DIY FPGA Mining rig for any algorithm with fast ROI

[HardwareCollector]

Please don't take the power usage here, let's consider only the hash power and the cost between XCVU9P ($4,000 FPGA) vs GTX 1080 Ti ($800 GPU)

The difference in cost is 5x, does it apply to the hashpower or not?

How quickly does FPGA programming adapt to new algos or the change of old algos?

Unfortunately, you cannot ignore power consumption, it is the primary reason to use them in the first place.

An efficient implementation of a new algorithm on an FPGA can take months, depending on it's complexity and the skill of the circuit designer.

[1714785453]

1714785453

[FatAnt]

Looks like Bittware reduced their standard warranty for the "crypto" models.  I believe they typically have 1 yr mfg warranty on their products.  Kind of disappointing the warranty was reduced that much for a $6k product.

Yes, a 90-day warranty raises a LOT of concerns.  Has Bittware done stress testing and has some reason to believe the failure rate ramps up after that timeframe?  I could understand a 90-day warranty on support issues with a 1-year hardware warranty.  

I was in the process of arranging my finances to purchase a few cards, but if the manufacturer has that little confidence in their product, they're sending me a message I can't ignore.  Even the Chinese manufacturers (with their notorious quality) give 180-day warranties.

[HardwareCollector]

With x16r and x17 requiring 2 cards would that be 300mh/s for both cards? Or 300 each equalling 600mh for two cards daisy chained together?

Clarifying the projected hash rates
X17: 2 cards daisy chained get 600MH/s total
X16R: 2 cards daisy chained get 600MH/s total
Xevan: 4 Bittware cards daisy chained get 600MH/s total

Hmmm, the math for this is incorrect and a Bittware card is not a requirement for Xevan or anything else for that matter.

Using your own numbers, if each card runs at 150 MH/s, then daisy chaining four cards together will still run the system at 150 MH/s.

[stash2coin]

Relying on these expensive card with limited supply is kind of semi failed project, these cards are great for developer but for the average Joe they are useless without proper bitstreams what will guarantee us that bitstreams will be posted over the time for these cards it not like every Hoe and Joe can program them.

If i was a FPGA developer i will target lower end FPGAs like sub $1k,  that will make it more affordable to the public, there are offerings from Altera/Intel thats very interesting for mining research like hardware PCIe controller, memory controller, interface for ethernet already build in and thats like $500-$600 FPGA price range, coupled with QDR memory, ideal miner for Monero(for monero algo we dont need much QDR scratchpad is only 2Megs for now) it doesnt mater it will be slow the key thing is how effective is compared to GPUs if the power consumptions is magnitude lower compared to GPUs well it deserves the affords.

Also we need open hardware , PCB and gerber files to be published so anyone can order the boards and assemble themselves or order assembling to 3rd party. Ordering PCBs to the chinese is dirty cheap these days.

[netmonk]

Looks like Bittware reduced their standard warranty for the "crypto" models.  I believe they typically have 1 yr mfg warranty on their products.  Kind of disappointing the warranty was reduced that much for a $6k product.

Yes, a 90-day warranty raises a LOT of concerns.  Has Bittware done stress testing and has some reason to believe the failure rate ramps up after that timeframe?  I could understand a 90-day warranty on support issues with a 1-year hardware warranty.  

I was in the process of arranging my finances to purchase a few cards, but if the manufacturer has that little confidence in their product, they're sending me a message I can't ignore.  Even the Chinese manufacturers (with their notorious quality) give 180-day warranties.

For any European purchase, the minimum warranty time is 24 months. That is why it would be better to buy those card from your local dealer, than bittware directly.
Of course, your local dealer will take this into account for pricing.

[wtfonly16]

ill ask again because people seem to not have understood me.

where
is
claymore-fpga
miner/ ?

Apparently you don't understand mining or FPGA.

Claymore has nothing to do with FPGA.  No such thing exists.


The FPGA will have it's own mining software/logic.  It has nothing to do with claymore. 

where is the fpga miner... if u buy fpga its just fpga... where is the custom logic for various coins where are the Files ?

[m5]

For any European purchase, the minimum warranty time is 24 months. That is why it would be better to buy those card from your local dealer, than bittware directly.
Of course, your local dealer will take this into account for pricing.

Local dealer would probably sell only to companies (and not end users), where the EU consumer warranty rules don't apply.

[big_daddy]

is someone selling this FPGA mining rig plug&play?
or is there an EU location where can I buy all stuff & count on software support?

