Acorn M.2 FPGA based GPU Accelerator

[KaydenC]

1. Lift is algorithm specific (some coins have a 512bit state and some have a 256bit state). Each Acorn can provide a MAX of around 30MH of lift to algorithms with a 512bit state, and 60MH for algorithms with a 256 bit state. That is irrespective of the number of GPUs. Power consumption of Acorn at peak is 15W. The limit is PCIe bandwidth, which for this generation of Acorn is PCIe 2.0 x4 = 20Gbps nominal, which yields an effective rate of 16Gbps after accounting for overhead. That math will then get you to the 33MH @ 512bit state, less 10% for safety and underpromising.

Why is Acorn on PCIe 2.0 and not 3.0. It seems bandwidth is a limiting factor, and doubling bandwidth can bring significant improvements.

Why aren’t all cars on the road lambos?

PCIe 3.0 Chips are significantly more expensive, this is the right place on the cost/value curve today. But it is being worked on.

Thanks. For the Acorn/GPU miner software, will there be a dev fee and if yes, how much will it be?

[1714095748]

1714095748

[1714095748]

1714095748

[philipma1957]

Businesses that assure consumer security also stand to make A LOT OF MONEY.  Of course, Acorn, Mineority, etc could include aspects of secure payment options such as PayPal to capitalize as Dwarf Miner did and then did not as an obvious bait/switch.  But I'm not just talking about secure payment options.

They already tried.

It was actually GPUHoarder in the interview but otherwise I completely agree with you. Seth Estrada's interview style and 85% waste of time on nothing drives me insane. It was such a waste of GPUHoarder's time!
Also, it is time to show some results. We have to plan what to do! I am going back and force between FPGA, Acorns and just getting a couple of more ASIC miners and forgetting GPU mining for good. Decision time for me is the next couple of days. Instead of all those discussions and interviews, we should get some real information!

I don't understand why you people can't wait. You'd rather that they'd just make up numbers and tell you what you want to hear, instead of getting everything squared away, and presenting you with accurate numbers/benchmarks. I actually appreciate a company that doesn't rush out data/info without verifying the accuracy. Nobody has to accommodate your schedule. Nobody has paid any money for these accelerator's. Having no patience is the reason there is so many scams on this forum.

but he did rush to start the thread and has missed his dates.

I never said anything negative about him everything was true.

he said  mid june for preorder >>>>>>>>>>> missed this date
he said late june for shipping >>>>>>>>>>>> missed this date
he mentioned showing proof with a video >>>> backed off this statement

he has done none of the above.

let us pretend he is fully 100% honest and will deliver every day of delay HERE  means we get closer to gear like this


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4553947.msg41248146#msg41248146

So I was looking forward to this working right now as I type instead it has been hype.

Phil, nice videos on the Ethereal capital Blackbox early model. Since they supplied you with a testing ring you seem to trust them.

Now, I just checked their latest 16x FPGA unit and they will include Acorn 215+ in their August batch.

https://blackbox.cat/collections/frontpage/products/blackbox-x16-bcu1525-fpga-system-with-16x-xilinx-bcu1525-fgpas-august-batch

Is Acorn still hype or Ethereal capital is riding the hype? Or they know more than you do?

I'm keeping an eye on this project, it seems interesting.

KJS sent that to me for a one month test run and demo it was a very nice piece of gear.
He fully trusted me with the gear and when demo was done along with the thread I shipped it back to him on my dime. but kept a month of mining profits.

It is a bit too much to ask him for the 60k rig to do the same thing.

but I know that ethos software and KJS and ohgoditsagirl and gpuhoarder all have said they have had working relationships and they do not speak badly of each other.

I know KJS sent me a 6k machine to test run and trusted me and I was good to him and did what I was supposed to do.

So I feel this gear is real  and I am mostly bitching that they missed deadlines and I do not know what to do  with my coin/cash/gear ratios mostly due to this delay.

