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

[DeathAndTaxes]

ztex is more expensive but the MH/w is higher and thus the chips can be completely silent like my solution above!

rupy how long are those hex spacers between the boards?

And where did you get them?

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[marked]

I think people using Spartan 6 will not get any higher hashrate from now and it looks like 180 - 200 MHash/s is the cap.

Doesn't eldentyrell three ring structure improve the performance or at least it will when the clock rate improves?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49971.0;all


marked

[DeathAndTaxes]

I think people using Spartan 6 will not get any higher hashrate from now and it looks like 180 - 200 MHash/s is the cap.

Doesn't eldentyrell three ring structure improve the performance or at least it will when the clock rate improves?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49971.0;all


marked

Yeah the prior person likely mispoke.  Some higher performance is possible.  ztex has boards running at 212 MH/s.  Still nobody is going to get 400 MH/s out of a Spartan so there will be no massive performance boost where a board costing roughly the same gets 25% or 33% or 50% higher performance.  The Spartan-6 is pretty well analyzed how so it is in the fine tuning.  A couple MH/s here and there.  Maybe someone gets a board going @ 220 MH/s which would be a nice 10% "free" compared to existing bitstreams but significantly higher performance is going to require a new class of chips.

There is no other 45nm chip which delivers the LUTs/$ that Spartan-6 does (without special "sweetheart" pricing) so that means waiting for the Artix-7 28nm chips to become available and at reasonable cost.  The largest Artix-7 chips likely can (eventually with a lot of bitstream analysis) achieve 500MH/s+ so a pair could provide the first GH/s board.  Still who know how long it will be (Q1-2013 ?) before Artix-7 provides better MH/$ than Spartan-6 does.

[bulanula]

I think people using Spartan 6 will not get any higher hashrate from now and it looks like 180 - 200 MHash/s is the cap.

Doesn't eldentyrell three ring structure improve the performance or at least it will when the clock rate improves?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49971.0;all


marked

Yeah the prior person likely mispoke.  Some higher performance is possible.  ztex has boards running at 212 MH/s.  Still nobody is going to get 400 MH/s out of a Spartan so there will be no massive performance boost where a board costing roughly the same gets 25% or 33% or 50% higher performance.  The Spartan-6 is pretty well analyzed how so it is in the fine tuning.  A couple MH/s here and there.  Maybe someone gets a board going @ 220 MH/s which would be a nice 10% "free" compared to existing bitstreams but significantly higher performance is going to require a new class of chips.

There is no other 45nm chip which delivers the LUTs/$ that Spartan-6 does (without special "sweetheart" pricing) so that means waiting for the Artix-7 28nm chips to become available and at reasonable cost.  The largest Artix-7 chips likely can (eventually with a lot of bitstream analysis) achieve 500MH/s+ so a pair could provide the first GH/s board.  Still who know how long it will be (Q1-2013 ?) before Artix-7 provides better MH/$ than Spartan-6 does.

My point was exactly this. There is no way people using expensive 45nm parts will match BFL power hungry but cheap 65nm high performance parts like BFL.

[antirack]

ztex is more expensive but the MH/w is higher and thus the chips can be completely silent like my solution above!

rupy how long are those hex spacers between the boards?

And where did you get them?

At least here in Hong Kong you get this stuff in electronic stores, somewhere near screws and nuts.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/50mm-PCB-Spacer-Hex-Stand-Off-Pillar-Male-Female-x25-/130626750145?_trksid=p5197.m7&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D2%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D6625141050556940213

[ztex]

and my initial programming efforts (using the 15d3a.ihx firmware) seemed to fail - the process started, then claimed 'no ZTEX devices present' and further programming efforts resulted in 'no device found'.

Then, when disconnecting the USB, and reconnecting, my Mac tells me a 'Ztex FPGA device for Bitcoin mining' unit has been connected to the USB bus (I've got Growl set up to notify me of all hardware changes). Nice touch, so the programming may have worked after all...