[Sandal_Hat]

Just my 2 cents speculation

the point is not to compete with asics... as we have seen recently any coin with a large marketcap is going to have an asic implemented after some time. the point is that an asic will only ever work for that algorithm. an fpga can do <within reason> many many kinds of algorithms, you just need to program it. i assume the people who know fpga's can look at a coins algorithm and whip up a miner similar to how people cook up gpu miners for cpu only coins. your gravy would be any algo that you could implement efficiently onto an fpga that no one is going to make an asic for.

Yes, I get the point.


But if your FPGA cost $2000 USD and can do 500 hashrate while the asic cost 400 USD and can do the same 500 hashrate, u are still screwed.
U will switch to other coins but so will all the FPGAs and GPUs. Those other coins that are not yet touched by asics will then have their mining difficulty skyrocket due to all the FPGAs and GPUs going there.


Basically, u will lose on a cost per MH/TH basis by too much even if u can match the asics efficiency. And looking at the speed in which asics appear on new coins these days, I dont see how that can work. This looks pretty sucidal.

Just my 2 cents speculation

you cant compare them. the asic will do what an asic does, so you compete on every coin without an asic and you compete vs gpus and cpus.

*edit to add, if you gain yourself a nice niche and an asic does happen to come out, you just go be the king of some other anthill of an algo that isnt asic implemented yet. theres no point trying to make your fpga be as fast or faster than an asic.

I am saying it makes no financial sense. The major GPU coins already have asics, with ETH being the biggest. And those coins that have no asic on it will have asics on it before the FPGA will come close to ever breaking even.


And everytime an asic takes over an alternate coin, all the GPUs and FPGAs that were mining that coin will go to a non-asic coin. That means the remaining non-asic coins will have difficulty skyrocket and guess wat, that means your GPUs and FPGAs mining make less money. Everytime a new asic comes out, the FPGAs make less money. So, there is no niche. There is a limited amount to be earned from mining u see. If the asics keep appearing to take some of it, the switchers (FPGAs/GPUs) will have less and less.


Why not u calculate how much it would cost to make an FPGA that can do the equivalent of mining 504mh like the L3+ or 14TH like the S9.
Run your numbers and see the gap. While I dont have the numbers, I dont think it can work.

Anyways, good luck in your endeavors. Maybe I am wrong.


Just my 2 cents

Sounds like you should probably just stick to GPUs and ASICs, leave the real profits to the people who understand this stuff.

I understand it fine lol. Why not run your numbers and see for yourself.
I get the idea that some of u guys dont like asics and want a holy grail badly but the concept makes no sense.
There is a limited amount of money to be earned in mining by all equipment.

[Sandal_Hat]

I am saying it makes no financial sense. The major GPU coins already have asics, with ETH being the biggest. And those coins that have no asic on it will have asics on it before the FPGA will come close to ever breaking even.


And everytime an asic takes over an alternate coin, all the GPUs and FPGAs that were mining that coin will go to a non-asic coin. That means the remaining non-asic coins will have difficulty skyrocket and guess wat, that means your GPUs and FPGAs mining make less money. Everytime a new asic comes out, the FPGAs make less money. So, there is no niche. There is a limited amount to be earned from mining u see. If the asics keep appearing to take some of it, the switchers (FPGAs/GPUs) will have less and less.


Why not u calculate how much it would cost to make an FPGA that can do the equivalent of mining 504mh like the L3+ or 14TH like the S9.
Run your numbers and see the gap. While I dont have the numbers, I dont think it can work.

Anyways, good luck in your endeavors. Maybe I am wrong.


Just my 2 cents

While your point of view is true in general, there are a couple of exceptions: mainly space and power constraints. Let’s be very specific in our comparison to avoid meaningless comparisons, XCVU9P ($4,000 FPGA) vs GTX 1080 Ti ($800 GPU).

Now let’s take the Phi1612 algorithm and give the FPGA a more realistic 5x performance advantage against the GPU at a power consumption rate of 150 watts (0.150 kWh). I would rather run a 100 FPGA farm (17.5 kWh) vs a 500 GPU farm (87.5 kWh) any day and here’s why. Lower overall costs if you believe the 5x advantage ascribed to the FPGA.

4x FPGAs and components approx. ($16K + $1.2K) in server chassis and add 100 watts for overhead.
4x GPUs and components approx. ($3.2K + $0.65K) in frame and add 100 watts for overhead.

