News / Updates: 05/29/18 - We are going to delay pre-sales at this time. We have calls scheduled with both Intel and Xilinx for this week. News to follow.
06/01/18 - Store opened at
https://fpga.land/ for user registration. We are still not taking orders at this time but you can register and receive updates when hashrates, pricing and order information becomes available.
06/04/18 - Any developers in the community wishing to develop bitstreams please send me a private message. If you can't make a crypto core in RTL, this doesn't apply to you.
06/04/18 - We will NOT be able to accept credit cards for batch 1. Credit card processors are unwilling to allow us to process credit cards to sell you FPGA that any other site
who doesn't market specifically to the crypto community would be able to sell and accept credit cards for. If we sold them as "FPGA Accelerators", no one would care. I should add, this is one of the reasons crypto was created in the first place.
06/05/18 - Pricing information has been released on our website
https://fpga.land/06/07/18 - Orders will open at 4PM EST on 06/07/2018
06/07/18 - Paypal disabled due to fraud and charge backs
06/08/18 - Sales have closed at this time. We may reopen sales if devices free up from cancelled or unpaid orders.
06/08/18 - Additional stock as opened up. Payments via crypto and bank wire only. Paypal has suspended our account.
06/12/18 - Paypal requested additional information to re-open our account for pre-orders. We won't be able to provide them the information by the time the sales close. They have agreed though to continue working with us in the future. We'll be allowed to sell via paypal for future batches.
06/14/18 - Several RTL source codes have been released by ourselves as well as Sprocket to bootstrap community RTL development. You can find
our github repo here and
sprocket's github repo here. Between the 2 of us we're covering around 90% of the algos in used today.
06/16/18 - Sales have closed. Register on the website to receive notice of openings for future sales.
06/21/18 - For those of you who purchased your fpga through us but wish to host with mineority will be given the opportunity to do so. We'll send out an email and update with details when we have them.
09/13/18 - Our pre-production BCU-1525 units shipped from Xilinx today. Volume production to follow; Current expectations are to start shipping volume units in early Oct. Additional shipping updates expected to follow once we have more information on exact shipping dates. We're hopeful we'll be able to ship all orders before the end of Oct.
10/20/18 - We've been busy shipping BCU-1525 units. To date a minimum of 800 units have been shipped out to customers of all sizes who did not opt to wait for additional upgrades (waterblocks, passive block upgrades, etc). We still have more units in the warehouse to prep for shipping and more units on the way scheduled to arrive next week.
11/2/18 - New build of minerator, bmc firmware and 60Mh/s lyra2z coming soon! We're expecting some community dev releases this week as well.
Allmine Developer / Miner website: https://all-mine.co/BCU-1525 Instructions: https://miner.all-mine.co/setup-instructionsDiscord Link: https://discord.gg/QMavGwvFAQWhat are the hardware requirements for FPGA mining?Currently there are no known specific hardware requirements for FPGA mining beyond basic requirements for GPUs. That is, a basic CPU, minimal ram, minimal disk, and x1 PCI-E 3.0 connectivity. There may be other hardware needs in the future for specific bitstreams. Some developers may opt to use the PCI-E bandwidth to communicate between cards or offload some processing from the FPGA to the CPU. In these instances, those developers will make known these hardware requirements. You may opt to upgrade or change your infrastructure then to support those bitstreams. The FPGA present a new way of doing things and there are countless possibilities for how various resources could be used in mining. Because this is an open but new development environment it will take some time for things to mature and the most efficient way of doing things to become evident.
What operating systems are supported for FPGA operations?At launch we are planning only Linux support. When you're mining, even in windows, all that's really necessary is for you to be able to edit a file and run a command line interface application. We do not see using linux as a blocking point for the operation for miners. Detailed setup and installation instructions will be provided. We're also planning integration into some mining-specific linux distributions which will allow easy web interface management. However, even without the web management it should not be difficult for someone who's operated a GPU miner or ASIC miner to also operate a FPGA miner.
Can the FPGA multi-mine?Yes! The FPGA can use resources however is needed for the developer to achieve their goal. It would be possible to mine several different algorithms at the same time on these devices. There are situations where some resources are more optimally used for one thing than another. Using the FPGA it's possible to mix and match algorithms and designs to achieve the best mix of resource utilization for profitability. An example of this, CN7 has a better hashrate using blockram. It would be possible to use CN7 on blockram, Lyra2z on the ultraram and using the rest of the logic space for a small tribus or other logic algo mix. Going forward with future generations of devices as they become larger I'd expect even greater variation of mining. It's becoming clear that the most profitable bitstreams will be multi-algo bitstreams.
What is "the shell" and why do I need it?"The Shell" fundamentally is a wrapper around any mining bitstream that will run on your FPGA. The wrapper provides a common set of communication and programming functionality to allow anyone's bitstream or design to operate on your FPGA without re-programming the FPGA using the USB cable. We're able to provide this because we've burned an encryption key onto every FPGA shipped. This encryption key is what enables the creation of our secure shell environment. Some examples of functionality that the shell provides are:
Hardware Management (Temperature, Power (Voltage/Amperage), Clock sources, PCI-E, Programming / Reprogramming)
Bitstream Management (Bitstream distribution, developer fee collection)
Mining Software (Bitstream management, Algo management, common communications platform for all bitstreams)
For Developers:
It allows developers an easier time to get started without needing to build their own software, communications, or worry about secure their development fee. They can focus solely on producing the best possible bitstream designs for maximum profitability. Due to the secure nature of the bitstreams it will enable developers who previously may have not released their designs, to release their designs, as they won't fear people attempting to cut out the developer fee and diminish their work.
For Miners:
Miners will get a wider selection of bitstreams, an easier and faster way to switch between them (over pci-e instead of USB), and easier management of their miners with our online config builder and management system. As of now, if you want to switch from one bitstream to another it would take possibly hours of reprogramming depending on the number of FPGA you have. Using our shell it will take seconds to switch bitstreams and starting mining a new one. This creates a better environment for profit switching and increased gains.
In addition, the shell and software provide user side control of clocking and overclocking. The user can define their own parameters for what they find to be desirable for voltage, clock, temperature, etc. Or, if desired, tell the software to overclock to the maximum of the safety limits.
Hashrates:Lyra2z (8,8,8) - 40Mh/s 225W ~ Still under development
Cryptonight variant 1 / monero version 7 - 14Kh/s 150W
Notes: Only posting hashrate numbers we're 100% sure about. Cores still under development are expected to increase in hashrate.
