DIY FPGA Mining rig for any algorithm with fast ROI

[senseless]

Power in a circuit scales linearly with clock speed and exponentially with voltage.

P = capacitance * voltage^2 * frequency

The reason why thermals spiral out of control at high clock speeds is because you also have to keep cranking up the voltage to keep things stable as the clocks go up.

I didn't think this is different for FPGA. Is it?

If that holds true, dropping the voltage on the FPGA to 0.75V from default 0.85V will allow for about 125% of baseline unmodified performance by allowing 25% OC within the same thermal envelope, assuming it is stable. So maybe about 11GH/s per card.

Whitefire is undervolting the card. He explained why in discord, but I can't recall the statement off the top of my head. But, I'm pretty sure this is why his amperage is so high.

We're going to bring up the modifications he mentioned to Xilinx and see how they feel about them. Some of the modifications we can do on our end before shipping (such as programming the PMBUS).

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[yrk1957]

What has to be understood is that this thread demonstrates the bleeding edge of FPGA mining. Sure, 95% percent who are interested will not even try the hardware mod.

But what will happen when FPGA cards come out of the box, will mods needed for mining? And at a price point of $2500-$3000? GPU mining will be effectively dead for non-ETH scenarios.

The unknown aspect is how FPGA are able to adapt to potential resistance from coins/Devs who will fork. The Phi/Lux will be probably be the first case.

[Ginzink]

What has to be understood is that this thread demonstrates the bleeding edge of FPGA mining. Sure, 95% percent who are interested will not even try the hardware mod.

But what will happen when FPGA cards come out of the box, will mods needed for mining? And at a price point of $2500-$3000? GPU mining will be effectively dead for non-ETH scenarios.

The unknown aspect is how FPGA are able to adapt to potential resistance from coins/Devs who will fork. The Phi/Lux will be probably be the first case.

I am mining Lux and hope they succeed Will be exciting for sure! As i just got the new 1080 ti cards selling them at a loss and buying FPGA is not very tempting.
But watching the thread to be updated.

[senseless]

The unknown aspect is how FPGA are able to adapt to potential resistance from coins/Devs who will fork. The Phi/Lux will be probably be the first case.

I hope they come to realize that the FPGA can provide them with asic resistance by increasing the NRE requirements for ASIC production. With the greater network hashrates higher tech levels of asic will not be nearly as profitable, if at all. It'll push the cost for a secret ASIC to 32, 28, 20nm or lower tech levels. All secret high level asics would be useless (and possibly may operate at a loss on networks secured by fpga). The fpga makes investment risk higher, probability of mask failure higher, time to market longer, and greater probability returns will be lower than expected for the secret asic.

In addition, the rapid reconfiguration of the FPGA via coding allows the FPGA to follow forks if it's ever necessary (to avoid a 16nm asic for instance). In addition, we're more than happy to work with coin devs to create new algos that would be FPGA optimized making use of the unique features of the FPGA to full potential. We do have academics on staff who have already created algos (some of which are used today globally in banking, etc). The failure of most coin devs is that they don't understand hardware. They just keep adding layers of complexity and hoping for the best. We can provide that hardware expertise which they lack.

We could have continued operating in secret. But we've opened up, we've been very open with how many boards are shipping, when, etc. Our goal is to reduce costs to make FPGA even more desirable for the crypto markets. I have been working Xilinx very hard to get pricing down to GPU levels. To do this, it requires moving FPGA in GPU levels.

[Dhino]

The unknown aspect is how FPGA are able to adapt to potential resistance from coins/Devs who will fork. The Phi/Lux will be probably be the first case.

I hope they come to realize that the FPGA can provide them with asic resistance by increasing the NRE requirements for ASIC production. With the greater network hashrates higher tech levels of asic will not be nearly as profitable, if at all. It'll push the cost for a secret ASIC to 32, 28, 20nm or lower tech levels. All secret high level asics would be useless (and possibly may operate at a loss on networks secured by fpga). The fpga makes investment risk is higher, probability of mask failure higher, time to market longer, and greater probability returns will be lower than expected for the secret asic.

In addition, the rapid reconfiguration of the FPGA via coding allows the FPGA to follow forks if it's ever necessary (to avoid a 16nm asic for instance). In addition, we're more than happy to work with coin devs to create new algos that would be FPGA optimized making use of the unique features of the FPGA to full potential. We do have academics on staff who have already created algos (some of which are used today globally in banking, etc). The failure of most coin devs is that they don't understand hardware. They just keep adding layers of complexity and hoping for the best. We can provide that hardware expertise which they lack.