$430K 100 FPGA farm vs $481.25K 500 GPU farm. Can you at least agree that this makes financial sense?

No that makes no sense. 481.25k/430k = 12% better only LOL.
If u or someone can make a machine that mines ETH 5 times more efficient than a GPU can, u would sell alot of it. It wont need to be an FPGA.

----------------------------
Concept doesnt work
----------------------------

Conceptually, u are paying more for buying it piecemeal wise and paying more for a machine that has algo switching capability.
Your competitor gets bulk discount by buying alot at once... AND ... is paying for a cheaper machine, although it can do 1 algo at a time.
Your competitor will always go after the major algo (major coin), pushing u out of that coin/algo and forcing u to mine the smaller coins.

---------------------
Rough Comparison:
----------------------
And while the E3 does 180mh for 800watts which is comparable to some GPUs, bitmain can sell it for as little as 800 USD if they want to. Thats the price they sold on first batch. To do 180mh, u will need to spend about 2500 USD on a rig. The asic can be 3 times cheaper

For 300watts, u can get 10,000 sol on asic or for gpu, u get say 1,100 sol? Thats 9 times more efficient and the asic is also far cheaper on a per sol basis.


If u consider the gap between using gpu to mine bitcoin/litecoin, vs asics, the gap is even bigger.
Doing it 12% better on FPGA isnt a game-changer at all.

---------------------
Why FPGA cant win
-----------------------

There is a limited amount of money that can be made from mining.
Lets say, for illustration, there are 100k of coins released for miners to earn every 10 mins

In the past, 10% of all coins are mined by ASICS and 90% by GPUs or FPGAs (aka switchers)
Time passes and asics mine 30% and then 50% and then 70% of all total mined coins.

Thus, as  time pass, the switchers (GPUs and FPGAs), now mine only the remaining 70% and then 50% and now 30% of coins.
Hence, as time passes, there will be more and more switchers sharing a smaller and smaller percentage of the mining PIE. The switchers mining profits will just decrease and decrease as the total % of all coins they mine decrease


And if a new major coin appears, the FPGA wont mine it long before an asic takes over. The remaining switchers will be sharing a smaller and smaller pool of coins. Thus, they will earn less and less as the remaining pool of coins have their difficulties skyrocket. Dont be surprised if GPUs get a 5-10% share of coins in future.

-----------------------------------
Speed of Asics being developed
------------------------------------

I mean just look at this year. It is only early May and we have a decred, sia, eth, cryptonight and now zcash asic. Thats 5 major algo and at least 5 major coins being taken down by asics. It is like one new algo takes down one major coin a month. Furthermore there might be other asics algo already made, just not released yet. And lets face it, a new major alt coin appears, it will be taken down by asics soon.


------------------------
Difficulty wave coming
------------------------

Ok, so in June 2018, the E3s will be shipped. ETH difficulty will skyrocket and alot of GPUs will move from ETH to other coins. Expect other coins difficulty to increase. The good news is that E3 price was increased from 800 to 2,100 usd. This means slighty lesser E3 purchased and lesser difficulty increase compared to if it were 800 USD. Do note that E3 price may go down again in future down which leads to more E3 purchases and higher difficulty. The antminer L3+ went down in price and it lead to a massive litecoin difficulty increase. If the E3 goes down in price, it is gonna take down GPU/FPGA mining even more. Remember, it can be priced 3 times lower than a gpu rig. A far stronger E3 may appear as well. U are pretty much at the whim of bitmain here.

ETH is actually the major gpu coin. If E3 price down to 800 USD again, it is goodbye to all GPU/FPGA.

The Z9 mini will take down zec/btc-gold gpu mining, period. SIA and Decred are asic owned.


Thus, I just dont see how it will work. By right, it was over for gpu when E3 appeared since eth is the major gpu coin. Does anyone know how much % of GPU mining is ETH. Is it over 50%?

Asics have clearly won the war. They may very well push GPUs to have 5-10% of total coins being mined in future.
I believe u are letting your feelings cloud your judgement. Anyways, good luck to u buddy.



Just my 2 cents

[netmonk]

I am saying it makes no financial sense. The major GPU coins already have asics, with ETH being the biggest. And those coins that have no asic on it will have asics on it before the FPGA will come close to ever breaking even.


