DIY FPGA Mining rig for any algorithm with fast ROI

[TheronB]

How powerful is the Xeon with integrated FPGA compared to the cards in the original post regarding hash rates?

What are the hashrates and current profits on the Nexys Video board?
I'd like to wet my appetite a little now and perhaps wait for the Bitware card with integrated HBM assuming it would also be supported.

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[cryptaioracle]

Not to be a big skeptic, but can we see actual mining rewards / performance somewhere?
I get that you say the ROI is 70-200 but I dont see much evidence that its anywhere near that without some serious video/photos its hard to put trust in something without ensuring that it does what you say it does.


What I see is:
1) GPU mining is losing its profitable and ASICs are knocking down the doors, this causes people to find other outlets
2) The OP is probably getting a referral payment for any hardware sales with these two companies (if not, maybe he should? I dont know, being transparent about this would be best)
3) OP has the ability (or could?) to lock the device with a signature to only work with his software, which makes them paperweights if he chooses to do some shady things (not saying he will or thats the case)


I would prefer decentralization in this field, the only way that'll happen is to remove the barrier from entry between the manu and software, middle man are reaping the rewards here.

Did you read my previous post about Personal Accelerator and Open Source Org for development, maintenance and support of FPGA  algorithm programming?

[cryptaioracle]

TLDR: Sounds Neat.  Do it if you can afford it.  Be aware of cost and risk factor of future support.

I have been mining off-and-on since 2014 and I remember quite well the FPGA interest back in 2014.  I'm sure there have been other FPGA efforts before 2014 but my point is to simply share my own opinion.

First, I'll just say this is probably a great opportunity for people who can afford this.  Not everyone will be on board to spend $5K to get a system running.  That's a rough estimate.. but $4K for the FPGA and then whatever else for ancillary equipment like mobo/ram/psu/etc.  

So people saying that this will cause the demise of GPU mining are being short sighted.  

Asides from being expensive, it is technically daunting.  We would be relying on a programmer for future firmware updates and from what I've seen the support is just not to the same scale as the existing support for other mining options.

So I'll just summarize by saying this sounds like an awesome opportunity for diversification of a mining portfolio if you have the money for that.  I imagine youtubers like VoskCoin would be jumping all over this.

TLDR: Sounds Neat.  Do it if you can afford it.  Be aware of cost and risk factor of future support.
 

This is probably one of the best and grounded comments I've read on this forum in a long time.  The fact is that 95% of miners out there have a very rudimentary understanding of computers, algorithms, and programming.  The barrier for entry is minuscule;  Buy a few GPUs and there are numerous programs available that are designed to mine on them.  I really can't envision a scenario where FPGAs will become fully mainstream.  As evidenced by all of the posts on here, they are difficult to buy, let alone program.  The real profits are always going to go to the people who spend the time and effort to find an edge in the mining game that goes beyond Nvidia, AMD, and Bitmain.

[Etherion]

I am a bit worried about the lack of developers for FPGA's. I have done some basic VHDL a few years ago and can say it is no small feat to outperform tempered gpu/cpu based solutions such as Ccminer. it has had hundreds of software engineers experts optimizing it over time. IF you were to implement a CPU or GPU on an FPGA the FPGA would be much much slower. 

I am worried that the XCVU095 is not the right FPGA and that pople will be jumping on the bandwagon only to see the OP change in the near future to another chip due to silicon contraints.

[Ginzink]

It's all nonsense. There is no evidence to prove the hashrate and power consumption.

Evidence is what i am waiting for as well, and alot of others i think
It is too big an investment to do on blind faith for us who cant program an FPGA ourself.

But it is good of the OP to share it if he actualy does it, and probably very profitable for him!

[Etherion]

It's all nonsense. There is no evidence to prove the hashrate and power consumption.

Evidence is what i am waiting for as well, and alot of others i think
It is too big an investment to do on blind faith for us who cant program an FPGA ourself.

But it is good of the OP to share it if he actualy does it, and probably very profitable for him!

I agree. I hope more developers come also.

[Etherion]

What I don't understand is why the op is not devoutning his efforts to equihash and cryptonightv7. These both has or will boot Asic from the network and they both got late coins support. For all that we know neoscyrpt and ethash has ver efficiency asic on the network that we are not aware of yet.

