Acorn M.2 FPGA based GPU Accelerator

[R0land]

I've been following this release for quite some time.....

It really sounds like all of you who bought these as "GPU accelerator"...have just been scammed. 

It´s not a scam ... it´s softram ! 

[vapourminer]

Have you seen that GPUHoarder is already mentioning (or testing ground) that there might not really be any viable GPU boost and the effort is going to be focused on Acorn solo mining (for some obscure coins)?
"
GPUHoarderToday at 8:45 PM
@Bazzaar if I had every confidence that we had community support and I wasn’t going to be immediately pressed to take returns by buyers who aren’t making the ROI they need, I would absolutely love for the next GPU Assist algos, further optimization, and tuning to be my focus. I love this stuff."

yup.

on some algos/coins if you run the profit numbers with the low power use and hash rate of the acorns stand alone vs gpu assist and its power savings and hash increase for the gpu, sometimes standalone mode can make more profit. depends on algo and the coin cost.

but pretty sure most all of us bought them with gpu boost in mind. gpuhoarder definitely needs to provide the official gpu assist miner. and let the miner decide standalone vs assist.

we always knew standalone mining was doable on the 215s, that was advertised pretty early on. and now it turns out the 101 can too.

[GoRdiE]

Anyone know the discord?

https://discord.gg/NebZyr

[philipma1957]

It looks like they never tested the gpu boost features and simply invented them from figments of their own imagination.

Zero proof  or demos of the boost feature in action that I know of.

If I am wrong please link to real demos of acorns boosting gpus.

[WillJ7]

It looks like they never tested the gpu boost features and simply invented them from figments of their own imagination.

Zero proof  or demos of the boost feature in action that I know of.

If I am wrong please link to real demos of acorns boosting gpus.

That is a bit harsh.  They delivered the hardware and have not disappeared so far.  I think they bit off a bit much, the bottom fell out of the market, and they have lost a lot of time dealing with angry customers.

[ZedZedNova]

It looks like they never tested the gpu boost features and simply invented them from figments of their own imagination.

Zero proof  or demos of the boost feature in action that I know of.

If I am wrong please link to real demos of acorns boosting gpus.

That is a bit harsh.  They delivered the hardware and have not disappeared so far.  I think they bit off a bit much, the bottom fell out of the market, and they have lost a lot of time dealing with angry customers.

It's not harsh. It's accurate. There may have been GPU boosting in a lab with a one-off, not ready for prime-time miner, but there has been nothing presented to the public, i.e.: send something to a trusted community user like Phil or Vosk or others, to prove that GPU assist is a thing.

I think GPUHoarder and SQRLs are doing their best to salvage a bad situation (between product delays due to myriad reasons, coordinating/acting as a facilitator for the BCU group buy, Mineority imploding, etc.) and do the right thing for their customers. If they'd been an exit scam they would have just gone silent like so many before them. That they are still around communicating and trying to make the best of a bad situation on so many fronts is a credit to GPUHoarder and his team. Stay tuned to see how this thing plays out.

[d57heinz]

It looks like they never tested the gpu boost features and simply invented them from figments of their own imagination.

Zero proof  or demos of the boost feature in action that I know of.

If I am wrong please link to real demos of acorns boosting gpus.

That is a bit harsh.  They delivered the hardware and have not disappeared so far.  I think they bit off a bit much, the bottom fell out of the market, and they have lost a lot of time dealing with angry customers.

It's not harsh. It's accurate. There may have been GPU boosting in a lab with a one-off, not ready for prime-time miner, but there has been nothing presented to the public, i.e.: send something to a trusted community user like Phil or Vosk or others, to prove that GPU assist is a thing.

I think GPUHoarder and SQRLs are doing their best to salvage a bad situation (between product delays due to myriad reasons, coordinating/acting as a facilitator for the BCU group buy, Mineority imploding, etc.) and do the right thing for their customers. If they'd been an exit scam they would have just gone silent like so many before them. That they are still around communicating and trying to make the best of a bad situation on so many fronts is a credit to GPUHoarder and his team. Stay tuned to see how this thing plays out.

