ALLMINE INC - FPGA Cryptominer

[senseless]

no interest in selling your miner or dev services?

also is that normal to have the intro pricing then jack it up, whitefire also says its $4k now but 5k + next month

It's the first time I've ever seen a company do that with FPGAs, that's for sure. Only avnet is doing it, digikey wants $5200/board for low QTY. My pricing just depends on chip order quantity, the more ordered, the lower the price is going to get.

I don't trust % fees for dev services because they're so easy to avoid paying.

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[martyroz]

Any interest?

Payment methods would be Crypto (obviously) and Credit Card / Paypal (identity verification would be required and shipping to your registered / verified address)

Shut up and take my money

[GPUHoarder]

no interest in selling your miner or dev services?

also is that normal to have the intro pricing then jack it up, whitefire also says its $4k now but 5k + next month

It's the first time I've ever seen a company do that with FPGAs, that's for sure. Only avnet is doing it, digikey wants $5200/board for low QTY. My pricing just depends on chip order quantity, the more ordered, the lower the price is going to get.

I don't trust % fees for dev services because they're so easy to avoid paying.

Really? This is standard operating procedure for Xilinx. Dev boards are usually sold cheaper than even just the chip cost for normal quantities. They want to make it easy for people to build things around their expensive chips, but still make all the margins on chips. I too have been talking to Xilinx and trying to get them to see there is a big market here, big enough to make up for their margins on some of these chips.

There is more FPGA hardware coming pretty soon (over the next 2-3 months)  from a few sources (disclosure - myself included). Generally speaking most are going to be in the same ballpark cost/performance, but there may be outliers or easier entry level costs.

The problem with FPGAs is it is very hard to protect the bitstream if you aren’t selling the hardware. You can sell hardware that will work with your encrypted bitstreams and also support unencrypted bitstreams (anyone can make new miners). You can also lock hardware to only your encrypted bitstreams. But if you don’t sell the hardware (and burn in the encryption keys) anyone can copy it. So that leaves virtuous open source, or people making profit on hardware alone. The tools and time to develop these things are very expensive, so you likely won’t find a lot of people giving it away for free. Development time is also much longer. If I make a change that actually needs tested on real hardware of VCU1525 size, expect hours for a very fast computer  to synthesize and route it before I can test it. A lot can be done in simulation, but the last mile takes a lot of time.

It is possible to use normal methods to try and protect the “command and control” normal software that drives the FPGA, but someone could reverse engineer that - just like OpenCL kernels.

If you think the FPGA is magic and the OpenCL compiler will give you 10-50x performance over your GPU, you will be sorely disappointed. Those of us seeing these gains are (afaik) writing very low level RTL to do so. There’s a big difference between OpenCL and RTL for FPGAs vs OpenCL vs ISA Assembky for GPUs.

[senseless]

no interest in selling your miner or dev services?

also is that normal to have the intro pricing then jack it up, whitefire also says its $4k now but 5k + next month

It's the first time I've ever seen a company do that with FPGAs, that's for sure. Only avnet is doing it, digikey wants $5200/board for low QTY. My pricing just depends on chip order quantity, the more ordered, the lower the price is going to get.

I don't trust % fees for dev services because they're so easy to avoid paying.

Really? This is standard operating procedure for Xilinx. Dev boards are usually sold cheaper than even just the chip cost for normal quantities. They want to make it easy for people to build things around their expensive chips, but still make all the margins on chips. I too have been talking to Xilinx and trying to get them to see there is a big market here, big enough to make up for their margins on some of these chips.

There is more FPGA hardware coming pretty soon (over the next 2-3 months)  from a few sources (disclosure - myself included). Generally speaking most are going to be in the same ballpark cost/performance, but there may be outliers or easier entry level costs.

The problem with FPGAs is it is very hard to protect the bitstream if you aren’t selling the hardware. You can sell hardware that will work with your encrypted bitstreams and also support unencrypted bitstreams (anyone can make new miners). You can also lock hardware to only your encrypted bitstreams. But if you don’t sell the hardware (and burn in the encryption keys) anyone can copy it. So that leaves virtuous open source, or people making profit on hardware alone. The tools and time to develop these things are very expensive, so you likely won’t find a lot of people giving it away for free. Development time is also much longer. If I make a change that actually needs tested on real hardware of VCU1525 size, expect hours for a very fast computer  to synthesize and route it before I can test it. A lot can be done in simulation, but the last mile takes a lot of time.

