Q: Why no PCIe ASIC miners?

[JayDDee]

I am curious why there are no ASIC miners in the form of a PCIe expansion card. It seems simpler and cheaper than
a standalone appliance. The ASIC controller would a driver on the host PC with only minimal FW required onthe card.
ASIC cards would be avaialable at lower price points opening the market to smaller operations.

The Future bit Moonllander was an interesting proof of concept but was limited to USB power and was effectively
just a toy. A PCIe expansion card would not be so limited.

[FP91G]

Fpga cards have been around for a long time.
Perhaps this is a technical issue that is easier to solve in a way that does not use PC mobo. What is the point of discussing this now if there are already ready-made solutions that are cheaper for the manufacturer.

[JayDDee]

FPGAs are not ASICs, they aren't consumer friendly either, which is the point I raised.
All ASIC miners are monsters that need 220V and are designed for a data centre environment.
The lack of a more consumer oriented ASIC miner is what I'm questioning. If you don't think it's
worth discussing then don't discuss it.

[Lafu]

I am curious why there are no ASIC miners in the form of a PCIe expansion card. It seems simpler and cheaper than
a standalone appliance.

Maybe the companies that manufacture the ASICS know that already and they dont looking for normal customers and want to sell there stuff to the big miner companies.
For ASICS you dont need really a PC to run it , only for the config and setup , pluged into the wall and it starts.
More consumer oriented ASIC miners would be nice i agree on that.

[JayDDee]

For ASICS you dont need really a PC to run it , only for the config and setup , pluged into the wall and it starts.
More consumer oriented ASIC miners would be nice i agree on that.

You're right but the popularity of the Moonlander suggests there is a market for consumer ASIC miners, notwithstanding
the current market conditions. Maybe Intel, now that they build the chips, might consider it in time for the next bull market.
It'd be interesting if people could mine BTC directly for around $1k. It would help a lot with decentralization of the net hash.

[adaseb]

I think this would be possible but it wouldn’t be cost effective. Most ASICs actually do have a computer inside. However it’s usually a Raspberry PI or something similar.

It’s cheap and small and low wattage and hence why it’s used instead of a motherboard which would need a CPU and ram.

[sxemini]

For ASICS you dont need really a PC to run it , only for the config and setup , pluged into the wall and it starts.
More consumer oriented ASIC miners would be nice i agree on that.

You're right but the popularity of the Moonlander suggests there is a market for consumer ASIC miners, notwithstanding
the current market conditions. Maybe Intel, now that they build the chips, might consider it in time for the next bull market.
It'd be interesting if people could mine BTC directly for around $1k. It would help a lot with decentralization of the net hash.

This is why i love the Futurebit Apollo BTC Miner and Node all in one - a little
bit expensive but it helps with decentralization.
BTC is not so decentralized as many people think - this what i say for years  

Interesting idea ASICs for PCIe, i see big use case for this.

I have also the hope to see more FPGA´s for normal consumers in the future and thanks Teamredminer for be the first miner with integrated FPGA support.

I think this would be possible but it wouldn’t be cost effective. Most ASICs actually do have a computer inside. However it’s usually a Raspberry PI or something similar.

It’s cheap and small and low wattage and hence why it’s used instead of a motherboard which would need a CPU and ram.

Yeah i see your point, but mining ETH with Asics is more efficent - but we all mine it also with GPU - because this ETH Asics are to expensive. And you can expand your "ASIC PCIe RIG" with one card after another. You can use PCIe splitter to expand and so on.

[swogerino]

I would love these friendly ASIC PCIE miners but I also like the fact that manufacturers like Goldshell if I am not mistaken offers good ASICS with low power consumption which I think can somewhat be the equivalent of what you are asking.They by offering such low consumption,are quite and are not a burden like the big ASIC-s which consume like over 3000 watt for all the processing power they have.I think a 205 Mhsh miner who mines Doge at just 220 Watt,the same consumption of a graphic card fits for me in more friendly ASIC-s.

[JayDDee]

I Goldshell if I am not mistaken offers good ASICS with low power consumption

That seems to addresses the cost of entry but I also like the modularity of a common host platform like easy
expansion, easy HW & SW upgrades, etc.

The controller cost seems like a non issue. When it's hosting $10k worth of mining HW, an extra couple of hundred
for mobo, CPU & RAM doesn't make much of a difference. I've never been a fan of skimping on the front end to save
a few bucks.

I was too quick to dismiss USB. With external power the mining boards could use USB, for real, making them easily
hot swappable and more scalable.

One way of looking at it is do you mine with GPUs because of the coins or is it the easy access to HW? In my case it's
the use of commodity HW and 120V/15A power. If I could order a PCIe BTC or LTC mining expansion card from Amazon I'd
probably already have a couple.

[philipma1957]

I Goldshell if I am not mistaken offers good ASICS with low power consumption

That seems to addresses the cost of entry but I also like the modularity of a common host platform like easy
expansion, easy HW & SW upgrades, etc.

The controller cost seems like a non issue. When it's hosting $10k worth of mining HW, an extra couple of hundred
for mobo, CPU & RAM doesn't make much of a difference. I've never been a fan of skimping on the front end to save
a few bucks.

