Acorn M.2 FPGA based GPU Accelerator

[philipma1957]

With current low prices for the coins an Acorn can help with, all the scenarios I've looked at show that they'll pay for themselves in 12-18 months. Is that what other people are coming up with too?

Can't wait to see some real $/day improvements when they ship: so many GPU/MB combo's to try!

I am going to try to create a contest for the most clever use of a two card nest

And of a four card nest.

I may need to run it on discord and not here.

[ZedZedNova]

Interesting quote I gleaned by reading the earlier posts (this one came through at 1:15am UTC-4) on the #gpuhoarder-products channel in the FPGA discord:

stick with me - load up on rx550 and 560s 4:1 with acorns in a Nest X4

I believe that was in response to someone who had observed that lots of prior posts were talking about monster MBs and CPUs, specifically the new threadripper and Epyc ones.

The Nest X4 has a PCIe switch so it eliminates the need for the MB to support bifurcation to share the power of the acorns.

[ZedZedNova]

With current low prices for the coins an Acorn can help with, all the scenarios I've looked at show that they'll pay for themselves in 12-18 months. Is that what other people are coming up with too?

Can't wait to see some real $/day improvements when they ship: so many GPU/MB combo's to try!

I am going to try to create a contest for the most clever use of a two card nest

And of a four card nest.

I may need to run it on discord and not here.

heh, been thinking about that already Phil.    Not actually a two card nest, but hey... hobby miners got to play, right? 

Nest X4 w/ 4 CLE-215+ in an x16 slot, plus the two 1080Ti hybrids each in an X4 slot, dual-mine ETH (acorn/squirrels miner has ETHLargement pill built-in) and something else, until ETH really, really goes POS. Unless I can score some super cheap Vega FE cards, in which case I'll build a 2nd miner leaving my 1080Ti hybrids doing their thing on X16R coins.

[dsmn]

The Nest X4 has a PCIe switch so it eliminates the need for the MB to support bifurcation to share the power of the acorns.

Inetresting, does the Nest X2G also do that ?

[philipma1957]

The Nest X4 has a PCIe switch so it eliminates the need for the MB to support bifurcation to share the power of the acorns.

Inetresting, does the Nest X2G also do that ?

I hope so as I purchased one of them and did not buy the four card one.

Still waiting for that order to be corrected as there is an error on the squirrelsresearch website for my order.

[ZedZedNova]

The Nest X4 has a PCIe switch so it eliminates the need for the MB to support bifurcation to share the power of the acorns.

Inetresting, does the Nest X2G also do that ?

https://store.squirrelsresearch.com/acorn/acorn-nest-x2g/

Acorn Nest X2G allows you to host two Acorn units in any PCIe 2.0 or greater x8 or x16 slot and provides four USB PCIe riser connections for accelerated GPUs without any special motherboard requirements.

Requirements:
PCIe 2.0 or greater x8 or x16 slot

Based on that information, I would say yes.

[dsmn]

Site says nothing about bifurcation, but it imply that the board does it since it says any pcie 2.0 x8 or higher port will work.

About the gpu's, most likely their comunication with the fpga's goes through the onboard switch nest2g have only, so the motherboard does not matter in this case, I dont understand why Nest2G would even require the x8 2.0 motherboard port, cant see what the high bandwidth there will do, other than for cross communication if you have multiple nest2g. But that makes no sense.

But thats how it is with a product like this, there is so manny options that they will need to hit the market before all use cases will be tested.

EDIT: Hmm thought about it and yeah cant see at all what high data throughput there would be on the motherboard from having multiple nest2g with 2 or 4 gpu's connected to the onboard ports, they should each talk with their gpu's over their onboard switch and there should be no cross communication over the motherboard since each nest2g will have its own acorn and gpu's, the data comming in and out of that nest2g pcie interface to motherboard should be just work and results. And therefor you should be able to just stick them in a 1x port.

This is all theory!!!!!!!!!!!!
But what do you think ?

[ZedZedNova]

With current low prices for the coins an Acorn can help with, all the scenarios I've looked at show that they'll pay for themselves in 12-18 months. Is that what other people are coming up with too?

Can't wait to see some real $/day improvements when they ship: so many GPU/MB combo's to try!

I am going to try to create a contest for the most clever use of a two card nest

And of a four card nest.

I may need to run it on discord and not here.

so I've been thinking more about interesting use of Nest X2G...