If I am 25k in cash 10k in coin and 20k in gear do I just wait and wait and wait.  or do I sell more gear or do I want to change my mobos buy more  ryzen 2700x and x470 boards.

At the moment I was hoping to just keep my 1080ti's and use acorn2 for a boost
I did not want to move into fpga's

[CreamyG31337]

Thanks. For the Acorn/GPU miner software, will there be a dev fee and if yes, how much will it be?

It's up to the bitstream developers, but GPUHoarder really hates fees. Whatever his team produces might actually be free.

They'll publish interfaces for other devs to use, so those ones might have around 4%, which is what the first bitstreams for the BCU FPGA are targeting.

[dragonmike]

You should assume that 1x risers are not supported.
.
.
There's no reason you should ever need a 16x riser to the video card!

I am 100% confused.


Right, so I have two rigs with 7 RX 570's on. Each hooked up with a 1x-to-16x powered riser. Very standard mining setup.
The mobo is MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon. PCI-E Gen 3. Three of the PCI-E slot are PCI-EX16 (support x16/x0/x4 or x8/x8/x4 modes).
The M.2 slot (currently unpopulated) is "1 x 2280 Key M(PCIe Gen3 x4/SATA)".

What should I do/expect from an Acorn in that slot?

[kjs]

KJS sent that to me for a one month test run and demo it was a very nice piece of gear.
He fully trusted me with the gear and when demo was done along with the thread I shipped it back to him on my dime. but kept a month of mining profits.

It is a bit too much to ask him for the 60k rig to do the same thing.

but I know that ethos software and KJS and ohgoditsagirl and gpuhoarder all have said they have had working relationships and they do not speak badly of each other.

I know KJS sent me a 6k machine to test run and trusted me and I was good to him and did what I was supposed to do.

So I feel this gear is real  and I am mostly bitching that they missed deadlines and I do not know what to do  with my coin/cash/gear ratios mostly due to this delay.

If I am 25k in cash 10k in coin and 20k in gear do I just wait and wait and wait.  or do I sell more gear or do I want to change my mobos buy more  ryzen 2700x and x470 boards.

At the moment I was hoping to just keep my 1080ti's and use acorn2 for a boost
I did not want to move into fpga's

Thanks philipma1957.

I will be able to send you a BLACKBOX system for review, but without GPU's or FGPA's installed.

The BCU1525 FGPA's have not shipped yet so its impossible to ship a fully loaded one even if we could.

[kjs]

Phil, nice videos on the Ethereal capital Blackbox early model. Since they supplied you with a testing ring you seem to trust them.

Now, I just checked their latest 16x FPGA unit and they will include Acorn 215+ in their August batch.

https://blackbox.cat/collections/frontpage/products/blackbox-x16-bcu1525-fpga-system-with-16x-xilinx-bcu1525-fgpas-august-batch

Is Acorn still hype or Ethereal capital is riding the hype? Or they know more than you do?

I'm keeping an eye on this project, it seems interesting.

No hype riding here, just providing real products that work real well.

[philipma1957]

KJS sent that to me for a one month test run and demo it was a very nice piece of gear.
He fully trusted me with the gear and when demo was done along with the thread I shipped it back to him on my dime. but kept a month of mining profits.

It is a bit too much to ask him for the 60k rig to do the same thing.

but I know that ethos software and KJS and ohgoditsagirl and gpuhoarder all have said they have had working relationships and they do not speak badly of each other.

I know KJS sent me a 6k machine to test run and trusted me and I was good to him and did what I was supposed to do.

So I feel this gear is real  and I am mostly bitching that they missed deadlines and I do not know what to do  with my coin/cash/gear ratios mostly due to this delay.

If I am 25k in cash 10k in coin and 20k in gear do I just wait and wait and wait.  or do I sell more gear or do I want to change my mobos buy more  ryzen 2700x and x470 boards.

