Ultra-Low-Cost DIY FPGA Miner - 175MH/s @ $1/MH

[Wandering Albatross]

You can actually do about 200MH/s on the LX150-N3, and if you order bulk quantities of that one (100pcs) you'll get it for as low as $115. That's almost 2 MH/$, so almost on par with GPUs. But you'll have to consider the cost of the board, other components, assembly, and time spent on it as well.

Destroying a $40 part is about as high as I'd want to go. And if I destroyed the first one I may not try another.

[stcupp]

You can actually do about 200MH/s on the LX150-N3, and if you order bulk quantities of that one (100pcs) you'll get it for as low as $115. That's almost 2 MH/$, so almost on par with GPUs. But you'll have to consider the cost of the board, other components, assembly, and time spent on it as well.

Where can you get them for $115 in 100 qty?

[TheSeven]

At least that's what pusle posted to the #bitcoin-fpga topic yesterday. Remember however that there's also other cost factors when building a board

[truckingeek]

So I'm drooling on this totally modular idea, and come up with what I view as the ideal "shoebox" crammed with FPGAs.  I did go to school many years ago for electronics engineering, but have been out of the field since 2001 and went off driving a semi truck instead.

What I'm thinking is a motherboard with maybe 10 or so sockets for LX150 daughtercards, each with its own voltage regulator and heatsink&fan.  The motherboard would have some kind of ARM processor with an Ethernet interface and probably a MicroSD card slot to store a really stripped down OS with web configuration and the bitstream for the FPGAs.  Underneath this mess would be a big beast of a 12V power supply.  The idea being you can start off with the "shoebox" and one or two FPGAs and add more as you see fit.  The shoebox would be self-bootstrapping and, after its initial configuration, would be smart enough to just connect to its pool and start mining with no intervention following a power cut.

Couple stupid questions:  First, it seems everyone is communicating via JTAG.  Is there a better way to do this?  Can any of the system-on-chip solutions (leaning towards the LH7A404 at the moment) talk to ten JTAG devices?  I know, well, jack squat about this bus so you'll have to talk to me like a five year old on this one.  I'm kinda thinking there would be enough GPIO on the bottom of the SOC to handle it, but as far as brains go I dunno if this would be optimal or even doable.

Second, I went and drooled on the Virtex-7 series...after cleaning various sticky things off my monitor I proceeded to pass out when I saw the price tag.  $150,000 per chip?!!?!  But the number of gates and potential clock speed sounds to me like each chip could be pushing in excess of 2GH/S.  Would these possibly be a viable solution, how scalable would Ztex and other code for the LX150 be for this monster, and at what price point could it be made profitable?

To the OP: kudos on making the skillet work!  My first attempt at reflow soldering a QFP in a toaster oven ended up looking an awful lot like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLRnoYmzhn4

[OggerMC]

i wonder if its still continued...
If it is, i would want to buy some!

[||bit]

To the OP: kudos on making the skillet work!  My first attempt at reflow soldering a QFP in a toaster oven ended up looking an awful lot like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLRnoYmzhn4

Did you try adjusting the rheostat from the 'darker' to a 'lighter' toast setting on a subsequent attempt?

[rph]

This thread is not dead. It's just been hibernating.  

I am very happy to announce I've been working on a full-custom ASIC project for the past 6 months.
We're estimating 1,000TH/s for around $0.14 (intro pricing), using about 20W, shipping in 4-6 weeks.
The HW/SW for that is still Top Secret, but, I do have some new PCB porn to share with you guys.
Here's the latest single-FPGA carrier, pasted and populated, but not yet skillet reflowed:



-rph

[crazyates]

This thread is not dead. It's just been hibernating.  

I am very happy to announce I've been working on a full-custom ASIC project for the past 6 months.
We're estimating 1,000TH/s for around $0.14 (intro pricing), using about 20W, shipping in 4-6 weeks.
The HW/SW for that is still Top Secret, but, I do have some new PCB porn to share with you guys.
Here's the latest single-FPGA carrier, pasted and populated, but not yet skillet reflowed:



-rph

Can it warm my coffee? If not, I'm not interested...

[Gomeler]

Dibs on the first unit. I'll even prepay while you finish developing it.

[aTg]

Hello, I am stunned by the announcement.
Calculate how long now to be operational the first prototype and chopped off at the benefits of our current FPGAs?
Greeting.

[stevegee58]

Hello, I am stunned by the announcement.

Don't be stunned.  The "1,000TH/s for around $0.14 (intro pricing), using about 20W" is a veiled jab at BFL.

[rjk]

What is that thing anyway? It looks like an FPGA carrier board (the markings even say FPGA) but I'm not sure which one. Is it custom?

NVM, read the OP this time.

[bulanula]

Okay so it is veiled...

Can you not see the obvious ( and famous ) 4-6 weeks line ?

Looks more like 4-6 months for real BFL product shots.

Too bad it kill all the FPGA guys like rph ...

[norulezapply]

Okay so it is veiled...

Can you not see the obvious ( and famous ) 4-6 weeks line ?

Looks more like 4-6 years for real BFL product shots.

Fixed that for you... FPGA guys have nothing to worry about

[Jay_Pal]

Bump

[crazyates]

Bump

Why are you bumping a thread that's already in the top 5 on the page?

[Jay_Pal]

Bump

Why are you bumping a thread that's already in the top 5 on the page?

Hum, sorry, "bump" wasn't the right word...
I wanted to folow... 

[wildemagic]

You can buy second hand fpga units for less than $1/MH.

I got my icarus boards for $0.78/MH

kind regards

[allinvain]

This thread is not dead. It's just been hibernating.  

I am very happy to announce I've been working on a full-custom ASIC project for the past 6 months.
We're estimating 1,000TH/s for around $0.14 (intro pricing), using about 20W, shipping in 4-6 weeks.
The HW/SW for that is still Top Secret, but, I do have some new PCB porn to share with you guys.
Here's the latest single-FPGA carrier, pasted and populated, but not yet skillet reflowed:



-rph

Is that a typo (1000TH/s)? I would assume yes and that you meant to say 1000 MH/s.

So that's $0.14 per Megahash? If so that would be ridiculously cool and I would love to be your first customer/beta tester, slave, lol, etc 

Can we expect that you'll release this before BFL comes out with their ASIC miner?

[crazyates]

This thread is not dead. It's just been hibernating.  

I am very happy to announce I've been working on a full-custom ASIC project for the past 6 months.
We're estimating 1,000TH/s for around $0.14 (intro pricing), using about 20W, shipping in 4-6 weeks.
The HW/SW for that is still Top Secret, but, I do have some new PCB porn to share with you guys.
Here's the latest single-FPGA carrier, pasted and populated, but not yet skillet reflowed:



-rph

Is that a typo (1000TH/s)? I would assume yes and that you meant to say 1000 MH/s.

So that's $0.14 per Megahash? If so that would be ridiculously cool and I would love to be your first customer/beta tester, slave, lol, etc 

Can we expect that you'll release this before BFL comes out with their ASIC miner?

It's not a real product. It's a picture taken from the OP in this thread.