DIY FPGA Mining rig for any algorithm with fast ROI

[ilia_2s]

Forget lyra2z, mtp(new algo) soon.

This thread has 44 pages now and you(fpga devs) not provided any proof, just theory.
You(fpga devs) say : go, buy fpga and later we maybe implement and maybe release some bitstreams.

I ask again : What are you going to mine with this fpga?

Let's sum up this discussion

Keccak - will work, low profit
Tribus - will work, low profit due to low network hashrate
Phi1612 - will work, forget it, devs changing algo due to anti-fpga and anti-asic policy
Skunkhash - will work, low profit due to low network hashrate
x17 - will work with 2 FPGA, need a verilog masochist, profit will be destroyed with 450x fpga
x16r - most likely will not work, or skip hard blocks at hashing,  need a verilog masochist
x16s - will work with 2 FPGA, need a verilog masochist
lyra2z - will work, forget it, devs changing algo due to anti-fpga and anti-asic policy
lyra2v2 - will work, low profit, asic soon
lyra2 - will work, low profit, low network hashrate
ethash - will work with ddr4 ram, low profit
equihash  - will work with ddr4 ram, low profit
cn-7, cn-light, etc - will work, low profit
Xevan - will work with 4 FPGA, need a verilog masochist, low profit due to low network hashrate
bitcore - I think, it will fit, and work with good hashrate(600MH), but profit will be destroyed due to low network hashrate
nist5, neoscrypt - I did not investigate, possible candidates for fpga. |

What algorithms have I forgotten?

While this may be true in the short/medium term, but in the long term FPGA may end replacing GPUs, as the costs go down and other players comes in and we see more mining oriented FPGAs. This is just the genesis of public FPGA mining.

Exceptions would be ASIC alog coins or coins who's Devs want to be FPGA-resistant (at least they think they can be FPGA-resistant).

Hi, looking for this funny thread. You are completely right. We are mining some of this algos on xilinx 6-series devices with high profit some 2 years ago. OP provides too optimistic rates, but no proofs. Some of real developers confirms it at first pages. If smth profitable will be released by OP at the end of may we can sell our powerful FPGA PCB, that seriously cheaper than dev-kits described here. But now it's looks like a yellow-paper.

[s1gs3gv]

So, we wait for the next chip and launch then -- Once the stratix and virtex devices with HBM2 hit the market, there's nothing that the coin devs will be able to do. Literally, nothing.

Of course there is: proof of stake

[s1gs3gv]

I also don’t think FPGAs are a centralization risk like ASICs

Why not ?

[GPUHoarder]

I also don’t think FPGAs are a centralization risk like ASICs

Why not ?

ASICs are dominated by Bitmain, and the chips are made as cheap as possible because they have absolutely no use outside of cryptomining. Bitmain can dominate at this because of the relatively low R&D / time investment and pure volume plays on the supply chain.

FPGAs have broad uses in many industries, and two large companies produce high performance versions. Neither is trying to sell end user products, but taking essentially the same route as Nvidia and AMD albeit in a higher margin market. Many end product suppliers can exist.

If 100,000 miners want FPGAs they can have them, just like GPUs. After that they have useful lives in all sorts of data processing. They’re flexible, programmable, and efficient.

I’ve yet to have someone explain to me why they think FPGAs are so bad but GPUs are so good. If you have two sources for $350 devices with similar mining performance why is one inherently bad?

[vrdelta]

So far I have the following algorithms in verilog:

skein
blake
cubehash
groestl
keccak
jh
blue midnight wish
cryptonight
fugue
nist5
aes
echo
sha256

... and more

We need more devs to roger up and get something together. I can see why people who are mining with FPGAs are keeping things to themselves but at the same time we need some real traction.

[s1gs3gv]

I also don’t think FPGAs are a centralization risk like ASICs

Why not ?

If 100,000 miners want FPGAs they can have them

Sure, someone like Bitmain couldn't control the distribution of FPGA devices in the same way they can control the distribution of their own ASICS, but they could dominate mining in the FPGA world simply thru economies of scale. What does it matter if 10000 home miners are out there with a few FPGAs when Bitmain can afford to have enormous industrial scale mining operations in multiple countries, and because of their scale at much lower cost ?

The implicit argument by FPGA proponents that they contribute to decentralization and are (therefore) implicitly good (TM) is really just a selling point used on their behalf to promote their own interests.

I like the idea of FPGA mining as much as the next girl, its geeky and fun, but seriously its not going to save the blockchain from the likes of big business.

[s1gs3gv]

I’ve yet to have someone explain to me why they think FPGAs are so bad but GPUs are so good.