We could have continued operating in secret. But we've opened up, we've been very open with how many boards are shipping, when, etc. Our goal is to reduce costs to make FPGA even more desirable for the crypto markets. I have been working Xilinx very hard to get pricing down to GPU levels. To do this, it requires moving FPGA in GPU levels.

No, you did not opened it up. It's @whitefire990 that opened FGPA to others. You just identified a business opportunity after you realized that secret FGPA mining will not be as profitable as before once @whitefire990 releases the bitstream in market. That's what @whitefire990 wanted to do and in my opinion he succeeded.

[2stout]

If anything has the potentially in the future to be the go to, ubiquitous POW mining hardware, it appears FPGA may fit the bill.  However, 2 main factors come into play:  1)Price point & 2) Ability to learn.

[senseless]

No, you did not opened it up. It's @whitefire990 that opened FGPA to others. You just identified a business opportunity after you realized that secret FGPA mining will not be as profitable as before once @whitefire990 releases the bitstream in market. That's what @whitefire990 wanted to do and in my opinion he succeeded.

No, I opened up once I realized that companies were going to try charging $6000 and $7000 for these fpga. Go through my post history. If you think I'm going to make any appreciable amount of money from this, you're wrong. What little we do make will be dumped back into development to provide the community the ability to make, compile and distribute their own bitstreams securely.

Edit: Our money is going to come from the devfee in the bitstreams we'll release. And, no one has to use ours. Whitefire's bitstreams will work on the boards too.

[LTCMAXMYR]

Summary: Go CN7 or go home.
Why would bother developing a bitstream for $1/day/card fee when you could do it for $2.5/day/card fee? Keccak seems like a waste of everyone's time.

You've got a point there, why start with the least profitable algorithm? I do not understand the rational behind this.

keccak is open-sourced, it is very easy to impact in fpga
There are  big challenge in lyra's algo and cryptonight, I'll wait for his next step

[Dhino]

No, you did not opened it up. It's @whitefire990 that opened FGPA to others. You just identified a business opportunity after you realized that secret FGPA mining will not be as profitable as before once @whitefire990 releases the bitstream in market. That's what @whitefire990 wanted to do and in my opinion he succeeded.

No, I opened up once I realized that companies were going to try charging $6000 and $7000 for these fpga. Go through my post history. If you think I'm going to make any appreciable amount of money from this, you're wrong. What little we do make will be dumped back into development to provide the community the ability to make, compile and distribute their own bitstreams securely.

Edit: Our money is going to come from the devfee in the bitstreams we'll release. And, no one has to use ours. Whitefire's bitstreams will work on the boards too.

We are all in this for money. You should make money if you are adding value to the community. You are adding value by lowering the FGPA cost.  I am also buying from you. It is none of my concern how much money you are making. In my opinion, credit to open up FGPA mining to newbie miners or to the people who are late in mining should be given to @whitefire990. Also @whitefire990 saved crypto community from Bitmain, Baikal and other ASIC manufactures, who were usurping majority of the value generated by cryptocurrency mining.

[Amph]

if these fpga have no real advantage over gpu on eth like coin, in the future all the coin will be very memory intensive, to force at least to pay you more for a good board or i'm missing something?

[percy_tc]

No, you did not opened it up. It's @whitefire990 that opened FGPA to others. You just identified a business opportunity after you realized that secret FGPA mining will not be as profitable as before once @whitefire990 releases the bitstream in market. That's what @whitefire990 wanted to do and in my opinion he succeeded.

No, I opened up once I realized that companies were going to try charging $6000 and $7000 for these fpga. Go through my post history. If you think I'm going to make any appreciable amount of money from this, you're wrong. What little we do make will be dumped back into development to provide the community the ability to make, compile and distribute their own bitstreams securely.

Edit: Our money is going to come from the devfee in the bitstreams we'll release. And, no one has to use ours. Whitefire's bitstreams will work on the boards too.

