobody is buying these, the algos are changing soon so will make this an expensive doorstop. Not good news for Baikal, maybe they didn't know about it.

They did what they always have..they mined with this puppy for months....so big whoop they get their hand slapped and don't dump them on us..they

still likely killed it $$$ wise...

[Coindgr]

For sure they already made a good profit, and after monero announced an algo modification, probably a new strategy, sell the miners and get even more profit. After this, develop new one for the coming algo...

[treanski]

For sure they already made a good profit, and after monero announced an algo modification, probably a new strategy, sell the miners and get even more profit. After this, develop new one for the coming algo...

im pretty sure they already have them ready to go and justwait for 28 of march to switch them on

[whitefire990]

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).

ASIC's on the other hand are NOT available to everyone.  First you need the software (Synopsys, which costs $500K), then you need at least $3 million USD for the first batch of chips (assuming you can find a billion dollar fab that wants to run your project), and most likely the first revision fails and needs at least another $3 million for another revision.

So:
CPU's + GPU's + FPGA's = available for everyone, can be programmed by anyone with extremely low cost or free tools
ASIC = extremely expensive and not feasible for an individual

I'm working on my own FPGA rig and I suggest other people do the same.  It also allows you to stay ahead of the curve, especially on smaller altcoins.  Baikal is good at making FPGA mining equipment, good for them.  Embrace change and advancement. 

And for those who are wondering, 60W for 20,000 hash on Cryptonight is absolutely feasible for a single FPGA with multiple external SRAM's.

And for those who want to develop their own FPGA rigs, make sure to analyze the algorithm(s) you want to implement, and choose the best board for the task in terms of the amount of internal memory the FPGA has vs. the amount of logic cells & DSP slices.

[uDwcHYO]

depends on how much will be released, and as far as I know another organization also announced their device

[Etherion]

Fate of this asic is sealed after fork, no asic is good for crypto,

And No GPU is good for Crypto neither, only decentralization is good for crypto, all major coins sooner or later should switch to POS instead POW, its the only way Crypto will rule the future.

PoS is a stupid idea by design.

I agree as POS =  centralization for whales.

All that the a central bank needs to do to destroy crypto that is pos is to buy the coin using free printed papper notes. 

[Etherion]

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).

ASIC's on the other hand are NOT available to everyone.  First you need the software (Synopsys, which costs $500K), then you need at least $3 million USD for the first batch of chips (assuming you can find a billion dollar fab that wants to run your project), and most likely the first revision fails and needs at least another $3 million for another revision.

So:
CPU's + GPU's + FPGA's = available for everyone, can be programmed by anyone with extremely low cost or free tools
ASIC = extremely expensive and not feasible for an individual

I'm working on my own FPGA rig and I suggest other people do the same.  It also allows you to stay ahead of the curve, especially on smaller altcoins.  Baikal is good at making FPGA mining equipment, good for them.  Embrace change and advancement. 

And for those who are wondering, 60W for 20,000 hash on Cryptonight is absolutely feasible for a single FPGA with multiple external SRAM's.

And for those who want to develop their own FPGA rigs, make sure to analyze the algorithm(s) you want to implement, and choose the best board for the task in terms of the amount of internal memory the FPGA has vs. the amount of logic cells & DSP slices.

I wish I had your time and skill.

[benutzu]

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).

ASIC's on the other hand are NOT available to everyone.  First you need the software (Synopsys, which costs $500K), then you need at least $3 million USD for the first batch of chips (assuming you can find a billion dollar fab that wants to run your project), and most likely the first revision fails and needs at least another $3 million for another revision.

So:
CPU's + GPU's + FPGA's = available for everyone, can be programmed by anyone with extremely low cost or free tools
ASIC = extremely expensive and not feasible for an individual

I'm working on my own FPGA rig and I suggest other people do the same.  It also allows you to stay ahead of the curve, especially on smaller altcoins.  Baikal is good at making FPGA mining equipment, good for them.  Embrace change and advancement. 

And for those who are wondering, 60W for 20,000 hash on Cryptonight is absolutely feasible for a single FPGA with multiple external SRAM's.

And for those who want to develop their own FPGA rigs, make sure to analyze the algorithm(s) you want to implement, and choose the best board for the task in terms of the amount of internal memory the FPGA has vs. the amount of logic cells & DSP slices.

You rock! Always thought about trying a FPGA but never took it seriously. I have background in working with embedded systems. Is it possible to give some starting points or hints? Thanks!

[DigitalCruncher]

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.

[garytheasshole]

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.

I know right? This has been bugging me for the past two days... is it a FPGA is it an ASIC are the specs correct is it an exit scam...

We'll just have to wait and see if/when someone gets one of these and opens it up.

[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.

I know right? This has been bugging me for the past two days... is it a FPGA is it an ASIC are the specs correct is it an exit scam...

We'll just have to wait and see if/when someone gets one of these and opens it up.

Asics dont do 2 different algos, Cryptonight and Cryptonight-lite. They are very similar but are they exactly the same, no. Baikal do FGGA , why would they change now.

[whitefire990]

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.)

[grchina]

I am currious why people think that baikal wont just reprogram their FPGA or even make new ones and mine with them when monero fork?They did it once and mined with them for more then 3 months without coming out with machines why not do the same again....

[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.)

The question  is how long will it take for baikal to release the new firmware for the giant n that works with the new monero algo. Or will they have to make a new miner every 6 months. Maybe someone  can ask baikal about this. If baikal offers a solution to this then they will definitely sell out.

[pikachuy]

The question  is how long will it take for baikal to release the new firmware for the giant n that works with the new monero algo. Or will they have to make a new miner every 6 months. Maybe someone  can ask baikal about this. If baikal offers a solution to this then they will definitely sell out.

Very slim chance, they haven't even released the promised 2 new algos for x10 and that miner came out couple of months ago.

Most likely there will be no firmware update for Giant N, and they will release a Giant N #2 miner to make more money from people after they done mining. LOL.

[clems]

And ETN will fork to V7
https://twitter.com/electroneuminfo/status/973182832959946757

So this miner is useless.