DIY FPGA Mining rig for any algorithm with fast ROI

[Blazin]

This looks like an interesting alternative to GPU mining, especially when comparing the energy efficiency to a GPU! Just way out of my budget for the time being.

Just out of curiosity, do you know what the noise level of your rig is in dB?

[Disastertx]

I saw your projections for skunkhash and am very interested on any updates there? Do you have an update on when you plan to release that one, other than after June 15th? Also PLEASE consider CN7 after skunkhash/Phi1612. Some of my concerns around some of these algo’s is the market cap, trading volumes, and liquidity. If the trading volume is too low, it won’t much matter that you can mine the equivalent of the 24 hour volumes, you won’t be the only one mining it!

I ASSUME the skunkhash bitstream (and others) would be compatible with Nicehash? They just make mining easier and very liquid by paying in BTC.

Just my two-cents.

[GPUHoarder]

I've been looking into a few FPGA board options and stumbled across a much cheaper board similar to the Xilinx KC705.
The FPGA is a XC7K325T with the following specs:
Logic Cells - 326,080
DSP Slices   - 840
Memory - 16,020 kb
You should be able to find more details on Xilinx's website

The board also has 128 MB of flash and 8 GB of DDR3, if that's helpful.

Would this board be capable of profitable mining? I know that SHA-224 and Blake2b would fit on, Keccak should too, but have no idea what the hashrate and profitability would be around. What other algorithms can fit on to it? Hashrate estimates?

I’m not sure if you realize, but there is a drastic difference between this and the VCU1525.

1. Almost 8 times less logic cells.
2. 20x less on-chip memory
3. 7 series fabric (28vs16nm) much much lower clock speeds (~250 vs 600 MHz max)
4. The flash is for configuration
5. DDR3 is bandwidth IS nice.

Over all Keccak you could maybe do 6-7 pipelines @ 200Mhz. - 1200-1400 MH. How cheap is cheap?.

Overall the XC7K325T based board  is about 16x less power than a VCU1525.

If you’re looking in that range, I might as well start taking pre-orders for my M.2 accelerator since it’s ready. It has a 200k LE 7 series chip and 1GB of DDR3 + 4x PCIe (2.0 atm). $329 for the very fast version, $199 for the lower end (100k LE/512MB DDR3). Uses a M.2 M-Key / Nvme slot, or a $10 PCIe adapter.

[exsexs]

If you’re looking in that range, I might as well start taking pre-orders for my M.2 accelerator since it’s ready. It has a 200k LE 7 series chip and 1GB of DDR3 + 4x PCIe (2.0 atm). $329 for the very fast version, $199 for the lower end (100k LE/512MB DDR3). Uses a M.2 M-Key / Nvme slot, or a $10 PCIe adapter.

How can I order this board? Can you share more infos? (Algos, hashrates etc...)

[krnlx]

we ever find out who the german guy is?

He is liar

[xaoyao]

i got the public keccak source and synthesized,not sure whether it can run properly,just evaluation of resources.

i put 24 core and set to 300MHz
so XUVU9P may run  7.2G ,160W power
how can you get 17G?

No, it is not enough.

I can make a 24 cores and 550 MHz with 0 WNS slack, probably 600 MHz. But it is less than 17G anyway. My ego is hurting.

he says two board can get 600Mh/s for x16R.
It also not make sense.

[xaoyao]

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

X16R's algorithm order is changing every block, how can you split the 16 hard algorithms into two FPGA?

[DigitalCruncher]

i got the public keccak source and synthesized,not sure whether it can run properly,just evaluation of resources.

i put 24 core and set to 300MHz
so XUVU9P may run  7.2G ,160W power
how can you get 17G?

No, it is not enough.

I can make a 24 cores and 550 MHz with 0 WNS slack, probably 600 MHz. But it is less than 17G anyway. My ego is hurting.

he says two board can get 600Mh/s for x16R.
It also not make sense.

Every FPGA developer has his own kung fu, and the hashrate is the only meaningful measure of truth.

[xaoyao]

@GPUHoarder

Great, have you ran any Secure Hash Algorithms on these devices, and if so, what was your throughput?

Keccak @ 11 GH, ~500Mhz 22 full pipelines, but I wasn’t strictly targeting Keccak directly so I didn’t push it to the limit.

For CryptoNightV7 I do the finalizer off FPGA because it’s hardly worth the area for the other SHA-3 candidates.

Have you finish the CryptoNightV7? how is the hashrate? Thanks a lot.

[GPUHoarder]

If you’re looking in that range, I might as well start taking pre-orders for my M.2 accelerator since it’s ready. It has a 200k LE 7 series chip and 1GB of DDR3 + 4x PCIe (2.0 atm). $329 for the very fast version, $199 for the lower end (100k LE/512MB DDR3). Uses a M.2 M-Key / Nvme slot, or a $10 PCIe adapter.

How can I order this board? Can you share more infos? (Algos, hashrates etc...)

I don’t want to be these guys that sell something on a render or photoshopped picture of a prototype, so I need two more weeks to get first production batch in, heatsinks on, etc. but if anyone wasn’t to reserve PM me contact info and I will share the info.

Developed these for our own use, but (dig around on the reddit threads and you’ll see me talking about it pre forms development a few months ago). We originally developed these for ourselves but I think they can help the general community so I will sell near cost.

I’m going to refrain from posting final hashrates until they are done on a final production model with the last power/cooling/speedgrade changes we’ve made.