The exit scam was passing an unproven idea onto customers instead of taking the risk we all thought had happened already.   They went silent here where this whole fiasco originated.  Mineority popped out with the eth enlargement pill as maybe a way to gain trust for this to take hold.  I find nothing out of ordinary when it comes to people finding ways to make money.  I’m sure when litigations start many will have taken snapshots with the way back so they can’t say otherwise.  Right!   I don’t give them any slack. They been around long enough to know how this dog and pony show works. If they didn’t then they didn’t do proper research to know we’ve seen just about every scam in the book play out here.   This is hitting many red flags for me. Either prove it can do what it originally was sold to do or start issuing refunds.  I can’t stand apologists. People making excuses for this shit.  This is basically sidehack 2.0.

[vapourminer]

Did you receive a jtag cable with your acorn? Mine didn't have one, the FAQ does state they come with one.

I need one so I can test the stand alone but I'm sure we'll get the assist software soon. I do wish we had some good updates.

Anyone know the discord?

no jtag cables came with my acorns.

i do have a jtag cable i cobbled up for an avr dragon programmer i used to reprogram some bfl stuff back in the day. if i need it for anything acorn or bcu related i hope i can use/adapt it. but jtag cables are cheap. no?

havent heard much about jtag use for acorns on discord though, as least as it relates to acorns. but i miss a lot of stuff there.

fpga acorn discord link:  https://discord.gg/TYNAey

may only last a day, if it doesnt work lemme know ill post another

[heavyarms1912]

Did you receive a jtag cable with your acorn? Mine didn't have one, the FAQ does state they come with one.

I need one so I can test the stand alone but I'm sure we'll get the assist software soon. I do wish we had some good updates.

Anyone know the discord?

no jtag cables came with my acorns.

i do have a jtag cable i cobbled up for an avr dragon programmer i used to reprogram some bfl stuff back in the day. if i need it for anything acorn or bcu related i hope i can use/adapt it. but jtag cables are cheap. no?

havent heard much about jtag use for acorns on discord though, as least as it relates to acorns. but i miss a lot of stuff there.

fpga acorn discord link:  https://discord.gg/TYNAey

may only last a day, if it doesnt work lemme know ill post another

There's no JTAG cable and I don't think it was mentioned either.  there's a JTAG header on the Acron and that's what was mentioned in the specs.

[RiceMiner69]

I completely agree with d57heinz. But hey, if you look on the bright side, while we are all waiting for the unicorn to appear, we have a sh*tcoin miner to work with.

Completely ridiculous.

[philipma1957]

It looks like they never tested the gpu boost features and simply invented them from figments of their own imagination.

Zero proof  or demos of the boost feature in action that I know of.

If I am wrong please link to real demos of acorns boosting gpus.

That is a bit harsh.  They delivered the hardware and have not disappeared so far.  I think they bit off a bit much, the bottom fell out of the market, and they have lost a lot of time dealing with angry customers.

I been around a long time in the mining game.

I pushed early on this thread asking for proof of concept  it has never been delivered.

Please show me wrong  show me working acorn boosting a gpu.

below are gpu_hoarder's posts on page one  of the thread.

Code:

[quote author=GPUHoarder link=topic=4391318.msg39110978#msg39110978 date=1527833198]
This information all existed in the discord but I wanted to share it with everyone.

So we’ve developed an FPGA accelerator over the past few months in M.2 (same as nVME drives) form factor designed to operate both standalone and in conjunction with GPUs. 

The first version to be released has 4x high speed PCIe lanes to communicate between the system/GPUs as well as 512MB or 1GB of onboard DDR3 along with a 100k+ LE or 200k+ LE FPGA of high speed grade. We’ve named it the Acorn, and the three models are the CLE-101, CLE-215, and CLE-215+

General expectation is it will provide performance roughly scaled with price/performance of the VCU1525, but it has a unique role and is not applicable to all of the same algorithms. Its performance in this role is dominated by its interconnect bandwidth and not its processing power.

It is capable of providing up to 30MH of lift to a mining system with GPUs on a hand full of algorithms or operate independently at higher-than-GPU level hashrates for other non-memory intensive algorithms (Keccak, etc). I will be releasing it alongside our mining software and bitstreams to support hybrid GPU acceleration. This project was not developed commercially, it was developed out of a product for my day job for internal use in our own mining systems to give an edge to traditional PCs and gaming systems turned miners.