Thats a red herring. Who is making that argument ?

[squallw]

I see that OP updated the topic and put some pics and 1 video, it is nice, but I think that we need a video of the rig in action.
I am not saying that it is all fake, but it will be good if OP can prove that mentioned gains and hash rate.

[GPUHoarder]

I’ve yet to have someone explain to me why they think FPGAs are so bad but GPUs are so good.

Thats a red herring. Who is making that argument ?

The developers who have forked explicitly over their algorithms being listed in this thread.

The economies of scale argument also applies to GPU based mining. For example, with modest capital I could easily build a host system supporting up to 128  GPUs  (since no one uses the PCIe for anything other than making them boot and comm that is lower than serial speed), supporting individually resetting and reinitializing them and all the benefits of smaller hosts, but at 5% of system cost instead of as much as 30%, and also provide power savings. The difference is Bitmain doesn’t represent enough demand to independently control the FPGA market, and the companies in that market are not going to sacrifice decades of high margin business for a short term cash play.

There is no down side for TSMC or commodity memory manufacturers to take big money for cheap part orders from Bitmain or any large player.. There is a downside for Xilinx/Intel flooding the market with cheap FPGAs. Similarly you don’t see NVIDIA and AMD letting Bitmain build custom mining GPUs with their chips at cheap prices. Companies with massive R&D into their chip products want to very carefully maintain control over markets to keep the balance between volume and margin exactly where it is most profitable.

[senseless]

So far I have the following algorithms in verilog:

skein
blake
cubehash
groestl
keccak
jh
blue midnight wish
cryptonight
fugue
nist5
aes
echo
sha256

... and more

We need more devs to roger up and get something together. I can see why people who are mining with FPGAs are keeping things to themselves but at the same time we need some real traction.

I've got rolled and unrolled versions of all the x11 algos plus some others (lyra2, 256bit versions of some of the x11 algos, etc) -- in vhdl.

[senseless]

I’ve yet to have someone explain to me why they think FPGAs are so bad but GPUs are so good.

Thats a red herring. Who is making that argument ?

The developers who have forked explicitly over their algorithms being listed in this thread.

The economies of scale argument also applies to GPU based mining. For example, with modest capital I could easily build a host system supporting up to 128  GPUs  (since no one uses the PCIe for anything other than making them boot and comm that is lower than serial speed), supporting individually resetting and reinitializing them and all the benefits of smaller hosts, but at 5% of system cost instead of as much as 30%, and also provide power savings. The difference is Bitmain doesn’t represent enough demand to independently control the FPGA market, and the companies in that market are not going to sacrifice decades of high margin business for a short term cash play.

There is no down side for TSMC or commodity memory manufacturers to take big money for cheap part orders from Bitmain or any large player.. There is a downside for Xilinx/Intel flooding the market with cheap FPGAs. Similarly you don’t see NVIDIA and AMD letting Bitmain build custom mining GPUs with their chips at cheap prices. Companies with massive R&D into their chip products want to very carefully maintain control over markets to keep the balance between volume and margin exactly where it is most profitable.

I'm pretty sure intel's plan is to flood the market. Why else would they be developing hybrid cpu/fpgas (like APUs) or why would they bother to create the CCIX interconnect? They're definitely going to flood the market. The question is when. Xilinx will almost surely wait and only react hoping that Intel will also try to preserve high margins. The way I see it, Xilinx has one last chance to gain market share before Intel opens the flood gates. Get your options placed on XLNX while you still can -- Looking forward to making money on their downfall.

Plus, as you and I both know, Quartus is capable of placement / routing that is orders of magnitude better than anything Vivado could do automatically without floorplanning.

I'm looking forward to my call with Intel next week! Hopefully I'll be able to get something rolling quickly and at a lower price point so we (crypto community as a whole) can avoid Xilinx all together.

Edit:

Oh ya, I find it hilarious that devs are changing their algos based on what we say in this thread. Which reminds me, I just developed this new code for cryptonight which makes use of a little hack that's able to bypass some steps to obtain a result quicker. I'm now mining monero at 100Kh/s per fpga.

[LTCMAXMYR]

I see that OP updated the topic and put some pics and 1 video, it is nice, but I think that we need a video of the rig in action.
I am not saying that it is all fake, but it will be good if OP can prove that mentioned gains and hash rate.

These pictures only shows it is  working, but can not prove its mining speed and power consumption.
a screenshot of mining software and a public pool stats are needed.
I don‘t doubt the board mining , but  doubt his actual speed and profits.

[s1gs3gv]

The economies of scale argument also applies to GPU based mining.