[vapourminer]

Overall the XC7K325T based board  is about 16x less power than a VCU1525.

If you’re looking in that range, I might as well start taking pre-orders for my M.2 accelerator since it’s ready. It has a 200k LE 7 series chip and 1GB of DDR3 + 4x PCIe (2.0 atm). $329 for the very fast version, $199 for the lower end (100k LE/512MB DDR3). Uses a M.2 M-Key / Nvme slot, or a $10 PCIe adapter.

PCIe 4x? does it need the 4x? ie, will running it on a single PCIe lane hurt performance?

i have an onda mining board with 8 full size 16x slots but i believe they run in 1x mode, so any PCIe  ->m2 adapter card would run at 1x.

[2112]

PCIe 4x? does it need the 4x? ie, will running it on a single PCIe lane hurt performance?

i have an onda mining board with 8 full size 16x slots but i believe they run in 1x mode, so any PCIe  ->m2 adapter card would run at 1x.

It costs next to nothing, basically only traces, all the logic is synthesized in the FPGA. Gives the board other uses besides mining.

The reason why old ZTEX boards have much better resale value than the old mining-only boards from ngzhang. His Lancelot & Icarus boards were really crippled by not having any way to get signals to the IO pads of the FPGA. They had only 2 (out of 8 available) signals connected between USB USART chip, greatly reducing available bandwidth and protocols. Similar weak connectivity was between the two FPGA chips on the board. It makes the whole board unusable for anything else, not even toy projects could be reasonably built on them.

[dhouse]

these fpga threads are killin' me, can someone just make a plug-and-play fpga miner and sell it to me already?

[basscleff1]

amen brother!

these fpga threads are killin' me, can someone just make a plug-and-play fpga miner and sell it to me already?

[senseless]

i got the public keccak source and synthesized,not sure whether it can run properly,just evaluation of resources.

i put 24 core and set to 300MHz
so XUVU9P may run  7.2G ,160W power
how can you get 17G?

No, it is not enough.

I can make a 24 cores and 550 MHz with 0 WNS slack, probably 600 MHz. But it is less than 17G anyway. My ego is hurting.

At least I'm not the only one who finds it hard to believe. There have been some inaccuracies in other things he's said. Maybe that was a preliminary estimate and not the actual hashrate achieved. We'll see on 05/30.

[GPUHoarder]

PCIe 4x? does it need the 4x? ie, will running it on a single PCIe lane hurt performance?

i have an onda mining board with 8 full size 16x slots but i believe they run in 1x mode, so any PCIe  ->m2 adapter card would run at 1x.

It costs next to nothing, basically only traces, all the logic is synthesized in the FPGA. Gives the board other uses besides mining.

The reason why old ZTEX boards have much better resale value than the old mining-only boards from ngzhang. His Lancelot & Icarus boards were really crippled by not having any way to get signals to the IO pads of the FPGA. They had only 2 (out of 8 available) signals connected between USB USART chip, greatly reducing available bandwidth and protocols. Similar weak connectivity was between the two FPGA chips on the board. It makes the whole board unusable for anything else, not even toy projects could be reasonably built on them.

This is accurate - plus one of the uses of this board is ETH acceleration, where it provides a few MH lift to GPUs isn’t the system that are on 1x connections.

[s1gs3gv]

If you’re looking in that range, I might as well start taking pre-orders for my M.2 accelerator since it’s ready. It has a 200k LE 7 series chip and 1GB of DDR3 + 4x PCIe (2.0 atm). $329 for the very fast version, $199 for the lower end (100k LE/512MB DDR3). Uses a M.2 M-Key / Nvme slot, or a $10 PCIe adapter.

which 7 series chip ? sounds nice.

[GPUHoarder]

If you’re looking in that range, I might as well start taking pre-orders for my M.2 accelerator since it’s ready. It has a 200k LE 7 series chip and 1GB of DDR3 + 4x PCIe (2.0 atm). $329 for the very fast version, $199 for the lower end (100k LE/512MB DDR3). Uses a M.2 M-Key / Nvme slot, or a $10 PCIe adapter.

which 7 series chip ? sounds nice.

There are only a handful that fit on an M.2 2280, and the most logic is in the Artix. Kintex 160 is next best.

I’ve got a bunch of interested PMs I’ll be responding to tomorrow as I have some obligations tonight.

The main reason I don’t want to list exact hash performance is the effect of cooling. Just like an nVME what I can get on a bench with great thermals might not match performance on the mother boards, which led to a heatsink modification I need to very final numbers with.

Essentially you’ll be looking at 10% of a VU9P for <10% of the price

[chondo]

these fpga threads are killin' me, can someone just make a plug-and-play fpga miner and sell it to me already?

Couldn't agree more...

[yrk1957]

I am looking at the startup log of Inno D9, and it shows entries like this:

Code:

Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0
Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: Linux version 4.14.0-xilinx (yex@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 6.4.0 (Buildroot 2018.02.1)) #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue May 22 15:52:07 CST 2018
Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: CPU: ARMv7 Processor [413fc090] revision 0 (ARMv7), cr=18c5387d
Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: CPU: PIPT / VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT aliasing instruction cache
Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: OF: fdt: Machine model: xlnx,zynq-7000
...
Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: FPGA manager framework
Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: fpga-region fpga-full: FPGA Region probed
...
Jan 28 15:58:18 InnoMiner kernel: fpga_manager fpga0: Xilinx Zynq FPGA Manager registered

Does this imply that D9 is actually an FPGA or simply that its designed using FPGA?