And everytime an asic takes over an alternate coin, all the GPUs and FPGAs that were mining that coin will go to a non-asic coin. That means the remaining non-asic coins will have difficulty skyrocket and guess wat, that means your GPUs and FPGAs mining make less money. Everytime a new asic comes out, the FPGAs make less money. So, there is no niche. There is a limited amount to be earned from mining u see. If the asics keep appearing to take some of it, the switchers (FPGAs/GPUs) will have less and less.


Why not u calculate how much it would cost to make an FPGA that can do the equivalent of mining 504mh like the L3+ or 14TH like the S9.
Run your numbers and see the gap. While I dont have the numbers, I dont think it can work.

Anyways, good luck in your endeavors. Maybe I am wrong.


Just my 2 cents

While your point of view is true in general, there are a couple of exceptions: mainly space and power constraints. Let’s be very specific in our comparison to avoid meaningless comparisons, XCVU9P ($4,000 FPGA) vs GTX 1080 Ti ($800 GPU).

Now let’s take the Phi1612 algorithm and give the FPGA a more realistic 5x performance advantage against the GPU at a power consumption rate of 150 watts (0.150 kWh). I would rather run a 100 FPGA farm (17.5 kWh) vs a 500 GPU farm (87.5 kWh) any day and here’s why. Lower overall costs if you believe the 5x advantage ascribed to the FPGA.

4x FPGAs and components approx. ($16K + $1.2K) in server chassis and add 100 watts for overhead.
4x GPUs and components approx. ($3.2K + $0.65K) in frame and add 100 watts for overhead.

$430K 100 FPGA farm vs $481.25K 500 GPU farm. Can you at least agree that this makes financial sense?

No that makes no sense. 481.25k/430k = 12% better only LOL.

---------------------
Rough Comparison:
----------------------
And while the E3 does 180mh for 800watts which is comparable to some GPUs, bitmain can sell it for as little as 800 USD if they want to. Thats the price they sold on first batch. To do 180mh, u will need to spend about 2500 on a rig. The asic can be 3 times cheaper

For 300watts, u can get 10,000 sol on asic or for gpu, u get say 1,100 sol? Thats 9 times more efficient and the asic is also far cheaper on a per sol basis.

If u consider the gap between using gpu to mine bitcoin/litecoin, vs asics, the gap is even bigger.
Doing it 12% beter on FPGA isnt a game-changer at all.

---------------------
Why FPGA cant win
-----------------------

There is a limited amount of money that can be made from mining.
Lets say, for illustration, there are 100k of coins released for miners to earn every 10 mins

In the past, 10% of all coins are mined by ASICS and 90% by GPUs or FPGAs (aka switchers)
Time passes and asics mine 30% and then 50% and then 70% of all total mined coins.

Thus, as  time pass, the switchers (GPUs and FPGAs), now mine only the remaining 70% and then 50% and now 30% of coins.
Hence, as time passes, there will be more and more switchers sharing a smaller and smaller percentage of the mining PIE. The switchers mining profits will just decrease and decrease as the total % of all coins they mine decrease


And if a new major coin appears, the FPGA wont mine it long before an asic takes over. The remaining switchers will be sharing a smaller and smaller pool of coins. Thus, they will earn less and less as the remaining pool of coins have their difficulties skyrocket
Thus, u gotta be abit mad to think u should invest in more expensive equipment just for that.

--------------------
Speed of Asics being developed
---------------------

I mean just look at this year. It is only early May and we have a decred, sia, eth, cryptonight and now zcash asic. Thats 5 major algo and at least 5 major coins being taken down by asics. It is like one new algo takes down one major coin a month. Furthermore there might be other asics algo already made, just not released yet. And lets face it, a new major alt coin appears, it will be taken down by asics soon.


-------------------
Difficulty wave coming
-------------------

Ok, so in June 2018, the E3s will be shipped. ETH difficulty will skyrocket and alot of GPUs will move from ETH to other coins. Expect other coins difficulty to increase. The good news is that E3 price was increased from 800 to 2,100 usd. This means slighty lesser E3 purchased and lesser difficulty increase compared to if it were 800 USD. Do note that E3 price may go down again in future down which leads to more E3 purchases and higher difficulty. The antminer L3+ went down in price and wat occured was a massive litecoin difficulty increase. If the E3 goes down in price, it is gonna take down GPU/FPGA mining even more. Remember, it can be priced 3 times lower than a gpu rig and a far stronger E3 may appear as well. U are pretty much at the whim of bitmain here. ETH is actually the major gpu coin. E3 price down to 800 USD and goodbye to all gpu because all gpu will move to other coins and all other coins difficulty will skyrocket. This will probably occur eventually.