The accelerator works by streaming high bandwidth hash state between GPUs and the FPGA over PCIe., allowing each piece of hardware to handle the portion of the algorithm it is best at. In general this means memory bandwidth or area heavy portions of the algorithm may be handled by the GPU, and hash algorithms designed for hardware implementations are handled by the FPGA. This approach works for any algorithm whose internal state is 256 bit (60Mh gains) or 512 bit (x16r, Lyra2Rev2, etc.) or smaller. The accelerator supports rapidly reconfiguring its algorithms from on-board DDR to enable handling of per-block or period (TimeTravel10) re-sequencing. It was designed originally to provide performance gains (especially for older GPUs with poor cores) and power savings for ETH by way of offloading the opening and closing Keccak calculations, as well as hash-selection to improve locality of reference for early ETH rounds. 

Given the anticipated path of ETH itself regarding POS and other fork possibilities please consider all those things if ETH is your target. It may be the most popular coin for GPUs, that does not mean it is the best use of FPGA or hybrid tech.

I’ve decided to make this hardware available to community at near cost, given all the FPGA interest lately, alongside my belief that broadly available general purpose acceleration hardware at its true market cost (not low volume industry specific dev boards) is the best defense against complete ASIC centralization. You will see this philosophy reflected in my activity around the VCU1525 board as well.

Anticipated pre-order prices of $199 for the CLE-101 512MB variant and $329 on the high end highest speed grade CLE-215+ 1GB DRAM version. On-board power consumption is nominally 15W. It will include a heatsink adequate for this dissipation level with reasonable airflow. It is important to note that to fit the FPGA this adapter is slightly outside of the 2280 M.2 specification, weighing in at 2380. The vast majority of M.2 slots should not have an issue with this.

I am also pursuing making available well priced options for individual PCIe x4 to M.2 M-key host boards (these are broadly available for $10-15), as well as Quad-M.2 PCIe switched and Bifurcated x16 host boards for those who do not have the available M.2 M-Key slots or require up to 240MH of acceleration.

I won’t post exact per algorithm stats or performance until I can do final testing of the actual boards to be shipped with the release hardware/heatsink/thermal management pieces in place, at which point I’ll accept pre-orders. This device requires quite a bit of testing to cover the list of common GPUs, PCIe configurations, and supported algorithms. I have no desire to sell anyone anything not useful to them, or to push a board at all, let alone one based on 3D renders, prototype parts pictures, or choppy YouTube videos, so I believe this full set of data along with final product pictures and overview must be published before I will take any preorders. I am sorry if that tests your patience.

Prototypes exist and I’ve already secured most of the hardware for a first batch so lead time will only be PCB + assembly.

At the time of shipping I will be releasing our internal miner software in closed source form for Windows and Linux that supports GPU only as well as Hybrid acceleration. You’re also welcome to develop your own bitstreams for the accelerator, and will have all the specifications necessary to do so.

I will also be publishing the interface for the bitstreams so that open source miners that wish to can use the FPGA directly. 

We are handling all CE, FCC, RoHS, and other certifications as well as ITAR and export compliance, so we will be able to ship to all non-US embargo’d countries. Taxes and import duties will fall on the purchaser. We will be offering at least a 90 day warranty.

All feedback is welcome. This is not my source of income, nor that of the rest of my team, and we don’t want anyone’s money unless they are happy with what we’re offering. I’m also happy to continue conversations I am already having with coin devs and miner developers on how or if FPGAs fit into their plans for their coin and/or ASIC Resistance strategies. This community is about choice, and I will respect the choices of those teams.

So all I would like from all of you beyond the feedback, is for anyone interested to hit our pre-order registration survey at http://www.squirrelsresearch.com to help us ensure we’re covering your needs and wants and have all the appropriate hardware secured. Based on that info very detailed performance information and full device photos (spoiler - it looks like an SSD with a heatsink on it!) will be published at the time preorders open, expected in mid-June. 

- David



[/quote]

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Code:

[quote author=GPUHoarder link=topic=4391318.msg39111496#msg39111496 date=1527833811]
[quote author=trillobeat link=topic=4391318.msg39111434#msg39111434 date=1527833744]
Good news!

I want to ask again ,  is the use of the M.2 accelerator  helping only a single GPU on the motherboard or all  GPUs will benefit?  

The MBs with two M.2 slots can use two accelerator units ? ( in the case a single GPU per accelerator) 
[/quote]

One Acorn can help multiple GPUs depending on algorithm, you can use two in two M.2 slots. 
[/quote]

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Code:

[quote author=GPUHoarder link=topic=4391318.msg39114820#msg39114820 date=1527837260]
[quote author=trillobeat link=topic=4391318.msg39113117#msg39113117 date=1527835514]
[quote author=GPUHoarder link=topic=4391318.msg39111496#msg39111496 date=1527833811]
[quote author=trillobeat link=topic=4391318.msg39111434#msg39111434 date=1527833744]
Good news!