It is possible to use normal methods to try and protect the “command and control” normal software that drives the FPGA, but someone could reverse engineer that - just like OpenCL kernels.

If you think the FPGA is magic and the OpenCL compiler will give you 10-50x performance over your GPU, you will be sorely disappointed. Those of us seeing these gains are (afaik) writing very low level RTL to do so. There’s a big difference between OpenCL and RTL for FPGAs vs OpenCL vs ISA Assembky for GPUs.

Ya, I've never seen any of these companies offer a promo price for a new fpga dev board. Normally 'promo price' to these companies would mean 10x the mass production price.

I'm considering the solution of using a shell (like aws) pass some wires through and allow any fpga dev to build and compile against our shell. We'll then distribute the firmware and collect the developer fee on behalf of the dev. There are a lot of FPGA devs in this community, a lot more than have been posting in the threads. I'm guessing they just haven't seen it yet.

It seems like there's not a lot of enthusiasm that there's only 1 dev providing firmware to the community. It would be nice to provide a platform that would allow any dev to create firmware and profit from the work.

[nsummy]

This new FPGA trend sounds interesting and earnings do sound good to everybody but don't you think making so many devices available could cripple coins?
Every coin developer is striving to be ASIC resistant but when using FPGAs they won't be able to counteract them since you can change the algo as fast as they fork.

I mean difficulty would increase but you still would have a lot of coins flooding the market and driving them on a bear trend to very low values thus ruining your ROI too.

I hate to break it to you but in 6 months Nvidia is going to be making a lot more devices available than the few thousand OP is talking about.  You can either evolve with the technology or get left behind

[pikachuy]

no interest in selling your miner or dev services?

also is that normal to have the intro pricing then jack it up, whitefire also says its $4k now but 5k + next month

It's the first time I've ever seen a company do that with FPGAs, that's for sure. Only avnet is doing it, digikey wants $5200/board for low QTY. My pricing just depends on chip order quantity, the more ordered, the lower the price is going to get.

I don't trust % fees for dev services because they're so easy to avoid paying.

Well, it's going be inevitable if whitefire does release his with dev fee. Why not tap into the market and collect residual for yourself regardless? If you have something that is already done, and then whitefire releases his, people are going use whitefire no matter what, since his is the one that is offered to the public.

But if you offered it ahead of the game and/or is better, then at least you get to collect some residual regardless if people want to bypass the dev fee or not.

Not sure how much work that would be needed to do this, but the way I see it, for example;

Lets say 100 people use your service, 50 people bypass the dev fee if that's your concern.
I would rather have 50% of some free residual, then 0% of nothing.

That's just one perspective.

[Regulater]

Definitely interested if the order is possible. Would sell off some rigs and willing to purchase around 25-30 Units minimum depending on the price possible. Only problem is would need some programs to be released with reasonable dev fees, or reasonable upfront costs. I dont have problems with Dev Fees, as majority of the good miners all have them, if they are reasonable i will support, or willing to pay monthly/yearly/one time for the miner.

Also i understand where you are coming from with the backout from backers. I had investors lined up in 2017 to build a large mining farm with solar panels, and had them backout during the crash. I still know plenty of investors and could potentially line up more units after the initial order. Have to watch how this whole FPGA thing goes as it seems alot are talking about it now, before anything can be done, and would need multiple rigs myself to prove.

[zzaherr]

Definitely interested if the order is possible. Would sell off some rigs and willing to purchase around 25-30 Units minimum depending on the price possible. Only problem is would need some programs to be released with reasonable dev fees, or reasonable upfront costs. I dont have problems with Dev Fees, as majority of the good miners all have them, if they are reasonable i will support, or willing to pay monthly/yearly/one time for the miner.

Also i understand where you are coming from with the backout from backers. I had investors lined up in 2017 to build a large mining farm with solar panels, and had them backout during the crash. I still know plenty of investors and could potentially line up more units after the initial order. Have to watch how this whole FPGA thing goes as it seems alot are talking about it now, before anything can be done, and would need multiple rigs myself to prove.

i'm in too and i can buy at least 50 units and me too in a farm with investors. please get in touch

[glinko]

I'm in! 10units/month

[Etherion]

Im kean.

Just a noob question if you don't mind: Will your design require a different bitstream from @whitefire990 than the one he will be releasing for the
DK-U1-VCU1525-A-G by the end of this months?

I'am asking as I have a quote for 2 DK-U1-VCU1525-A-G in South Africa but If I need to wait a few weeks to get the more mining dedicated version from you I might be willing.