This looks like your MacOS is having a problem wit the re-numeration of the FX2 devices. If you would send the output I could say more.

[BTC-engineer]

I think people using Spartan 6 will not get any higher hashrate from now and it looks like 180 - 200 MHash/s is the cap.

Doesn't eldentyrell three ring structure improve the performance or at least it will when the clock rate improves?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49971.0;all


marked

Yeah the prior person likely mispoke.  Some higher performance is possible.  ztex has boards running at 212 MH/s.  Still nobody is going to get 400 MH/s out of a Spartan so there will be no massive performance boost where a board costing roughly the same gets 25% or 33% or 50% higher performance.  The Spartan-6 is pretty well analyzed how so it is in the fine tuning.  A couple MH/s here and there.  Maybe someone gets a board going @ 220 MH/s which would be a nice 10% "free" compared to existing bitstreams but significantly higher performance is going to require a new class of chips.

There is no other 45nm chip which delivers the LUTs/$ that Spartan-6 does (without special "sweetheart" pricing) so that means waiting for the Artix-7 28nm chips to become available and at reasonable cost.  The largest Artix-7 chips likely can (eventually with a lot of bitstream analysis) achieve 500MH/s+ so a pair could provide the first GH/s board.  Still who know how long it will be (Q1-2013 ?) before Artix-7 provides better MH/$ than Spartan-6 does.

The new Artix-7 28nm chip from Xilinx is for sure one of the most interesting new FPGA for mining. Unfortunatley this chip is not yet available, and what is even more worse there is no official announcement when it will get available. When the production of this chip starts it could also take a longer time until the chips are really available on the market for attractive costs, because large companies with high volume are already waiting for this type of chip to assemble their boards.

This week is the Embedded World tradeshow 2012. Maybe I can get some more information about the availability at the trade-show, but I guess we have to wait at least 6 month until a 28nm FPGA miner will be available. Spartan-6 is already available now and you can use the time (with a 50BTC blockreward) until the end of this year to compensate your investment in FPGA. I guess 28nm FPGA miner will start in the time area of 25BTC blockreward. So it will take much longer until you have your return of investment. Beside all of this the 'risk' grows that someday, someone announce a SASIC or even an ASIC.   
 

[CA Coins]

Nice setup rupy.  What kind of temp/Mhz are you getting with the passive heatsink?

[Turbor]

@ Rupy

That's a very nice rig you have there, Sir ! I like to see what others do with their boards. Cool

[CA Coins]

Has anybody seen this?  Was running steadily for a few days until this popped up:

Code:

2012-02-27T22:39:50: bus-0-1: ztex_ufm1_15d3-2012-L1-B1: f=208.00MHz,  errorRate=0.00%,  maxErrorRate=1.14%,  hashRate=208.0MH/s,  submitted 13 new nonces,  luckFactor=1.00
2012-02-27T22:41:28: bus-0-1: ztex_ufm1_15d3-2012-L1-B1: Error: bus=bus-0  device=\\.\libusb0-0014--0x221a-0x0100: Read hash data: libusb0-dll:err [control_msg] sending control message failed, win error: The device does not recognize the command. : Disabling device

It kept running like this until I noticed a slight drop in hash rate.  Restarted the java process and now everything is fine.

[rjk]

The Mac it's running on is an 8-core Xeon workstation with 10 GB of RAM, running 7 optimised minerd instances for Litecoin, one cgminer instance on the hacked 6870 GPU, and is feeding one 30", one 27" and one 18" screen. The USB tree looks insane as there are hubs in the LED Cinema Displays and I've got hubs hanging off those, with iPhones and other random gadgets connected, including a Blue Eyeball webcam/mic which eats bandwidth. The 27" LED display has a built in webcam as well, plus I have three separate USB audio outputs. In short, this Mac is running flat out as it's also my main machine so Safari has something like 90-odd windows open, swamping the GPU vram and hammering the PCIe bus. The ZTEX 1.15d is cruising along rather nicely, on what's effectively an unsupported platform.