At the moment I was hoping to just keep my 1080ti's and use acorn2 for a boost
I did not want to move into fpga's

Thanks philipma1957.

I will be able to send you a BLACKBOX system for review, but without GPU's or FGPA's installed.

The BCU1525 FGPA's have not shipped yet so its impossible to ship a fully loaded one even if we could.

having it with 1 or 2 bcu1525 and an acorn2 would be a good way to show what it can do.

or having it with an acorn2 and some of my 1080ti's would also by a good way to demo it


lastly is a mixed system possible  say 1 or 2   BCU1525 FGPA's  an acorn2 and  a few 1080ti's

this last one would appeal to a lot of miners like myself with some  gpus on hand and boosting the setup with an acorn2 and a fpga or 2.

For many  your 16 fpga + acorn2 = too much $$$

but a combination  of 1080ti + acorn2 + BCU1525 FGPA is possible and attractive

[lok8nusa]

Do your own research, people.

I did some. I didn't find out anything new about the Acorn, but I know more about the people behind it. I tried the same thing with the DwarfMiner. It wasn't quite as fruitful of a search.

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20160221/NEWS/160219936/software-developer-squirrels-looks-to-start-tech-hub-in-north-canton

Am I interested in the Acorn? You bet!   If it gets anywhere close to the general claims made so far by GPUHoarder, it will help.

Am I going to send this guy money before he demonstrates in some manner what it can do? Not on your life. How many of you pre-ordered the DM T1 without knowing it only worked on AsicBoost enabled pools?

When (I don't think it's an 'if', now) GPUHoarder demos some concrete numbers and deployment info, I'll make a decision based on facts, not 'gee-whiz'. Would I like to see reviews by trusted forum members? Absolutely. Third-party verification is never a bad idea.


Mine on!

[Madr8b]

Any idea when the Acorn's will be available? 

[grendel25]

KJS sent that to me for a one month test run and demo it was a very nice piece of gear.
He fully trusted me with the gear and when demo was done along with the thread I shipped it back to him on my dime. but kept a month of mining profits.

It is a bit too much to ask him for the 60k rig to do the same thing.

but I know that ethos software and KJS and ohgoditsagirl and gpuhoarder all have said they have had working relationships and they do not speak badly of each other.

I know KJS sent me a 6k machine to test run and trusted me and I was good to him and did what I was supposed to do.

So I feel this gear is real  and I am mostly bitching that they missed deadlines and I do not know what to do  with my coin/cash/gear ratios mostly due to this delay.

If I am 25k in cash 10k in coin and 20k in gear do I just wait and wait and wait.  or do I sell more gear or do I want to change my mobos buy more  ryzen 2700x and x470 boards.

At the moment I was hoping to just keep my 1080ti's and use acorn2 for a boost
I did not want to move into fpga's

Thanks philipma1957.

I will be able to send you a BLACKBOX system for review, but without GPU's or FGPA's installed.

The BCU1525 FGPA's have not shipped yet so its impossible to ship a fully loaded one even if we could.

having it with 1 or 2 bcu1525 and an acorn2 would be a good way to show what it can do.

or having it with an acorn2 and some of my 1080ti's would also by a good way to demo it


lastly is a mixed system possible  say 1 or 2   BCU1525 FGPA's  an acorn2 and  a few 1080ti's

this last one would appeal to a lot of miners like myself with some  gpus on hand and boosting the setup with an acorn2 and a fpga or 2.

For many  your 16 fpga + acorn2 = too much $$$

but a combination  of 1080ti + acorn2 + BCU1525 FGPA is possible and attractive

I think this is the kind of transparent collaboration that a lot of people have been looking for.  This is the kind of thing that will push a lot of people past the speculative barrier.  Well done and thank you!

Of course, looking forward to actual follow through and results.  And I would be more interested in use cases illustrating GPU enhancements (1070, 1080, 1080ti here) as opposed to the somewhat limitedly accessible BCUXXXX FPGA.