I want to ask again ,  is the use of the M.2 accelerator  helping only a single GPU on the motherboard or all  GPUs will benefit?  

The MBs with two M.2 slots can use two accelerator units ? ( in the case a single GPU per accelerator) 
[/quote]

One Acorn can help multiple GPUs depending on algorithm, you can use two in two M.2 slots. 
[/quote]

So an Asrock B250M Pro 4 mATx board which has 2 PCIe 3.0  x16 slots and 2 Ultra M.2 PCIe GEN 3.0 x4   will get two GPUs  fully boosted by two accelerators.  

In the case of a board with single x16 slot and say 4 PCIe x1 slots, all GPUs will benefit but to a lesser degree as the limitation on x1 slots?

 Is this correct?
[/quote]

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Code:

[quote author=GPUHoarder link=topic=4391318.msg39118581#msg39118581 date=1527840841]
[quote author=KaydenC link=topic=4391318.msg39115802#msg39115802 date=1527838214]
How important is pcie 3.0 4x bandwidth for this FPGA? Because I use 8 gpu riserless Onda mobos; the only way it'll connect is via m2 key host boards on Pcie 1x lanes.


[/quote]

Unfortunately if you don’t have any place with at least 4x PCIe 2.0 it will be difficult to use in the GPU hybrid role. You would be limited to standalone algorithms.
[/quote]
That’s correct. 
[/quote]

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Code:

[quote author=GPUHoarder link=topic=4391318.msg39144981#msg39144981 date=1527863405]
[quote author=gameboy366 link=topic=4391318.msg39132651#msg39132651 date=1527853403]
-Will it increase hash of gpus that are on pcie x1.

-Is there any limitation to how many gpus it can handle and is there any decrease in performance if more gpus are used

-if two of these are used do we expect double the results

Also is there any MoBo that has more then one Pcie x16 that runs at full x16 speed.


[/quote]

It is better to use fewer GPUs, as long as your PCIe bandwidth andsupports it. You must be able to have at least 4x PCIe 2.0 lanes of bandwidth to the GPUs you are accelerating. That is 8 GPUs in 1x, which is not the ideal.

The maximum lift total per accelerator is around 30MH normally, as stated in post. There are some algorithms where there is 60. In all non-standalone cases the PCIe bandwidth becomes bottleneck before accelerator performance.




[/quote]

[Hueristic]

The longer they put off release the more the insiders using have the edge.

[RiceMiner69]

It's hard to have an edge when it doesn't exist....GPUHoarder has mentioned on the Discord channel that its possible to have the release before Xmas but this is an "Upper Range".....

I wouldn't be holding my breath for this....

[ZedZedNova]

Either prove it can do what it originally was sold to do or start issuing refunds.

How much skin do you have in this game? Did you purchase Acorns or Nest cards? I have skin in the game and so do others here.

Phil had skin in the game, requested a refund for the gear he ordered, and received it a while ago. Maybe not as fast as he would have liked, but he did receive a refund. Many others have done the same for Acorns, Nests, and BCUs. If you want a refund I'll bet that if you contacted SQRL support they'd refund your money.

I opted to stick it out for basically the same reasons as vapourminer. I went in with my eyes wide open knowing that there were likely to be some hiccups along the way. That's almost always the case with pre-order hardware and software to power it. I'll take my lumps and bumps and see where things go when the bear market reverses Soon^(TM).

[RiceMiner69]

I think the OP is just asking for some proof this software exists and works..... That's not too much of an ask when everyone has been waiting for a few months. 

[philipma1957]

Either prove it can do what it originally was sold to do or start issuing refunds.

How much skin do you have in this game? Did you purchase Acorns or Nest cards? I have skin in the game and so do others here.

Phil had skin in the game, requested a refund for the gear he ordered, and received it a while ago. Maybe not as fast as he would have liked, but he did receive a refund. Many others have done the same for Acorns, Nests, and BCUs. If you want a refund I'll bet that if you contacted SQRL support they'd refund your money.

I opted to stick it out for basically the same reasons as vapourminer. I went in with my eyes wide open knowing that there were likely to be some hiccups along the way. That's almost always the case with pre-order hardware and software to power it. I'll take my lumps and bumps and see where things go when the bear market reverses Soon^(TM).

where is that bull?