I agree. This is why I don't think that ASIC resistant algos mediate the risk of centralization either.

[GPUHoarder]

So far I have the following algorithms in verilog:

skein
blake
cubehash
groestl
keccak
jh
blue midnight wish
cryptonight
fugue
nist5
aes
echo
sha256

... and more

We need more devs to roger up and get something together. I can see why people who are mining with FPGAs are keeping things to themselves but at the same time we need some real traction.

What is your proposal for traction?  Between what those of us with our own RTL have posted here, what I know of in private, and what is already in public repos I’m unaware of any algorithms for which there is already code written to run on FPGAs. Actions are being taken to make sure the community has access to various hardware options, at better pricing that’s has previously existed.

[s1gs3gv]

There is no down side for TSMC or commodity memory manufacturers to take big money for cheap part orders from Bitmain or any large player.. There is a downside for Xilinx/Intel flooding the market with cheap FPGAs. Similarly you don’t see NVIDIA and AMD letting Bitmain build custom mining GPUs with their chips at cheap prices. Companies with massive R&D into their chip products want to very carefully maintain control over markets to keep the balance between volume and margin exactly where it is most profitable.

Well, i don't have the insight into Bitmain's private business relationships with NVIDIA and AMD that you obviously do ;-)

[s1gs3gv]

I'm pretty sure intel's plan is to flood the market. Why else would they be developing hybrid cpu/fpgas (like APUs) or why would they bother to create the CCIX interconnect? They're definitely going to flood the market.

Well, not meaning to repeat the obvious, but it seems that not only does GPUHoarder have special insights into the private business relationships of Bitmain, NVIDIA and AMD, but you have them with INTEL !

Seriously, they won't be flooding the market with cheap UltraScale+ FPGAs if they flood the market with anything. Integrating some kind of FPGA functionality on an x86 die, ok. Serious enough to be useful for mining advantage, unlikely.

~ LOL ~

[senseless]

There is no down side for TSMC or commodity memory manufacturers to take big money for cheap part orders from Bitmain or any large player.. There is a downside for Xilinx/Intel flooding the market with cheap FPGAs. Similarly you don’t see NVIDIA and AMD letting Bitmain build custom mining GPUs with their chips at cheap prices. Companies with massive R&D into their chip products want to very carefully maintain control over markets to keep the balance between volume and margin exactly where it is most profitable.

Well, i don't have the insight into Bitmain's private business relationships with NVIDIA and AMD that you obviously do ;-)

There's only so many people in this business. Sales and more specifically, the authorized sales reps, like to brag.

How do you think bitmain knows what their competitors are doing? How do you think I know what amazon paid Xilinx, or about recent purchases Bitmain made?

[GPUHoarder]

The economies of scale argument also applies to GPU based mining.

I agree. This is why I don't think that ASIC resistant algos mediate the risk of centralization either.

Every product Bitmain ships is torn apart and analyzed by many people world wide. If such a deal was occurring we would know.  I didn’t say it was impossible, just that we don’t see it happening and there are strong market reasons why it wouldn’t.

The best way to mediate the risk of centralization is a properly functioning free market. That may be an illusion, but the entry of more hardware capable of mining (and not just mining - also powering large participating nodes!) from more manufacturers is the best way I can think of to prevent centralized control. In a perfect world every toaster would brown the bread with a few hundred watts of hashes.

The way I see it the next generation of GPUs is likely to represent a major shift in capabilities much larger than previous years, due to GDDR6 and other factors. This will force an upgrade-or-die world on all existing GPU miners over time. The best possible scenario is a variety of competitive upgrade paths that spread out hash power and PoW amongst multiple technologies and manufacturers.

[s1gs3gv]

There's only so many people in this business. Sales and more specifically, the authorized sales reps, like to brag.

How do you think bitmain knows what their competitors are doing? How do you think I know what amazon paid Xilinx, or about recent purchases Bitmain made?

I give up. Tell me

[senseless]

There's only so many people in this business. Sales and more specifically, the authorized sales reps, like to brag.

How do you think bitmain knows what their competitors are doing? How do you think I know what amazon paid Xilinx, or about recent purchases Bitmain made?

I give up. Tell me

I just did. The first thing any sales rep is going to do is tell you how wonderful of a company they are and how many huge businesses in your sector they're doing business with. All you need to do is ask some leading questions the right way. They'll happily provide you information that you can use a little bit of supposition with or in some instances, just directly tell you information they shouldn't. In the case of amazon, a xilinx authorized distributor sales' agent directly told me what amazon paid (without any leading questions).