Oh... and if anyone is looking to expand on this and include more testers I would recommend Vosk Coin. 

[CreamyG31337]

You should assume that 1x risers are not supported.
.
.
There's no reason you should ever need a 16x riser to the video card!

I am 100% confused.


Right, so I have two rigs with 7 RX 570's on. Each hooked up with a 1x-to-16x powered riser. Very standard mining setup.
The mobo is MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon. PCI-E Gen 3. Three of the PCI-E slot are PCI-EX16 (support x16/x0/x4 or x8/x8/x4 modes).
The M.2 slot (currently unpopulated) is "1 x 2280 Key M(PCIe Gen3 x4/SATA)".

What should I do/expect from an Acorn in that slot?

Okay so if the max amount of 4x-16x slots on your board is 3, and you have one m.2 slot, ideally you should have 2 video cards and 2 acorns working together, and use the rest of the slots with the 1x risers for normal mining (if you want). Let me explain how I'd do it.
One acorn in the m.2 slot, obviously.
If you had been using that slot, here's what you could buy to move the SSD to an SATA port without cloning it (this might help someone else): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/NI5L-High-quality-PCB-B-Key-M-2-NGFF-SSD-to-2-5-SATA-Converter-Adapter/32797563020.html
2 video cards and one more acorn in an adapter can go in any of the slots that provide 8x/4x
Here's an adapter that will do the minimum required: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/JEYI-SK4-M-2-NVMe-SSD-NGFF-TO-PCIE-X4-adapter-M-Key-interface-card-Suppor/32785472313.html
And then to get at any of the 1x slots you've blocked with the video cards, I'd use these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Newest-Sale-PCI-E-X1-Extension-Cable-Riser-Card-Extender-USB-3-0-Transfer-Cables-PCI/32861850204.html
There are other SKUs of that same adapter at that same bitCON store (lol) but this is the only one with free shipping (that only works if you order 1 at a time). If you're okay paying a lot more for faster shipping you can save a few cents switching to a different sku or using the mobile app to pay. I also saw them on amazon.com under the ubit name. I don't know why these aren't more popular; they're really hard to find. I wouldn't use the $2-3 cables to extend those slots as those are really trashy looking, and will definitely break eventually. I wouldn't risk connecting the usb direct to the 16x slot from your other riser, use the included one without power and then the complete 1x to 16x riser chained to that. A bit messy, but safe.
Everything I've written assumes you can run your board in pci-e v2 mode. If it's not stable and you need to use v1 you have to use one less acorn because your 4x slot is now useless to it. You also might want to double check that using slots on your board doesn't fuck with the bandwidth to the m.2 slot. I checked https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z170A-GAMING-PRO-CARBON/Specification and it looks fine -- it only disables SATA ports 5/6 when you use it, which is easy to work around.

[kjs]

having it with 1 or 2 bcu1525 and an acorn2 would be a good way to show what it can do.

or having it with an acorn2 and some of my 1080ti's would also by a good way to demo it


lastly is a mixed system possible  say 1 or 2   BCU1525 FGPA's  an acorn2 and  a few 1080ti's

this last one would appeal to a lot of miners like myself with some  gpus on hand and boosting the setup with an acorn2 and a fpga or 2.

For many  your 16 fpga + acorn2 = too much $$$

but a combination  of 1080ti + acorn2 + BCU1525 FGPA is possible and attractive

Yes, that is a very good idea. I'll have a think about how we could make that possible.

The key issue at the moment is getting supply of the FGPA's, I have 2 x developer kits on the way but in general there is very limited supply in the marketplace.

Similarly with Acorn, they are still pre-production at this stage and I have spoken with David at SQRL's and there is expected to be some supply available in 3-4 weeks time.

Once I have at least 1 x FGPA and 1 x Acorn in hand I'll organise the eval.