The Z9 mini will take down zec/btc-gold gpu mining, period. SIA and Decred are asic owned.

Thus, I just dont see how it will work. By right, it was over for gpu when E3 appeared since eth is the major gpu coin. Does anyone know how much % of GPU mining is ETH. Is it over 50%?

Asics have clearly won the war. They may very well push GPUs to have 5-10% of total coins being mined in future.
I believe u are letting your feelings cloud your judgement. Anyways, good luck to u buddy.



Just my 2 cents

Your 2 cents are quite interesting but miss the point.
What does ASIC resistance is ?
Basically, choosing hashing algorithm for which developping ASIC cost a lot and therefore renders mass production unattractive.
This was the main point of Cryptonight in 2013/2014, choosing high memory intensive algorithm, to put a physical economical barrier to ASIC developpment (back in the time memory integration on ASIC was very expensive).
Given technological progress, in 2017, it seems memory unit are more affordable for ASIC, and we see ASIC of Cryptonight publicly released in ferbruary 2018, and we suspect them to be already mining since july 2017.
The major pitfall of ASIC is staticness. Which means that the work it is designed for cannot be updated or changed after. So the new strategy for beeing asic resistant, if to often change POW algorithm. It's a cat and mouse game.
So when coin dev choose to change their pow algorithm, like Monero dev did, those expensive and efficient piece of hardware are becoming useless except for blocking door (or targeting minor CN coins for less profit).

Some other coin dev choose to not change their pow like BTC did not after ASIC appearance. Like zcash seems to choose also.
In that case, it is clearly obvious that ASIC will soonner or later dominate the mining of those coins, any other kind of hardware are far less efficient and more energy consumming.

So where is the market for FPGA mining: Basicaly all coins which developpers want to keep ASIC mining away. Most of cryptonight variant for instance, Even if monero change pow every 6 months, every 6 months developpers can release updated fpga file to adapt to new pow.
Also all coin which are not attractive enough to invest huge money into ASIC developpment based on exotic POW which can fit nicely in FPGA. Bringing better h/w ratio than gpu/cpu mining. Of course when an ASIC is existing for a coin, and developper dont want to hardfork POW, there is no more room for cpu/gpu/fpga mining.

[Sandal_Hat]

I am saying it makes no financial sense. The major GPU coins already have asics, with ETH being the biggest. And those coins that have no asic on it will have asics on it before the FPGA will come close to ever breaking even.


And everytime an asic takes over an alternate coin, all the GPUs and FPGAs that were mining that coin will go to a non-asic coin. That means the remaining non-asic coins will have difficulty skyrocket and guess wat, that means your GPUs and FPGAs mining make less money. Everytime a new asic comes out, the FPGAs make less money. So, there is no niche. There is a limited amount to be earned from mining u see. If the asics keep appearing to take some of it, the switchers (FPGAs/GPUs) will have less and less.


Why not u calculate how much it would cost to make an FPGA that can do the equivalent of mining 504mh like the L3+ or 14TH like the S9.
Run your numbers and see the gap. While I dont have the numbers, I dont think it can work.

Anyways, good luck in your endeavors. Maybe I am wrong.


Just my 2 cents

While your point of view is true in general, there are a couple of exceptions: mainly space and power constraints. Let’s be very specific in our comparison to avoid meaningless comparisons, XCVU9P ($4,000 FPGA) vs GTX 1080 Ti ($800 GPU).

Now let’s take the Phi1612 algorithm and give the FPGA a more realistic 5x performance advantage against the GPU at a power consumption rate of 150 watts (0.150 kWh). I would rather run a 100 FPGA farm (17.5 kWh) vs a 500 GPU farm (87.5 kWh) any day and here’s why. Lower overall costs if you believe the 5x advantage ascribed to the FPGA.

4x FPGAs and components approx. ($16K + $1.2K) in server chassis and add 100 watts for overhead.
4x GPUs and components approx. ($3.2K + $0.65K) in frame and add 100 watts for overhead.

$430K 100 FPGA farm vs $481.25K 500 GPU farm. Can you at least agree that this makes financial sense?

No that makes no sense. 481.25k/430k = 12% better only LOL.