[RiceMiner69]

Phil is smart then....

The way I see it, in these situations, the earlier you ask for your refund, the more likely you get it.....

[philipma1957]

Phil is smart then....

The way I see it, in these situations, the earlier you ask for your refund, the more likely you get it.....

If you go back you will see I offered free help was blown off.

My concerns were exactly what happened.


But they gave refunds of course my refund was in btc I paid in btc.  Lucky for me my refund was given when btc was 6300 I cashed it out and turned a 3 or 4 dollar profit. On what the BTC cost me to buy.

Now if you get a btc refund you lose about ½ your money.

Ie if you paid 0.100 btc  you get back 0.100 btc

so it would be 620 value in july but only 350 value now.

It is why most do not ask for a refund they know that is a loss.

[Exoskeleton]

Phil is smart then....

The way I see it, in these situations, the earlier you ask for your refund, the more likely you get it.....

If you go back you will see I offerd free help was blown off.

My concerns were exactly what happened.


But they gave refunds of course my refund was in btc I paid in btc.  Lucky for me my refund was given when btc was 6300 I chased it out and turned a 3 or 4 dollar profit. On what the BTC cost me to buy.

Now if you get a btc refund you lose about ½ your money.

Ie if you paid 0.100 btc  you get back 0.100 btc

so it would be $620 value in july but only $350 value now.

It is why most do not ask for a refund they know that is a loss.

Exactly. This. People are basically trapped now. And if Btc had gone up in value how much do you want to bet they would be issuing you that refund in USD. Or an equivalent amount in USD in Btc.

This reeks of a money grab so much that I'd basically call it a scam light. They never had the software they promised they did that would allow GPU boosting, were obviously always going to be way behind schedule because of unrealistically projected supply line dates, and basically offloaded all risk onto the buyer in the form of overhyped presales.

And don't worry about how much "skin I have in the game". I would be thousands and thousands deep in these guys if I didn't see all the red flags a mile away. If they had shown a working model and software, ever, I would have probably would have pre ordered a shit load of these "GPU Accelerators". The only reason I don't have any skin in this game is because I was around in 2012-2013 when the whole BFL scam went down and let me say this seems like the exact same thing in a different package.

Over promise, get customer funds through presales, use customer funds for R&D that should already be done(and to trade/gamble?), delay(*Two weeks), offer a refund based on lower value of Btc or USD, pocket the profit, and eventually release a product that is close to worthless so they can point and say "its not a scam, see, we made you, something..." and "we offered you a refund at one point".

[philipma1957]

Phil is smart then....

The way I see it, in these situations, the earlier you ask for your refund, the more likely you get it.....

If you go back you will see I offerd free help was blown off.

My concerns were exactly what happened.


But they gave refunds of course my refund was in btc I paid in btc.  Lucky for me my refund was given when btc was 6300 I chased it out and turned a 3 or 4 dollar profit. On what the BTC cost me to buy.

Now if you get a btc refund you lose about ½ your money.

Ie if you paid 0.100 btc  you get back 0.100 btc

so it would be $620 value in july but only $350 value now.

It is why most do not ask for a refund they know that is a loss.

Exactly. This. People are basically trapped now. And if Btc had gone up in value how much do you want to bet they would be issuing you that refund in USD. Or an equivalent amount in USD in Btc.

This reeks of a money grab so much that I'd basically call it a scam light. They never had the software they promised they did that would allow GPU boosting, were obviously always going to be way behind schedule because of unrealistically projected supply line dates, and basically offloaded all risk onto the buyer in the form of overhyped presales.

And don't worry about how much "skin I have in the game". I would be thousands and thousands deep in these guys if I didn't see all the red flags a mile away. If they had shown a working model and software, ever, I would have probably would have pre ordered a shit load of these "GPU Accelerators". The only reason I don't have any skin in this game is because I was around in 2012-2013 when the whole BFL scam went down and let me say this seems like the exact same thing in a different package.

Over promise, get customer funds through presales, use customer funds for R&D that should already be done(and to trade/gamble?), delay(*Two weeks), offer a refund based on lower value of Btc or USD, pocket the profit, and eventually release a product that is close to worthless so they can point and say "its not a scam, see, we made you, something..." and "we offered you a refund at one point".

It is in effect giving them a free bet on price of coin.

Now maybe they simply just held the left over coin and spent most of it on the gear.
It still does not excuse no working demo  of all the June estimates.