We are all in this for money. You should make money if you are adding value to the community. You are adding value by lowering the FGPA cost.  I am also buying from you. It is none of my concern how much money you are making. In my opinion, credit to open up FGPA mining to newbie miners or to the people who are late in mining should be given to @whitefire990. Also @whitefire990 saved crypto community from Bitmain, Baikal and other ASIC manufactures, who were usurping majority of the value generated by cryptocurrency mining.

Bitmain and Baikal will have their move, i hope all of you realize that FPGA miner developing won't "destroy" these companies.... And it is not aid decentralization either.
Big mining farms will buy a thousand of FPGA's if it is going to be stable and profitable.

From technical perpective FPGA is very very exciting, and hope that i have a chance to play with it. I don't really care who was the " first" guy to open it to public. I'm really glad FPGA guys working together to success their mission. Fingers crossed!

[greyday]

Bitmain and Baikal will have their move, i hope all of you realize that FPGA miner developing won't "destroy" these companies.... And it is not aid decentralization either.
Big mining farms will buy a thousand of FPGA's if it is going to be stable and profitable.

This always confuses me. For coin decentralization the hardware type is irrelevant, you can help keep them decentralized by mining solo or on smaller pools.

[Iamtutut]

Bitmain and Baikal will have their move, i hope all of you realize that FPGA miner developing won't "destroy" these companies.... And it is not aid decentralization either.
Big mining farms will buy a thousand of FPGA's if it is going to be stable and profitable.

This always confuses me. For coin decentralization the hardware type is irrelevant, you can help keep them decentralized by mining solo or on smaller pools.

Mining solo ? You'll need huge $$$$$ to obtain the hashrate that can find blocks, unless you mine much smaller coins with a very low network hashrate.

[Mrsmoker]

Bitmain and Baikal will have their move, i hope all of you realize that FPGA miner developing won't "destroy" these companies.... And it is not aid decentralization either.
Big mining farms will buy a thousand of FPGA's if it is going to be stable and profitable.

This always confuses me. For coin decentralization the hardware type is irrelevant, you can help keep them decentralized by mining solo or on smaller pools.

I think you are wrong, sir.
everybody can buy GPU but not everybody can buy asics (regarding price and scarcity or manipulation of distribution)

[chup]

This is awesome.  The fewer people that get involved, the better.  I hope the FPGA community stays small, so profits don't get diluted.
...
Still, despite this information, hopefully people don't buy; the fewer people that get involved, the better.

Shooting yourself in devfee legs? Two times?

[m5]

Any idea where to get that DC1613A USB-PMBus dongle? Both Digikey and Mouser will have them only on end of July... I have looked at the official schematic and it doesn't seem complicated, but I don't know if it is only a "dumb" converter between USB and PMBus interfaces or the built-in PIC microcontroller have some proprietary firmware loaded.

[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.

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.

Can anyone prove or at least give some evidence that this FPGA hash rate and power consumption is true?
I saw a lot of things at this topic but nothing that convinced me that all the things that OP said is real.

[Ginzink]

Lux just released a statement of their new hard fork.

"Phi2 is also designed to be scalable and modular so that its FPGA resistance can be maintained over time. As the possibility for an industrial, commercial or otherwise mass-produced FPGA for Phi2 becomes clear, the algorithm can be easily modified and updated to Phi3, thus immediately rendering those devices obsolete. This cat-and-mouse game can continue indefinitely until FPGA producers realize they are artlessly wasting their time and their money trying to build FPGAs for Luxcore’s hashing algorithm."

[ilia_2s]

Can anyone prove or at least give some evidence that this FPGA hash rate and power consumption is true?
I saw a lot of things at this topic but nothing that convinced me that all the things that OP said is real.

There is no windows (EXE) miner application was released to check it...

[vapourminer]

The last thing I want to do is see this come out and totally annihilate GPU mining.  And that is exactly what it has the potential to do.  Profitability for everything else will be completely destroyed and we'll be stuck fire selling everything we have in the hope we can get in line to acquire this hardware and software.

no, gpus will always have something to mine, as some algos will almost certainly be created with anti asic/fpga properties. wont stop fpga/asics but will make it much more expensive to develop.

OhGodaCompany has its ProgPOW plans that will leverage so much of a gpus capabilities (not just CUDA cores or whatever) that its just not worth emulating with fpga/asic, as to do it one would basically have to emulate an entire gpu to do it. easier just to use a real gpu.

of course it remains to be seen how that goes, but fpga/asic is not the end of pow on gpus. at least not yet.