---------------------
Rough Comparison:
----------------------
And while the E3 does 180mh for 800watts which is comparable to some GPUs, bitmain can sell it for as little as 800 USD if they want to. Thats the price they sold on first batch. To do 180mh, u will need to spend about 2500 on a rig. The asic can be 3 times cheaper

For 300watts, u can get 10,000 sol on asic or for gpu, u get say 1,100 sol? Thats 9 times more efficient and the asic is also far cheaper on a per sol basis.

If u consider the gap between using gpu to mine bitcoin/litecoin, vs asics, the gap is even bigger.
Doing it 12% beter on FPGA isnt a game-changer at all.

---------------------
Why FPGA cant win
-----------------------

There is a limited amount of money that can be made from mining.
Lets say, for illustration, there are 100k of coins released for miners to earn every 10 mins

In the past, 10% of all coins are mined by ASICS and 90% by GPUs or FPGAs (aka switchers)
Time passes and asics mine 30% and then 50% and then 70% of all total mined coins.

Thus, as  time pass, the switchers (GPUs and FPGAs), now mine only the remaining 70% and then 50% and now 30% of coins.
Hence, as time passes, there will be more and more switchers sharing a smaller and smaller percentage of the mining PIE. The switchers mining profits will just decrease and decrease as the total % of all coins they mine decrease


And if a new major coin appears, the FPGA wont mine it long before an asic takes over. The remaining switchers will be sharing a smaller and smaller pool of coins. Thus, they will earn less and less as the remaining pool of coins have their difficulties skyrocket
Thus, u gotta be abit mad to think u should invest in more expensive equipment just for that.

--------------------
Speed of Asics being developed
---------------------

I mean just look at this year. It is only early May and we have a decred, sia, eth, cryptonight and now zcash asic. Thats 5 major algo and at least 5 major coins being taken down by asics. It is like one new algo takes down one major coin a month. Furthermore there might be other asics algo already made, just not released yet. And lets face it, a new major alt coin appears, it will be taken down by asics soon.


-------------------
Difficulty wave coming
-------------------

Ok, so in June 2018, the E3s will be shipped. ETH difficulty will skyrocket and alot of GPUs will move from ETH to other coins. Expect other coins difficulty to increase. The good news is that E3 price was increased from 800 to 2,100 usd. This means slighty lesser E3 purchased and lesser difficulty increase compared to if it were 800 USD. Do note that E3 price may go down again in future down which leads to more E3 purchases and higher difficulty. The antminer L3+ went down in price and wat occured was a massive litecoin difficulty increase. If the E3 goes down in price, it is gonna take down GPU/FPGA mining even more. Remember, it can be priced 3 times lower than a gpu rig and a far stronger E3 may appear as well. U are pretty much at the whim of bitmain here. ETH is actually the major gpu coin. E3 price down to 800 USD and goodbye to all gpu because all gpu will move to other coins and all other coins difficulty will skyrocket. This will probably occur eventually.

The Z9 mini will take down zec/btc-gold gpu mining, period. SIA and Decred are asic owned.

Thus, I just dont see how it will work. By right, it was over for gpu when E3 appeared since eth is the major gpu coin. Does anyone know how much % of GPU mining is ETH. Is it over 50%?

Asics have clearly won the war. They may very well push GPUs to have 5-10% of total coins being mined in future.
I believe u are letting your feelings cloud your judgement. Anyways, good luck to u buddy.



Just my 2 cents

Your 2 cents are quite interesting but miss the point.
What does ASIC resistance is ?
Basically, choosing hashing algorithm for which developping ASIC cost a lot and therefore renders mass production unattractive.
This was the main point of Cryptonight in 2013/2014, choosing high memory intensive algorithm, to put a physical economical barrier to ASIC developpment (back in the time memory integration on ASIC was very expensive).
Given technological progress, in 2017, it seems memory unit are more affordable for ASIC, and we see ASIC of Cryptonight publicly released in ferbruary 2018, and we suspect them to be already mining since july 2017.
The major pitfall of ASIC is staticness. Which means that the work it is designed for cannot be updated or changed after. So the new strategy for beeing asic resistant, if to often change POW algorithm. It's a cat and mouse game.
So when coin dev choose to change their pow algorithm, like Monero dev did, those expensive and efficient piece of hardware are becoming useless except for blocking door (or targeting minor CN coins for less profit).

Some other coin dev choose to not change their pow like BTC did not after ASIC appearance. Like zcash seems to choose also.
In that case, it is clearly obvious that ASIC will soonner or later dominate the mining of those coins, any other kind of hardware are far less efficient and more energy consumming.