What it you used this MB: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182968
Populated the 7 PCIe x16 slots (configured as x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8) with Nest X2G
Filled the four Nest X2Gs with Acorn CLE-215+ (total of 14 Acorns)
and then used the risers (yeah, yeah, I know...) to host RX570 GPUs (total of 28)

The target here is mining X16R. When used with RX570s only 42% of the CLE-215+ capacity is used, so you can boost two RX570s with one CLE-215+ and still have 16% of the CLE-215+ capacity available. If you are OK with slightly less boost, you could use CLE-215 (non plus model) for two RX570s.

Assuming that my math is correct, that config would be like mining with 70 RX570s, but with an approximate power cost equivalent of 32 RX570s.

Google tells me (for whatever  that's worth) that with an 8GB RX570 Nitro+ you can get ~6.7MH/s, so that's ~469 MH/s in this franken-rig.

The thing that concerns me is the spacing of the PCIe x16 slots. Not sure that there is enough space for the Acorns with their heat sinks. Now if you could find an x16 to x16 riser that wasn't a cable... throw in four of them to stagger the height of the Nest X2Gs...

OK, time to go get some grilled beef, and deep fried chicken.

EDIT: Ignore my bloviating. BIOSes limit to 13 GPUs max. Per GPUHoarder from just a few minutes ago on discord channel when I asked about this config.

[ZedZedNova]

Site says nothing about bifurcation, but it imply that the board does it since it says any pcie 2.0 x8 or higher port will work.

Early on, before the Nest boards were announced, the only way that a quad M.2 riser board would work with the Acorns was if the BIOS/MB supported bifurcation of the PCIe bus.

Because the Nest boards have an on-board PCIe switch, bifurcation support is no longer needed, which is why the web site says "without any special motherboard requirements."

There was a lot of discussion in the discord channel regarding bifurcation, and what MBs supported it, in the last few weeks leading up to the product release.

[philipma1957]

I thiink on Z77 I had max Pci e 1.1 with Celeron and hd 6870. But on Z170 all RX are runing on 3.0 and 006 ver . eitherway, 1.0 is more than enough for mining cards. For Acron, not sure, didnt pay attention.

I have 4 or 5 z170 boards from biostar  https://www.amazon.com/Biostar-RACING-Z170GT7-Intel-Motherboard/dp/B06XDKHN1S


I think  that these boards  with the nest x2g  and  acorn 215+  will be true beasts

This board may do four four card nests. 16 x 15 = 240 watts

16 x  15 = 240 hash

That is like 12 1080tis which would use over 2000 watts


Costly as 16 x 330 = 5k and 520 for nests total of 5500

[dsmn]

I am going to try to create a contest for the most clever use of a two card nest.

Well incase the onboard pcie switch on the nest2g card makes the acorn talk direct with the gpu, so the high throughput data never reach the pcie bus of the motherboard only work and result, and the nest2g then can run of a 1x port, then I can come up with some pretty faar out ideas

[gsrcrxsi314]

Just want to make sure I’ve got this right so far.

No word how these things boost pure ETH mining, if at all, right?

[jmigdlc99]

For the Acorn accelerator, would the 480/470 class cards be interchangeable with their 580/570 counterparts?

Searched and back read a little, can't seem to find any answer to this yet.

Asking again because i have old rigs and am also interested in knowing if these acorns will also work on rx 470/480 GPUs and whether or not they will share close to, if not the similar, hashrates/improvements as the 570/580 series GPUs.

[ZedZedNova]

Just want to make sure I’ve got this right so far.

No word how these things boost pure ETH mining, if at all, right?

Read the fine website! There is a table below the Acorn products that tell you what kind of gains you might see.

If you are ONLY mining ETH, then the CLE-101 is the Acorn for you. And what it does is not so much give you huge boost in your hash rate, but reduce the power consumed.

http://www.squirrelsresearch.com/acorn-cle-101/

http://www.squirrelsresearch.com/faq/

On both pages above, scroll down for the details. On the first link, there is a table with info about hash rates and power use. On the second page (the FAQ) there are some answers about how many Acorns you would need based on type of card (low-/high-end).

[GPUHoarder]

I thiink on Z77 I had max Pci e 1.1 with Celeron and hd 6870. But on Z170 all RX are runing on 3.0 and 006 ver . eitherway, 1.0 is more than enough for mining cards. For Acron, not sure, didnt pay attention.