[CreamyG31337]

Oh... and if anyone is looking to expand on this and include more testers I would recommend Vosk Coin. 

Please, no. Guy is annoying af. Just my opinion!

[kjs]

Oh... and if anyone is looking to expand on this and include more testers I would recommend Vosk Coin. 

Please, no. Guy is annoying af. Just my opinion!

Well, I would but I need my review sample back as we only have 1-2 spare.

[ZedZedNova]

Any idea when the Acorn's will be available? 

Soon^TM

[mfurman]

Any idea when the Acorn's will be available? 

Soon^TM

LOL. I see that most of us decided to wait patiently.

[rickgresham]

All the discussion I see here appears focused on accelerating ethhash.  Any predictions for accelerating cryptonight?

[CreamyG31337]

Oh... and if anyone is looking to expand on this and include more testers I would recommend Vosk Coin.  

Please, no. Guy is annoying af. Just my opinion!

Well, I would but I need my review sample back as we only have 1-2 spare.

In Vosk's last video he mentions mineority disappointing him by selling FPGAs instead of working on ProgPOW. Then he's complaining about reduced Nvidia profit due to the Z9 mini and bitmain being evil, and how 'people' only care about profit, yet he's bought two Z9's and another ASIC on the way? If he's not going to set a decent example, he's just a hypocrite. I don't hate the guy, I just think he could do a lot better if his reviews were more focused on the technology and less about how much money he can make. Let him and his subscribers buy their ASICs and leave the FPGAs for people that can tell the difference between a scam and a deal at this early stage. If you have a review sample please send it to Seth or someone else that actually made some FPGA videos recently.

[ciprianpt]

Oh... and if anyone is looking to expand on this and include more testers I would recommend Vosk Coin.  

Please, no. Guy is annoying af. Just my opinion!

Well, I would but I need my review sample back as we only have 1-2 spare.

In Vosk's last video he mentions mineority disappointing him by selling FPGAs instead of working on ProgPOW. Then he's complaining about reduced Nvidia profit due to the Z9 mini and bitmain being evil, and how 'people' only care about profit, yet he's bought two Z9's and another ASIC on the way? If he's not going to set a decent example, he's just a hypocrite. I don't hate the guy, I just think he could do a lot better if his reviews were more focused on the technology and less about how much money he can make. Let him and his subscribers buy their ASICs and leave the FPGAs for people that can tell the difference between a scam and a deal at this early stage. If you have a review sample please send it to Seth or someone else that actually made some FPGA videos recently.

maaan, you read my mind, no kidding, after my FPGA and Acorn "reviews" i'm doing a big one about the asics and i kinda mentioned the same things as you just did

[mfurman]

Oh... and if anyone is looking to expand on this and include more testers I would recommend Vosk Coin.  

Please, no. Guy is annoying af. Just my opinion!

Well, I would but I need my review sample back as we only have 1-2 spare.

In Vosk's last video he mentions mineority disappointing him by selling FPGAs instead of working on ProgPOW. Then he's complaining about reduced Nvidia profit due to the Z9 mini and bitmain being evil, and how 'people' only care about profit, yet he's bought two Z9's and another ASIC on the way? If he's not going to set a decent example, he's just a hypocrite. I don't hate the guy, I just think he could do a lot better if his reviews were more focused on the technology and less about how much money he can make. Let him and his subscribers buy their ASICs and leave the FPGAs for people that can tell the difference between a scam and a deal at this early stage. If you have a review sample please send it to Seth or someone else that actually made some FPGA videos recently.

Let's be realistic. Is it about ideology or mining (I am assuming - for profit)? Antminer Z9 mini is currently quite profitable (yes, it may end soon). I am comparing my different GPUs' profitability with ASIC's and I am leaning toward forgetting this GPU struggle. I do hope that Acorn is going to improve things but if it going to be only for some miner Algos, it will not help me.