How many miners are going to get the new FPGA platforms?

[Darrel]

Seeing that they are now usable I am curious how many people are going to try them out.  I know they are pretty expensive but what a cool new piece of equipment.


Cheers,

Darrel

[true_source]

given the fact that they are expensive and most people cannot do anything else with them in case the bitcoin collapses, and therefore given that they have either a low resale price/are hardly resellable I would say the amount of early adaptors to fpga mining platforms will be limited, until they become significantly cheaper(like below $75). And even then I think that there's only a low amount of people willing to pay for something that they cannot easily resell(like they can do with a GPU)

[Stephen Gornick]

Seeing that they are now usable I am curious how many people are going to try them out.  I know they are pretty expensive

At current exchange rates and difficulty levels, the dual-FGPA board will produce just under 0.12 BTC per day, which is worth about $1.22 USD.  Calculated using the typical U.S. residential rate the cost of electricity to run this board for a day is under $0.04 USD, or about 3% of revenue.  For comparison, when GPU graphics cards are used for mining the cost of electricity can exceed half the miner’s revenue in regions where electric rates are high.

- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/9268040136

The cost of electricity is not the only consideration however.  Many of those mining would like to add capacity but have hit the limit where more GPU equipment would cause breakers to start popping, would require additional physical space, or would require additional methods to remove the heat produced.

They are shooting for 70 units to get the per-board production costs down.  I would not be surprised if they exceed that target.

[jh1523]

The fpga miners are a nice idea, but at the current cost the break-even point is over a couple years even with including the electricity savings. The boards do have other interesting potential uses. I hope they do get the price down, but personally don't think I would consider them an option until they get to a price point of 33-25% of what they are now.

[gbeirn]

I think I might try out 1 or two boards just to see

[simonk83]

There's no way I'm spending $400+ for 100Mh

[Canen]

They will come down in price and get more powerful.  There is no doubt that this is the future, but for now I will stick to my 5830.

[noone]

There's no way I'm spending $400+ for 100Mh

Or to say this another way:  why should anyone sell effective, let alone super-effective, mining hardware?  It makes more sense for the manufacturer to mine than sell.

[hmongotaku]

wasn't it on paper their 600 dollars and hitting 109mh/s?

[bcforum]

Seeing that they are now usable I am curious how many people are going to try them out.  I know they are pretty expensive but what a cool new piece of equipment.


Cheers,

Darrel

None of the currently available FPGA platforms are optimized for cost, primarily since the designers don't know what is required yet. There is also the problem of design by committee which never bodes well.

[ThomasAnderson]

Can somebody speculate what is a realistic price once they are optimized for cost, taking into account the fact that they are hand made, not by machines... I'm guessing at least 200 dollars?

[Mr.Coin]

The only way I see these selling is if they can do 200Mh/s for $100.

[hmongotaku]

they chinese got one in the works.. 400 usd for 200mh/s.. not sure when will it be done.