A question about FPGAs and mining

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Why do you think so? If yes, which FPGA chips or boards would you recommend?

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[NotFuzzyWarm]

This really belongs in the Altcoin Hardware area. ref the pinned msg at top of this area mainly point-3

[_heatsink]

This really belongs in the Altcoin Hardware area. ref the pinned msg at top of this area mainly point-3

Well, you can potentially stack multiple Xilinx Ultrascale FPGAs together and it can give you a decent enough hash rate for mining Bitcoin, why reserve the discussion for just altcoins? There are certain benefits to using FPGAs because they can be reprogrammed to do other things even though they are difficult to use. The profit margins for mining may be higher with ASICs but FPGA Bitcoin mining may still be worth it. Would really love to hear a more technical rationale for why public opinion is so against it, I personally think of it is as a viable option if you have multiple high end FPGA boards.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

By today's standards - hell, even going back to what the 28nm ASIC's from 2014 could do -- FPGA's are just too power hungry and too slow to be viable (profitable) for mining BTC. As a 'can you do it for the heck of it' experiment, sure they will work.

There are those here who back-in-the-days cut their teeth mining BTC using FPGA's and if they were the slightest bit viable they would still be talking about using them. Sad fact is aside from being programmable, no matter what a FPGA s used for be it mining, video or other image processing, etc., by any type of measure they simply cannot compete against purpose-designed ASIC's when it comes to throughput, power efficiency and low cost.

[ranochigo]

The profit margins for mining may be higher with ASICs but FPGA Bitcoin mining may still be worth it. Would really love to hear a more technical rationale for why public opinion is so against it, I personally think of it is as a viable option if you have multiple high end FPGA boards.

You underestimate the efficiency of the ASICs that we have. My USB ASIC has a higher hashrate than FPGAs while being more efficient and potentially cheaper. FPGA is okay if ASIC isn't mature already. That isn't the case for Bitcoin, anyone would prefer using an ASIC over FPGA for SHA256D unless they don't care about profits.