[baboon1234]

Do FPGA (or anything else) have any similar use cases to crypto mining? Guess the point I wanna make is : Are there any other devices or processors which I can earn "passive" income with in some shape or form?

[greerso]

It's all nonsense. There is no evidence to prove the hashrate and power consumption.

This.

[GPUHoarder]

It's all nonsense. There is no evidence to prove the hashrate and power consumption.

This.

There are at least 3, maybe 4 independent FPGA devs in this post who are backing up the numbers of the original posts as reasonable or similar to our own. You may be fair to say you haven’t personally witnessed the evidence, but it is silly to insinuate that because you don’t know how to develop for FPGAs the performance is nonsense is a bit of a stretch.

At the end of the day mining is a competition, and most of us truly competing are not going to show our hands just to satisfy pundits.

[greerso]

It's all nonsense. There is no evidence to prove the hashrate and power consumption.

This.

There are at least 3, maybe 4 independent FPGA devs in this post who are backing up the numbers of the original posts as reasonable or similar to our own. You may be fair to say you haven’t personally witnessed the evidence, but it is silly to insinuate that because you don’t know how to develop for FPGAs the performance is nonsense is a bit of a stretch.

At the end of the day mining is a competition, and most of us truly competing are not going to show our hands just to satisfy pundits.

You have spoke the most sense on this and the other thread and personally I am convinced you are intelligent and know what you are talking about on this subject.  That doesn't mean to say that I have any reason to trust you or those trying to profit here when there is still not even so much as screen shot.   I could be misreading the information presented, but the only thing that I saw was a screenshot of a miner making about a penny per hour and it wasn't clear whether it was an AWS EC2 instance or the hardware photographed.

A couple of people here are dangling carrots to solicit business.  One of them has made statements that you and one other have debunked.  It is reasonable for anyone that is hungry for a carrot to question whether it is real or not.

I understand completely why you would wont to hold onto your competitive advantage.  Especially if it is something that you depend on as your primary form of income.  Personally, I like to think that if I were using open source projects and information derived from a community that I would contribute any information that I had to offer back to that same community but that is easy for me to say while it is not costing me anything to do so.

For me, I am actively seeking to hire an FPGA developer to prove the concept and will release any code commissioned as open source.  Let me know if you're interested 

[2112]

For me, I am actively seeking to hire an FPGA developer to prove the concept and will release any code commissioned as open source.  Let me know if you're interested 

Yeah, you've solicited at fiverr or mturk.

You can't fight bullshit with bullshit. You sound like one of those people that would say that they "hired a dentist" when they go for the tooth cleaning.

The anger that comes through your posts is the same of the anger of the compulsive gamblers, that know that they have problem but cannot deal with it. You get the rush from buying the proverbial "pig in a poke" or "cat in a bag", but just can't admit that to yourself. All the rationalizations you are posting are just for your own consumption, to convince yourself that you don't have a problem. I used to work in the entertainment and "gaming" (polite world for regulated gambling that they use for themselves), I've seen the type at many trade shows.

Quoting the rest for posterity:

You have spoke the most sense on this and the other thread and personally I am convinced you are intelligent and know what you are talking about on this subject.  That doesn't mean to say that I have any reason to trust you or those trying to profit here when there is still not even so much as screen shot.   I could be misreading the information presented, but the only thing that I saw was a screenshot of a miner making about a penny per hour and it wasn't clear whether it was an AWS EC2 instance or the hardware photographed.

A couple of people here are dangling carrots to solicit business.  One of them has made statements that you and one other have debunked.  It is reasonable for anyone that is hungry for a carrot to question whether it is real or not.

I understand completely why you would wont to hold onto your competitive advantage.  Especially if it is something that you depend on as your primary form of income.  Personally, I like to think that if I were using open source projects and information derived from a community that I would contribute any information that I had to offer back to that same community but that is easy for me to say while it is not costing me anything to do so.

[greerso]

For me, I am actively seeking to hire an FPGA developer to prove the concept and will release any code commissioned as open source.  Let me know if you're interested 

Yeah, you've solicited at fiverr or mturk.

You can't fight bullshit with bullshit. You sound like one of those people that would say that they "hired a dentist" when they go for the tooth cleaning.

The anger that comes through your posts is the same of the anger of the compulsive gamblers, that know that they have problem but cannot deal with it. You get the rush from buying the proverbial "pig in a poke" or "cat in a bag", but just can't admit that to yourself. All the rationalizations you are posting are just for your own consumption, to convince yourself that you don't have a problem. I used to work in the entertainment and "gaming" (polite world for regulated gambling that they use for themselves), I've seen the type at many trade shows.