[gameboy366]

no interest in selling your miner or dev services?

also is that normal to have the intro pricing then jack it up, whitefire also says its $4k now but 5k + next month

It's the first time I've ever seen a company do that with FPGAs, that's for sure. Only avnet is doing it, digikey wants $5200/board for low QTY. My pricing just depends on chip order quantity, the more ordered, the lower the price is going to get.

I don't trust % fees for dev services because they're so easy to avoid paying.

Well, it's going be inevitable if whitefire does release his with dev fee. Why not tap into the market and collect residual for yourself regardless? If you have something that is already done, and then whitefire releases his, people are going use whitefire no matter what, since his is the one that is offered to the public.

But if you offered it ahead of the game and/or is better, then at least you get to collect some residual regardless if people want to bypass the dev fee or not.

Not sure how much work that would be needed to do this, but the way I see it, for example;

Lets say 100 people use your service, 50 people bypass the dev fee if that's your concern.
I would rather have 50% of some free residual, then 0% of nothing.

That's just one perspective.

+1

[senseless]

Im kean.

Just a noob question if you don't mind: Will your design require a different bitstream from @whitefire990 than the one he will be releasing for the
DK-U1-VCU1525-A-G by the end of this months?

I'am asking as I have a quote for 2 DK-U1-VCU1525-A-G in South Africa but If I need to wait a few weeks to get the more mining dedicated version from you I might be willing.

No, if he releases bitstreams for the VCU1525, it would work on the boards I'd make. And, the board I'd make would be equivalent to the product id you mentioned. The only difference is it will be cheaper once the $4,000 avnet promo ends. Avnet and Digi will both increase their price to $5200 for small MOQ. I would still be offering at $4k or less (hopefully, if we can get 10k orders).

[xxoanser]

Im interested 3 or 4 units from mex

[nerdralph]

Did you read this:

Sorry, I've been meaning to make a post related to this.  We have been working with the OP to determine the optimal configuration and board for this application, as we have a few to choose from.  The XUPP3R may not be the optimal one, we have other boards, including one with larger core power supplies and even the VU13P instead of the VU9P. The OP is working to determine the combination of FPGA size, clocks, logic, memory and power use that maximizes ROI.  We do not want to sell you boards that may not be the best fit, that is in no one's best interest.

So you have not missed out, you perhaps have saved yourself from buying a non-optimal board (we actually have not yet taken any orders or shipped any boards to miners so no one is in that camp).  You can still contact us and we will get back to you as soon as we have enough details to let you place an order.

So VU13P might be better? I think you are going too fast. I am interested in 2 but things need to settle down.

Edit: And OP(whitefire99) is still working specs.

I've already been at this for over a year. I've been mining on these boards since June 2017 and working on them since Jan 2017. The XCVU9P is where you want to be at. The XCVU13P isn't produce in the same quantity and it will not be as cost effective. The fact they don't know which device to get and are just figuring this out now shows how late to the game they are.

Bittware is also not going to give you a good deal. For each board they sell they're going to gross about 2/3.

Maybe they mean the VU31P and not the 13P?  The 31P has 4GB of HBM2 memory, which would be better for equihash than the VU9P.

[senseless]

Did you read this:

Sorry, I've been meaning to make a post related to this.  We have been working with the OP to determine the optimal configuration and board for this application, as we have a few to choose from.  The XUPP3R may not be the optimal one, we have other boards, including one with larger core power supplies and even the VU13P instead of the VU9P. The OP is working to determine the combination of FPGA size, clocks, logic, memory and power use that maximizes ROI.  We do not want to sell you boards that may not be the best fit, that is in no one's best interest.

So you have not missed out, you perhaps have saved yourself from buying a non-optimal board (we actually have not yet taken any orders or shipped any boards to miners so no one is in that camp).  You can still contact us and we will get back to you as soon as we have enough details to let you place an order.

So VU13P might be better? I think you are going too fast. I am interested in 2 but things need to settle down.

Edit: And OP(whitefire99) is still working specs.

I've already been at this for over a year. I've been mining on these boards since June 2017 and working on them since Jan 2017. The XCVU9P is where you want to be at. The XCVU13P isn't produce in the same quantity and it will not be as cost effective. The fact they don't know which device to get and are just figuring this out now shows how late to the game they are.

Bittware is also not going to give you a good deal. For each board they sell they're going to gross about 2/3.

