ZTEX USB-FPGA Modules 1.15x and 1.15y: 215 and 860 MH/s FPGA Boards

[Drsmite]

Has anyone pointed their 1.15x(s) at P2Pool yet?  Should it work or is the current miner software incompatible with shares of higher than difficulty 1?

[Turbor]

Never tried it out. But i'm curious too.

[rupy]

I think p2pool needs long polling, I asked SZ about a deadline and he said jan/feb.

[ztex]

Has anyone pointed their 1.15x(s) at P2Pool yet?  Should it work or is the current miner software incompatible with shares of higher than difficulty 1?

Aren't invalid shares (e.g. shares that does not met the difficulty) detected by the p2pool software? (If not, even better. ;-))

But currently BTCMiner is not suitable for p2pool for another reason: it supports no long polling.

LP and another stale reduction algorithm (which also works if BTCMiner is only connected to a local bitcoin instance) will be implemented in the next release. Since BTCMiner can simultaneously run hundreds of FPGA boards this is not trivial (but not really difficult).

[Turbor]

That may be the reason for more rejects. 1% is not bad but with LP it will get even better !

[ztex]

That may be the reason for more rejects. 1% is not bad but with LP it will get even better !

The stale rate (on the bitcoin chain) is a little bit less than 1%. For that reason I do not consider LP as super urgent.

[rupy]

But p2pool might be an important step for bitcoin so that makes it a bit more interesting!

[DeathAndTaxes]

But p2pool might be an important step for bitcoin so that makes it a bit more interesting!

Yeah and on p2pool you will get about 2 to 3 LP per minute.  Roughly 20x as often as Bitcoin main network.  So LP support is mandatory (well without massive stale rates).

[rupy]

D&T are you using p2pool? What would you say of the payout compared to say deepbit?

[DeathAndTaxes]

D&T are you using p2pool? What would you say of the payout compared to say deepbit?

I have only one rig on it.  With 10GH I need to be careful moving them around.  Everything looks solid.  There is significant variance though so it isn't suitable (at this point) for miners who obsess over how much they make per day.  For me my power bill comes once a month so what matters is how much variance I have month to month not day to day.

As p2pool grows variance should be less of an issue.  At ~150GH/s it should find blocks on average every 12 hours.  That means even an unlucky period should be 10+ blocks per week.

TL/DR version:
p2pool works BUT it is "cutting edge" expect it to be rough around the edges.

[rupy]

New firmware out with long-polling. http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/

[CA Coins]

New firmware out with long-polling. http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/

Nice!  Will test LP out.  Thanks.

[iambaboon]

2 questions:
1.

License production programs can be offered too. The customer would purchase the empty PCB including a license fee and gets assembly data (stencil data, bill of material, pick and place data, ...). Estimated costs (including PCB, license fee, parts, assembly) based on the prices here in Germany (from official Xilinx Distributor) would be:
100 units: 170 EUR (about 230 USD)
250 units: 140 EUR (about 190 USD)

I don't have experience with hardware. Does this mean that one could get all the instructions to build one 1.15x module at home ? In that case, a friend of mine with some experience in electronics/electronic part mounting would know enough ?

2. By using the adaptations you mentioned, would it be possible to use one of the ATX power supplies supporting GPUS at the moment to power, let's say, a 30-module cluster ?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I don't have experience with hardware. Does this mean that one could get all the instructions to build one 1.15x module at home ? In that case, a friend of mine with some experience in electronics/electronic part mounting would know enough ?

You could but assembly is usually pretty cheap on a simple & small board design.  You wouldn't be saving much at all.  Trying to do it without very expensive specialized gear and experience means anything theoretical savings ($20 per board maybe) would be offset by losses due to defects. 

Say you could manage to hand build boards w/ only a 5% defect rate.  Net-net, you would knock a whole $10 off each board.  Not a good trade for the hundreds of hours it would take to build hundreds of units. 

[ztex]

I don't have experience with hardware. Does this mean that one could get all the instructions to build one 1.15x module at home ? In that case, a friend of mine with some experience in electronics/electronic part mounting would know enough ?

100 unit price is going to be reduced to about $250 for the next batch. So license production makes only sense for 250 units or more.

You should have some experience with electronic. Hand soldering is not worth the time and money (lower yield rate)

2. By using the adaptations you mentioned, would it be possible to use one of the ATX power supplies supporting GPUS at the moment to power, let's say, a 30-module cluster ?

A 350 W ATX supply would be sufficient to power a 30 FPGA boards.

[DeathAndTaxes]

100 unit price is going to be reduced to about $250 for the next batch. So license production makes only sense for 250 units or more.

Hmm now that is interesting. 20 GH for $25K & 1KW. 

Well a guy can dream. I got a 5.76KW circuit.  Could put 100 GH/s in my garage.  Of course then I would need a full time security guard so thats cuts into the ROI.

[rjk]

100 unit price is going to be reduced to about $250 for the next batch. So license production makes only sense for 250 units or more.

Hmm now that is interesting. 20 GH for $25K huh @ 1KW.  Well a guy can dream. I got a 5.76KW circuit.  Could put 100 GH in my garage.  Of course then I would need a full time security guard.

Well that pretty much blows my dream of a 20ghash rig using video cards, drawing 7 kw.

And this isn't vaporware either..... hmmm.....

[Inspector 2211]

New firmware out with long-polling. http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/

I tried it this morning, pointing it at deepbit.net (just like I was doing with the December 2011 version).

Result: 0.0 MH/s

After a few minutes of getting 0.0 MH/s, I reflashed the "old" (December 2011) firmware and was back to my usual 199 MH/s again.

Any ideas?

Is the long-polling command line parameter now mandatory? I have never used it.

[ztex]

I tried it this morning, pointing it at deepbit.net (just like I was doing with the December 2011 version).

Result: 0.0 MH/s

After a few minutes of getting 0.0 MH/s, I reflashed the "old" (December 2011) firmware and was back to my usual 199 MH/s again.

Any ideas?

Send me the logs / output.

Is the long-polling command line parameter now mandatory? I have never used it.

Long polling URL is determined automatically (you see it in the logs/output) or can be defined by "-lp"

[Inspector 2211]

I tried it this morning, pointing it at deepbit.net (just like I was doing with the December 2011 version).

Result: 0.0 MH/s

After a few minutes of getting 0.0 MH/s, I reflashed the "old" (December 2011) firmware and was back to my usual 199 MH/s again.

Any ideas?

Send me the logs / output.

Will do, but right now I'm at work, so by the time I can send them, it'll be [early] Saturday morning in Germany.
I'm mining in a small office I rent in Silicon Valley, mostly with HD 5830 cards. (Yes, it gets "toasty" in there...)