Quoting the rest for posterity:

You have spoke the most sense on this and the other thread and personally I am convinced you are intelligent and know what you are talking about on this subject.  That doesn't mean to say that I have any reason to trust you or those trying to profit here when there is still not even so much as screen shot.   I could be misreading the information presented, but the only thing that I saw was a screenshot of a miner making about a penny per hour and it wasn't clear whether it was an AWS EC2 instance or the hardware photographed.

A couple of people here are dangling carrots to solicit business.  One of them has made statements that you and one other have debunked.  It is reasonable for anyone that is hungry for a carrot to question whether it is real or not.

I understand completely why you would wont to hold onto your competitive advantage.  Especially if it is something that you depend on as your primary form of income.  Personally, I like to think that if I were using open source projects and information derived from a community that I would contribute any information that I had to offer back to that same community but that is easy for me to say while it is not costing me anything to do so.

Not at all angry.  Attempted to make that clear on my last post.

My point here is that some very smart people here are making unproven claims.  It is healthy to question those claims that others here are hoping to profit from.

If you truly do have a skill that has given you a competitive advantage, by all means keep it to yourself, you've earned it.

[Etherion]

I'm curious to see how this plays out. Is there more money to be made having an arms race between devs producing Bitstreams or working for a large farm/mining operation.

[yrk1957]

For me, I am actively seeking to hire an FPGA developer to prove the concept and will release any code commissioned as open source.  Let me know if you're interested 

Yeah, you've solicited at fiverr or mturk.

You can't fight bullshit with bullshit. You sound like one of those people that would say that they "hired a dentist" when they go for the tooth cleaning.

The anger that comes through your posts is the same of the anger of the compulsive gamblers, that know that they have problem but cannot deal with it. You get the rush from buying the proverbial "pig in a poke" or "cat in a bag", but just can't admit that to yourself. All the rationalizations you are posting are just for your own consumption, to convince yourself that you don't have a problem. I used to work in the entertainment and "gaming" (polite world for regulated gambling that they use for themselves), I've seen the type at many trade shows.

Quoting the rest for posterity:

You have spoke the most sense on this and the other thread and personally I am convinced you are intelligent and know what you are talking about on this subject.  That doesn't mean to say that I have any reason to trust you or those trying to profit here when there is still not even so much as screen shot.   I could be misreading the information presented, but the only thing that I saw was a screenshot of a miner making about a penny per hour and it wasn't clear whether it was an AWS EC2 instance or the hardware photographed.

A couple of people here are dangling carrots to solicit business.  One of them has made statements that you and one other have debunked.  It is reasonable for anyone that is hungry for a carrot to question whether it is real or not.

I understand completely why you would wont to hold onto your competitive advantage.  Especially if it is something that you depend on as your primary form of income.  Personally, I like to think that if I were using open source projects and information derived from a community that I would contribute any information that I had to offer back to that same community but that is easy for me to say while it is not costing me anything to do so.

Not at all angry.  Attempted to make that clear on my last post.

My point here is that some very smart people here are making unproven claims.  It is healthy to question those claims that others here are hoping to profit from.

If you truly do have a skill that has given you a competitive advantage, by all means keep it to yourself, you've earned it.

One point to understand is that some FPGA Devs have fallen out of the closet once the OP started his public discussion. They probably would have liked to stay hidden, and no fault of theirs for that. Its all about money in the end.

[2112]

Not at all angry.  Attempted to make that clear on my last post.

My point here is that some very smart people here are making unproven claims.  It is healthy to question those claims that others here are hoping to profit from.

If you truly do have a skill that has given you a competitive advantage, by all means keep it to yourself, you've earned it.

I'm not buying it. You just lack introspection.

You don't talk like an investor. Investors are (generally) friendly or even overly friendly. Their suspiciousness is on the inquisitive side.

Your suspiciousness is on the paranoid side. And it shows like a "tell" in poker.

Read the past posts of the user senseless, he apparently wasted some considerable money doing a small world tour trying to solicit business, unsuccessfully. I bet that he now has some useful knowledge on how to distinguish gamblers from investors.

In my experience for the casino gamblers the road to recovery may be through learning how to really compute their odds.

