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

[smoolae]

The ones who know more: Is it possible to reprogram FPGA everytime some fork occurs with Cryptonight algo and thus still keep mining? Or cannot it be done?

[microtechies]

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

So this miner is useless.

That is not official it is a fan pleading with ETN to fork (also ETN take ages to make dev changes in the past)

[dlezama]

How i understand these miners developed long time ago and used by developers for mining cryptonight, and now he want sell him?

Miner developers (Baikal) use them while it is extra profitable, (why sell something, what make you extra high profit, without any competition, they mined quietly) and after they spoil the diff. and profitability start to fall, they start selling units.

Yup and this has been previously done by Bitmain and others, they "test mine" with their product for a couple of months typically before general public release. Just look at what happened on the SIA network, it was clear Bitmain had them running about 45 days before release if you look at the overall network hashrate.

These most recent miners are profitable, for the companies that produce them and the first few people that receive them. After that their value tanks.

Since Monero and I suspect other algos will are/will fork away from this Asic, it's long term value is highly questionable.

I wouldn't touch this device unless it could be had dirt cheap because of the risks of forks invalidating it.

The hashrate for SIA increased when bitmain shipped, not a day before. We were carefully monitoring it. See for example https://siastats.info/mining

[DigitalCruncher]

The ones who know more: Is it possible to reprogram FPGA everytime some fork occurs with Cryptonight algo and thus still keep mining? Or cannot it be done?

It is technically possible to reprogram FPGA, and the V7 POW function is almost  same as older one.
So new bitstream should update FPGA, but the question is will this bitstream be released and when it will happen.

BTW old X6500, ztex and others can mine altcoins with profit.

[Wananavu99]

The ones who know more: Is it possible to reprogram FPGA everytime some fork occurs with Cryptonight algo and thus still keep mining? Or cannot it be done?

It is technically possible to reprogram FPGA, and the V7 POW function is almost  same as older one.
So new bitstream should update FPGA, but the question is will this bitstream be released and when it will happen.

BTW old X6500, ztex and others can mine altcoins with profit.

Thx for bringing that up, I totally forgot about the X6500rev3 and 2 versions.  Makes me wonder about other "asic resistant" algo's out there...only matter of time for FPGA and Asic?

[crypto4pizza]

They're obviously trying to get rid of stock/make sales.  They finally responded to my email that I sent them 2 months ago for the Giant B w/their generic email with prices for all their products.

[Turkish88]

ETN team working very "fast"
While ETN change their algo all asics morally obsoleted

[treanski]

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.)

giant-n already disrupted cryptonight networks, just look over the overall hashrate increase the past months...i bet my balls it wasnt all vega rigs or botnets

[Mattthev]

ETN team working very "fast"
While ETN change their algo all asics morally obsoleted

Yeah I'm counting with ETN mining

[duyquang06]

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.)

You take the point.
Thanks for long post and good information 

[JohnTheMiningGuy]

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

So this miner is useless.

That isn't the official ETN page...

[ruplikminer]

Where can be the Baikal-n be bought? Do you think it's still profitable?

[oomurashin]

i had order one units,but asicmarket.com does not ship yet....... take over 72hrs

[treanski]

i had order one units,but asicmarket.com does not ship yet....... take over 72hrs

many people warned about them, they will propably mine few weeks with your miner and then ship it

[Cryptodelver]

We have made a list of all coins that can be mined with the Baikal Giant N https://cryptodelver.com/asic/baikal-giant-n
We wil update this list once the forks have happened.

[baikal]

Two types of cable included.

So, for Power, you can use
1) power adapter(12v >10A) by with black-red cable  "DC connector -> PCI-E connector "
2) ATX power with black-yellow cable.   "PCI-E port, one port -> three ports"

And add one specification image

[Mattthev]

Two types of cable included.

So, for Power, you can use
1) power adapter(12v >10A) by with black-red cable  "DC connector -> PCI-E connector "
2) ATX power with black-yellow cable.   "PCI-E port, one port -> three ports"

And add one specification image

That's great.
I can't read the image at all.

[bitcoinexplorer]

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.)

giant-n already disrupted cryptonight networks, just look over the overall hashrate increase the past months...i bet my balls it wasnt all vega rigs or botnets

1. What assurance do you have that Baikal will update firmwire to add new algos, where in they do not announce that they will add any new algo. And they don't do unless they announce in start.

2. They announced at pre release of Giant X 10 that they will add 2 new algorithms, which are not yet implemented after a period of 4+ months.

3. I think you should not be positive about 'new algo' for Giant N , unless Baikal atleast announce for some 'hope'

[bitcoinexplorer]

Two types of cable included.

So, for Power, you can use
1) power adapter(12v >10A) by with black-red cable  "DC connector -> PCI-E connector "
2) ATX power with black-yellow cable.   "PCI-E port, one port -> three ports"

And add one specification image

Hey Baikal


1. Will you release any new algo for Giant N, if the cryptonite major coins FORK away to avoid Baikal miners?

2. What about the promised 2 ALGOs for Giant  x10.

3. I am your big fan and humbly suggest you to remove MoQ and bring price lower due to volatility of market.

Thanks

[treanski]

Two types of cable included.

So, for Power, you can use
1) power adapter(12v >10A) by with black-red cable  "DC connector -> PCI-E connector "
2) ATX power with black-yellow cable.   "PCI-E port, one port -> three ports"

And add one specification image

will your miner be able to mine the forked coins?

answer yes or no?

no answer = no and you sell useless shit to people