Maybe they mean the VU31P and not the 13P?  The 31P has 4GB of HBM2 memory, which would be better for equihash than the VU9P.

Those aren't in mass production yet.

[greerso]

There is a lot of talk on two threads here about these fpga cards for mining but very little information and zero evidence that any of it even works.  Sure, I'll spend $35k on a rig with a $450 per day return.  Prove that it works.

[jamesgalb]

Those aren't in mass production yet.

You have said in the other thread that you mine using AWS and own a couple FPGAs yourself....  Could you please display them working before you start asking people about money?

[Sandal_Hat]

The VCU1525 schematics and bom are available for anyone to produce. I have already sat down with Xilinx (in Shenzhen) and negotiated chip pricing. If there is enough interest, I could facilitate a chip purchase, put the chips on boards and deliver them at a regular price of $4,000-$4,500. To hit a $4,000-$4,500 and stay at $4,000-$4,500 there would need to be at least 1,000 boards sold. If order volume went up to or over 10,000 units pricing could be dropped to $3,000-$3,500 per unit.

You would be able to use the device with the firmwares produced by whitefire990

Any interest?

Payment methods would be Crypto (obviously) and Credit Card / Paypal (identity verification would be required and shipping to your registered / verified address)


UPDATES:

The community seems to be uneasy that there is only one developer announcing they will be providing firmware for the VCU1525. We are considering building a 'shell' framework (like the AWS shell) that would allow any FPGA developer to compile encrypted code for our boards. We would provide a development environment (vivado) to the dev, provide the mining software, communication interface and facilitate fee collection on the devs behalf. If there are any FPGA developers who would be interested in building firmwares to be released to the community please contact me.

It is as I suspected. Economies of scale allow price to be lowered significantly. That is why bitmain can produce asics cheaper than competitors.

[senseless]

Those aren't in mass production yet.

You have said in the other thread that you mine using AWS and own a couple FPGAs yourself....  Could you please display them working before you start asking people about money?

Here's one of my VCU118 mining NIST5 with a PCI-E interface. Couple caveats... 1) This board is only 80A 0.85V vccint, so I need to stay under that to keep from frying it. The NIST5 design is operating at a fraction of it's maximum frequency because I can't operate it faster on this board. 2) Never completed / fully optimized nist5 because literally the day I was planning to start mining it baikal started mining it with their x10. 3) The picture says "AWS FPGA" because I use the same software on both.

Excuse the dust, that case was a GPU miner back in 2011. It's the only case I had that was big enough to fit the VCU118 and still put the side on it.

https://imgur.com/a/tmebe6W

And if you're curious why I named the software SuperMiner 31337, I was getting sick of pool operators getting curious about about my Fpgaminer software version string and superior hashrates. Moral of that story, pool server operators are watching and checking hashrates to try to gain an edge by seeing what's possible.

I'll see if I can make a video at some point showing it working with a monitor.

[GPUHoarder]

Those aren't in mass production yet.

You have said in the other thread that you mine using AWS and own a couple FPGAs yourself....  Could you please display them working before you start asking people about money?

Here's one of my VCU118 mining NIST5 with a PCI-E interface. Couple caveats... 1) This board is only 80A 0.85V vccint, so I need to stay under that to keep from frying it. The NIST5 design is operating at a fraction of it's maximum frequency because I can't operate it faster on this board. 2) Never completed / fully optimized nist5 because literally the day I was planning to start mining it baikal started mining it with their x10. 3) The picture says "AWS FPGA" because I use the same software on both.

Excuse the dust, that case was a GPU miner back in 2011. It's the only case I had that was big enough to fit the VCU118 and still put the side on it.

https://imgur.com/a/tmebe6W

And if you're curious why I named the software SuperMiner 31337, I was getting sick of pool operators getting curious about about my Fpgaminer software version string and superior hashrates. Moral of that story, pool server operators are watching and checking hashrates to try to gain an edge by seeing what's possible.

I'll see if I can make a video at some point showing it working with a monitor.

I’ll back up senseless here - the board he is proposing is useful and valuable for all the FPGA mining being done. There will be many FPGA mining options soon, but if you’re interested in getting into this space it is a good option.  


As to the picture,
VCU118 - aka the ol’ Ultrascale+ test/dev bed. http://imgur.com/FKVHPNs

This is not the same space as GPU mining. Expect Bitstreams, miner development, etc. to be more ASIC like.

Edit: I would be interested in 8 of these for some testing.