Holy shit dude. Seriously.

[CA Coins]

The Mac it's running on is an 8-core Xeon workstation with 10 GB of RAM, running 7 optimised minerd instances for Litecoin, one cgminer instance on the hacked 6870 GPU, and is feeding one 30", one 27" and one 18" screen. The USB tree looks insane as there are hubs in the LED Cinema Displays and I've got hubs hanging off those, with iPhones and other random gadgets connected, including a Blue Eyeball webcam/mic which eats bandwidth. The 27" LED display has a built in webcam as well, plus I have three separate USB audio outputs. In short, this Mac is running flat out as it's also my main machine so Safari has something like 90-odd windows open, swamping the GPU vram and hammering the PCIe bus. The ZTEX 1.15d is cruising along rather nicely, on what's effectively an unsupported platform.

Holy shit dude. Seriously.

That's a serious man cave, albeit a rather hot man cave

[CA Coins]

Like the 'man cave' comment. My girlfriend calls it 'the fucking matrix' (quote, word for word) if she ever has to come down here  I guess running the RedPill screensaver on the Macs doesn't help matters... 

LOL, that's great!

[rupy]

The hex spacers are 5,5 cm, but you have to measure your heatsinks, bought at the most assorted screw shop in town... When it comes to temperature I actually "underclock" my chips. The way to do this is remove them from the cold air stream at boot up so they clock down to about 208/212 and then I place them over the air inlet on the edge of the window board. I can barely feel that they are warm, even on the bottom if the first FPGA. That way I know they will last as long as they can. The trick here is to have window board ventilators that are drawn by the evacuation air pump of the building, cooling without noise!

FYI, the brick from ztex get's a little too hot with 5 boards, atleast if you want it to last 10 years. I would buy a 80 watt instead. The DC splitter is awesome though!

EDIT: One last tip... the d-link usb router with 7 connections actually run 5 ports fine without external power, great to reduce power cable salad!

[ztex]

Has anybody seen this?  Was running steadily for a few days until this popped up:

Code:

2012-02-27T22:39:50: bus-0-1: ztex_ufm1_15d3-2012-L1-B1: f=208.00MHz,  errorRate=0.00%,  maxErrorRate=1.14%,  hashRate=208.0MH/s,  submitted 13 new nonces,  luckFactor=1.00
2012-02-27T22:41:28: bus-0-1: ztex_ufm1_15d3-2012-L1-B1: Error: bus=bus-0  device=\\.\libusb0-0014--0x221a-0x0100: Read hash data: libusb0-dll:err [control_msg] sending control message failed, win error: The device does not recognize the command. : Disabling device

It kept running like this until I noticed a slight drop in hash rate.  Restarted the java process and now everything is fine.

You see this if the USB connection is interrupted. Check the USB cables and if possible, try out another port of the hub.

If it happens, you just need to rescan the bus (command "r").

[cypherdoc]

Ztex, what is your delivery time?

[ztex]

Ztex, what is your delivery time?

Small amounts (e.g. for testing) are available immediately and can be ordered from the shop (http://shop.ztex.de)

For larger amounts the lead time depends on the volume, e.g. currently about 7 weeks for 50 FPGA boards. (The aim is to reduce the lead time of a 100 unit order to about 4 weeks.)

[BR0KK]

Finaly im able to post here

i do have  five 1.15x Boards at home. I want to by at least 5 more boards from Ztex.

[aTg]

Finaly im able to post here

i do have  five 1.15x Boards at home. I want to by at least 5 more boards from Ztex.

What have you done with the radiator? only you put the fan?
Those using other more flat radiator?

[rjk]

Finaly im able to post here

i do have  five 1.15x Boards at home. I want to by at least 5 more boards from Ztex.

I would be interested in seeing some other angles.