So where is the market for FPGA mining: Basicaly all coins which developpers want to keep ASIC mining away. Most of cryptonight variant for instance, Even if monero change pow every 6 months, every 6 months developpers can release updated fpga file to adapt to new pow.
Also all coin which are not attractive enough to invest huge money into ASIC developpment based on exotic POW which can fit nicely in FPGA. Bringing better h/w ratio than gpu/cpu mining. Of course when an ASIC is existing for a coin, and developper dont want to hardfork POW, there is no more room for cpu/gpu/fpga mining.

I edited previous post to explain more. Do read the conceptual part.


There are too few developers that will fork just to avoid asics lol. The only major that did that is monero. That is why asics which used to command say 10% of all mining, now command maybe 70-80%? Why do u think GPUs keep losing market share to Asics?


And it seems u didnt realize that as it is, once the antminer E3 and and antminer Z9 hit the market later, it is going to drive eth and zec/btc-gold,etc difficulty up so high that alot of GPUs will switch to other coins. If the antminer E3 goes down in price, difficulty of ETH will skyrocket.


The key lies in antminer E3 price. ETH is too major a coin. They may just decide to cash in later with lower E3 prices.


==============================
What it is already CHECKMATE FOR GPU/FPGA
==============================
U just dont realize it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7wufiq/ethereum_is_64_of_all_gpu_mining_by_power_09gw_of/
According to this thread, ETH is 64% of all GPU mining power. I always thought it was above 50%.

That being said, the antminer E3 is actually checkmate for GPU already. If they just push it down to 800 USD again. Sales of E3 will skyrocket leading to ETH difficulty skyrocket. GPUs will move out of ETH to other coins. Difficulty of other coins will rise too. GPUs will be wiped out and probably sold en mass cheap on ebay. U see, they can manufacture it at too cheaply for gpus to compete.

U are actually not competing with your asic competitor with your FPGA. U are at their mercy. I hope u realize this. I am talking about existing asics and not them having to come up with a stronger one yet.


FPGA can only win if lets say over 50% of GPU mining power is shared among say 100 crypto coins. Ahhh and then, u would wanna use FPGA because it is too difficult to create 100 different asics to mine 100 different coins.
However, that isnt the case in crypto world. Eth holds 64% lol and a few major coins hold most of the other %. That is why crypto manufacturers mostly build Asics. They arent stupid. With 5 asics appearing so far this year to take down 5 gpu coins, it seems they can create a new asic every 30 days now. Thus, it is possible that 90+% of future coins are asic coins.


Now, do wise up and stop pointing that small handgun at the tanks and bazookas. U aint gonna win. Oh and u are welcome buddy

P.S> U may even wanna consider shorting nvdia and amd stock in july-august before earnings lol. The downdraft should show up by then.


Just my 2 cents.

[Sandal_Hat]

So, I would say the key is just ethereum and the E3.

E3 sold cheaply --> Lots of E3 sales --> skyrocket eth difficulty -->ETH GPU power moves from ETH to other coins --> the other coins (36% of mining power) cannot take the huge 64% of mining power from ETH GPUs--> difficulty of all other coins skyrocket --> Low gpu/fpga profits--> GPUs sold cheap en masse on ebay

This, it would be better to just focus on making a better Eth asic. ETH controls majority of GPU mining after all. I would think u cant manufacture it cheaper since u dont have economies of scale. Thus, u have to make it more efficient somehow...if u wanna take on the king.

Just my 2 cents

[yrk1957]

So, I would say the key is just ethereum and the E3.

E3 sold cheaply --> Lots of E3 sales --> skyrocket eth difficulty -->ETH GPU power moves from ETH to other coins --> the other coins (36% of mining power) cannot take the huge 64% of mining power from ETH GPUs--> difficulty of all other coins skyrocket --> Low gpu/fpga profits--> GPUs sold cheap en masse on ebay

This, it would be better to just focus on making a better Eth asic. ETH controls majority of GPU mining after all. I would think u cant manufacture it cheaper since u dont have economies of scale. Thus, u have to make it more efficient somehow...if u wanna take on the king.

Just my 2 cents

All premised on - "E3 sold cheaply"?

Last time Bitmain increased the price from 800 to 2000 odd. Without even delivering a single one! Bitmain is not going to sell you their money making machine cheap...