For the cryptocurrency mining addicts the road to recovery may be through actually investing $99 in an FPGA training kit like Digilent Arty 7 and actually losing their logic design virginity.

Edit:

In order to effectively play a white knight here you actually need to show some knowledge, otherwise you just look funny.

[greerso]

Not at all angry.  Attempted to make that clear on my last post.

My point here is that some very smart people here are making unproven claims.  It is healthy to question those claims that others here are hoping to profit from.

If you truly do have a skill that has given you a competitive advantage, by all means keep it to yourself, you've earned it.

I'm not buying it. You just lack introspection.

You don't talk like an investor. Investors are (generally) friendly or even overly friendly. Their suspiciousness is on the inquisitive side.

Your suspiciousness is on the paranoid side. And it shows like a "tell" in poker.

Read the past posts of the user senseless, he apparently wasted some considerable money doing a small world tour trying to solicit business, unsuccessfully. I bet that he now has some useful knowledge on how to distinguish gamblers from investors.

In my experience for the casino gamblers the road to recovery may be through learning how to really compute their odds.

For the cryptocurrency mining addicts the road to recovery may be through actually investing $99 in an FPGA training kit like Digilent Arty 7 and actually losing their logic design virginity.

Edit:

In order to effectively play a white knight here you actually need to show some knowledge, otherwise you just look funny.

Ok, you have me misunderstood again.  I appear to have led you to believe that I'm presenting myself as a white knight, gambler and/or investor.  I am not claiming to be any of those things.  I am a mining hobbyist.  I do not have a significant investment in it and I do ok from my day job in an entirely different field.

Thank you for the tip on the $99 fpga training kit.  I was considering something like this myself and this is actually very useful.  Can you recommend any sources of information on how mining can be achieved on an fpga?

[HardwareCollector]

It's all nonsense. There is no evidence to prove the hashrate and power consumption.

While it is true that OP has provided zero evidence to backup his claims, it doesn't make it all nonsense.

However, a person with reasoning abilities isn't going to purchase hardware based on claims alone, they will wait until the 30th of May to find out if OP is credible or not.

[2112]

Thank you for the tip on the $99 fpga training kit.  I was considering something like this myself and this is actually very useful.  Can you recommend any sources of information on how mining is be achieved on an fpga?

Start with something simple like SHA256D used in Bitcoin:

https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner

Or something from the official Xilinx marketing publication:

http://issuu.com/xcelljournal/docs/xcell_journal_issue_84/16

Have fun!

Edit: I forgot to include standard explanation about the difference between CPU programming and FPGA programming.

CPUs have von Neumann architecture with linear memory, e.g. from 0 to 4294967296. Compiling and running your first 10 line program will take seconds on your typical usable computer with 4GB of RAM.

FPGA have a completely generic two dimensional architecture that literally has kajilion of constraints. Most of those constraints are secret to the FPGA vendor. The XCVU9P FPGA discussed in this thread has about 2104 pads, just describing the pads that are actually connected with useful signals on the VCU1525 board is a file that has 25 pages in the manual. Those are the constraints that are visible and not secret.

When compiling your first 10 line FPGA program the Xilinx toolchain will still have to process those constraints even if you use less than 1% of 1% of the whole VCU9P chip. On the other hand the small XC7A35T chip on the training board has much, much less internal constraints that needs to be read by the toolchain.

You will observe that your small 10 line FPGA program will be completely compiled and done for a small device like like 7A35T while for the large device the Xilinx toolchain is still decrypting the secret VU9P constraints file. Amazon recommends that you run their FPGA development kit for VCU9P on a computer with 32GB of RAM to get sensible performance for nontrivial programs.

Just be aware of the above.

Edit2: Trying to learn logic design on a high-end device may seriously test your patience. Start with a low-end device.

Edit3: Grammar fixes.

[s1gs3gv]

The way I read this thread is that there are some credible devs looking for a business model that makes their work sustainable and profitable, more profitable than simply mining with their own secret sauce on their own expensive hardware.

There is the 'mining with dev fee' model and the hardware provider model. Both models require popular acceptance and adoption of fpga mining to work. Early adopters take a lot of risk because of the high cost of getting started with fpga mining equipment and missing proof of acceptable ROI.

pollo e huevos ?

It'd be sweet if we had a coin whose proof of work algorithm was fpga and gpu friendly but asic resistant !