I have 4 or 5 z170 boards from biostar  https://www.amazon.com/Biostar-RACING-Z170GT7-Intel-Motherboard/dp/B06XDKHN1S


I think  that these boards  with the nest x2g  and  acorn 215+  will be true beasts

This board may do four four card nests. 16 x 15 = 240 watts

16 x  15 = 240 hash

That is like 12 1080tis which would use over 2000 watts


Costly as 16 x 330 = 5k and 520 for nests total of 5500

What a beautiful motherboard!

[GPUHoarder]

For the Acorn accelerator, would the 480/470 class cards be interchangeable with their 580/570 counterparts?

Searched and back read a little, can't seem to find any answer to this yet.

Asking again because i have old rigs and am also interested in knowing if these acorns will also work on rx 470/480 GPUs and whether or not they will share close to, if not the similar, hashrates/improvements as the 570/580 series GPUs.

Yes the 470/480s are pretty similar. We’re doing testing on the older cards next week I believe (79xx and newer, 980s and newer.)

[Elder III]

I thiink on Z77 I had max Pci e 1.1 with Celeron and hd 6870. But on Z170 all RX are runing on 3.0 and 006 ver . eitherway, 1.0 is more than enough for mining cards. For Acron, not sure, didnt pay attention.

I have 4 or 5 z170 boards from biostar  https://www.amazon.com/Biostar-RACING-Z170GT7-Intel-Motherboard/dp/B06XDKHN1S


I think  that these boards  with the nest x2g  and  acorn 215+  will be true beasts

This board may do four four card nests. 16 x 15 = 240 watts

16 x  15 = 240 hash

That is like 12 1080tis which would use over 2000 watts


Costly as 16 x 330 = 5k and 520 for nests total of 5500

What a beautiful motherboard!

I'm very interested to see how many nests can be supported on a single motherboard.  Theoretically it ought to work (as much as I can calculate anyways). I can't wait to get our shipment and start testing different configurations.

[Craxis]

I thiink on Z77 I had max Pci e 1.1 with Celeron and hd 6870. But on Z170 all RX are runing on 3.0 and 006 ver . eitherway, 1.0 is more than enough for mining cards. For Acron, not sure, didnt pay attention.

I have 4 or 5 z170 boards from biostar  https://www.amazon.com/Biostar-RACING-Z170GT7-Intel-Motherboard/dp/B06XDKHN1S


I think  that these boards  with the nest x2g  and  acorn 215+  will be true beasts

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/717paUOjm4L._SL1024_.jpg

This board may do four four card nests. 16 x 15 = 240 watts

16 x  15 = 240 hash

That is like 12 1080tis which would use over 2000 watts


Costly as 16 x 330 = 5k and 520 for nests total of 5500

Could you add one more CLE-215+ in the M2 slot and make it 17x15?

[ZedZedNova]

Do you have before testing a very very rough estimate of the acceleration for a few algorithms ?
Otherwise will wait for the test obviously Smiley

Read the fine website: http://www.squirrelsresearch.com/acorn-cle-215-plus/
scroll down and read the table.

You will need to use your google-foo to locate hash rates for the various GPU cards listed, then it's simple math to figure out what you can get.

[philipma1957]

I thiink on Z77 I had max Pci e 1.1 with Celeron and hd 6870. But on Z170 all RX are runing on 3.0 and 006 ver . eitherway, 1.0 is more than enough for mining cards. For Acron, not sure, didnt pay attention.

I have 4 or 5 z170 boards from biostar  https://www.amazon.com/Biostar-RACING-Z170GT7-Intel-Motherboard/dp/B06XDKHN1S


I think  that these boards  with the nest x2g  and  acorn 215+  will be true beasts

This board may do four four card nests. 16 x 15 = 240 watts

16 x  15 = 240 hash

My board above can do

8x
8x
4x
4x

In the size 16 slots

That is like 12 1080tis which would use over 2000 watts


Costly as 16 x 330 = 5k and 520 for nests total of 5500

Could you add one more CLE-215+ in the M2 slot and make it 17x15?

Maybe will be testing slow but sure due to cost.

These 215+ are 330 each. But if each one does 15 at 15 watts on x16r.   Compared to 20 at 200 watts for the 1080ti they will do well.