[B1tUnl0ck3r]

got a quote from bittmex about the xupp3r. about $5900USD with its development kit but with no memory.

and also a price a for xupp3r with development kit and two of the qdrii+ 288 mb modules. about $12500 USD. ouch. the qdrii+ memory may not even help much with algos that are mostly compute heavy, so im wondering if its worth it. have to try and get some numbers for eth.

Ok now pls roughly gauge how much MH or TH u can get if u buy and fix one of those against any of the current ASIC algo.

Because lets say if u gotta spend say 2000 USD to get your FPGA able to do 504mh on scrypt, which makes it equivalent to an L3+ and your FPGA can mine say 3 other coins that are not asic linked yet, I hope u realize that the L3+ is alot cheaper at 725 USD now and it was once 450 USD.

don't forget that the price you pay to get an fpga isn't equal the cost to make it .

the real question isn't for how much are sold fpgas but how much do they cost to make.

So, I would say the key is just ethereum and the E3.

E3 sold cheaply --> Lots of E3 sales --> skyrocket eth difficulty -->ETH GPU power moves from ETH to other coins --> the other coins (36% of mining power) cannot take the huge 64% of mining power from ETH GPUs--> difficulty of all other coins skyrocket --> Low gpu/fpga profits--> GPUs sold cheap en masse on ebay

This, it would be better to just focus on making a better Eth asic. ETH controls majority of GPU mining after all. I would think u cant manufacture it cheaper since u dont have economies of scale. Thus, u have to make it more efficient somehow...if u wanna take on the king.

Just my 2 cents

All premised on - "E3 sold cheaply"?

Last time Bitmain increased the price from 800 to 2000 odd. Without even delivering a single one! Bitmain is not going to sell you their money making machine cheap...

why should they? because you are americans? you want an impunity rape card with that too?

[HardwareCollector]

@Sandal_Hat

Don’t pretend the example I gave makes no financial sense; it would be like arguing with someone that 2 is not less than 3, it’s pointless.

Now, I understand what you are saying but you are also conflating the issues. A reconfigurable system that costs less, and consumes 5x less space and energy; but has comparable hash rates for a given algorithm is preferred for mining, and that’s the issue. If such a system exits, it would push out the less efficient system.

As an aside, I know that dollar for dollar in the long run for mining, FPGAs lose to GPUs, and GPUs lose to ASICs, but it doesn't happen overnight

[B1tUnl0ck3r]

@Sandal_Hat

Don’t pretend the example I gave makes no financial sense; it would be like arguing with someone that 2 is not less than 3, it’s pointless.

Now, I understand what you are saying but you are also conflating the issues. A reconfigurable system that costs less, and consumes 5x less space and energy; but has comparable hash rates for a given algorithm is preferred for mining, and that’s the issue. If such a system exits, it would push out the less efficient system.

As an aside, I know that dollar for dollar in the long run for mining, FPGAs lose to GPUs, and GPUs lose to ASICs, but it doesn't happen overnight

no it shouldn't push the less efficient system, it's like a private mining software... if you keep it for yourself, all the suckers believe to have the hedge, while they are just the muppets of show bigger than their little understanding can grasp... behind the curtail..

anyway, fpga, asics aren't priced in $ anymore... live with the time please .

[dragonmike]

Your discussions omit three important parameters:

1) coin price increases (crowds out diff increases)
2) emergence of new coins & algos (reduces asic dominance)
3) the willingness of large coins to fork to fight asics (reduces asic dominance)

These speak against loss of profitability and arguments against reprogrammable fpgas as well.

[Mashy81]

these can be reprogrammed if there is a fork yes but it will still take a month or 2. It takes minutes to switch software on gpu.

Also the next generation of gpus 10nm and 7nm will be out this year that will be big efficiency increase for gpu. Its gonna be a while longer for fpga to get to 10nm and 7nm.

the gap will be closing before you are even finished. Mining is moving so quick now.
Good luck.

[m5]

these can be reprogrammed if there is a fork yes but it will still take a month or 2. It takes minutes to switch software on gpu.

Also the next generation of gpus 10nm and 7nm will be out this year that will be big efficiency increase for gpu. Its gonna be a while longer for fpga to get to 10nm and 7nm.

the gap will be closing before you are even finished. Mining is moving so quick now.
Good luck.

Why do you think it would take a month to re-program FPGA to a new fork? I guess it takes max few days after the code for GPU is released as the fork changes are quite small, so the only few lines of code is changed, but enough so that it breaks already manufactured custom ASICs.
It can take few months to design new custom algo for FPGA, but not to make few changes due to fork.