I was too quick to dismiss USB. With external power the mining boards could use USB, for real, making them easily
hot swappable and more scalable.

One way of looking at it is do you mine with GPUs because of the coins or is it the easy access to HW? In my case it's
the use of commodity HW and 120V/15A power. If I could order a PCIe BTC or LTC mining expansion card from Amazon I'd
probably already have a couple.

Tell you what why don’t we start a campaign on Intel forum boards.

For a pcie asic ltc/doge miner and a pcie btc miner.

intel has a pcie ssd. and they want to get into mining.


https://community.intel.com/


and lets get a thread going

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Does-anyone-know-any-info-on-intel-mining-chips/m-p/1399175#M108689


I just opened an account with intel see link.

[JayDDee]

Tell you what why don’t we start a campaign on Intel forum boards.

If I was to campaign for anything at Intel I'd be to stop fucking around with AVX512 and get on with it.
I hate the Alderlake arch, I want either all P cores or all E cores depending on what I intend to use it for.
I'd probably prefer a laptop with Ecores and a desktop with Pcores.
Hybrid arch only makes sense if they have significant differences that are exploited. Dumming
down P-cores because E-cores don't support AVX512 is one of the stupidest things I've seen.
Permanently disabling the AVX512 workaround may have been worse.

I hope AMD goes with a different approach to hybrid using a true MIMD-SIMD (CPU-GPU) hybrid architecture,
not the co-processor model used now with iGPUs. The CPU would handle the single threads or threads that need
more complex instructions like AES/SHA and also be able to vectorize loops with AVX512. The GPU would handle
all the parallel processing for massively multithreaded applications.

Back on topic, Intel doesn't seem interested in making mining rigs, just the chips.

[philipma1957]

Tell you what why don’t we start a campaign on Intel forum boards.

If I was to campaign for anything at Intel I'd be to stop fucking around with AVX512 and get on with it.
I hate the Alderlake arch, I want either all P cores or all E cores depending on what I intend to use it for.
I'd probably prefer a laptop with Ecores and a desktop with Pcores.
Hybrid arch only makes sense if they have significant differences that are exploited. Dumming
down P-cores because E-cores don't support AVX512 is one of the stupidest things I've seen.
Permanently disabling the AVX512 workaround may have been worse.

I hope AMD goes with a different approach to hybrid using a true MIMD-SIMD (CPU-GPU) hybrid architecture,
not the co-processor model used now with iGPUs. The CPU would handle the single threads or threads that need
more complex instructions like AES/SHA and also be able to vectorize loops with AVX512. The GPU would handle
all the parallel processing for massively multithreaded applications.

Back on topic, Intel doesn't seem interested in making mining rigs, just the chips.

dumb they sell this:

https://www.newegg.com/intel-optane-ssd-900p-series-280gb/p/N82E16820167437?


why not sell a hashboard based on that form factor.


you could use

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813145299R?

2 full slots for the intel asic on a pcie maybe do ltc/doge 150-200 watts each say 400 watts and 1gh

and the 3 small slots could do riser based gpus. say 450 watts for 3 gpus.

a nice 850 watt system build it on a wooden board  use this psu

https://www.newegg.com/evga-supernova-1300-g-220-gp-1300-x1-1300w/p/N82E16817438190?

[JayDDee]

Tell you what why don’t we start a campaign on Intel forum boards.

If I was to campaign for anything at Intel I'd be to stop fucking around with AVX512 and get on with it.
I hate the Alderlake arch, I want either all P cores or all E cores depending on what I intend to use it for.
I'd probably prefer a laptop with Ecores and a desktop with Pcores.
Hybrid arch only makes sense if they have significant differences that are exploited. Dumming
down P-cores because E-cores don't support AVX512 is one of the stupidest things I've seen.
Permanently disabling the AVX512 workaround may have been worse.

I hope AMD goes with a different approach to hybrid using a true MIMD-SIMD (CPU-GPU) hybrid architecture,
not the co-processor model used now with iGPUs. The CPU would handle the single threads or threads that need
more complex instructions like AES/SHA and also be able to vectorize loops with AVX512. The GPU would handle
all the parallel processing for massively multithreaded applications.

Back on topic, Intel doesn't seem interested in making mining rigs, just the chips.

dumb they sell this:

https://www.newegg.com/intel-optane-ssd-900p-series-280gb/p/N82E16820167437?


why not sell a hashboard based on that form factor.


you could use

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813145299R?

2 full slots for the intel asic on a pcie maybe do ltc/doge 150-200 watts each say 400 watts and 1gh

and the 3 small slots could do riser based gpus. say 450 watts for 3 gpus.

a nice 850 watt system build it on a wooden board  use this psu

https://www.newegg.com/evga-supernova-1300-g-220-gp-1300-x1-1300w/p/N82E16817438190?

They'd work well with riserless mobos also. The hash boards could be all standard spacing, there's no need
to pack as much as possible on one card. Unlike gaming, 2 smaller cards will mine just as well as one larger one.

I don't know why Intel still sells the PCIe SSD, M.2 MVMe made them obsolete.

That's a nice PSU, coincidentally I have a 1600 G+ arriving Thursday., getting ready for Ada-Lovelace & Raphael.

[SafuBTC]

I'd rather dream for an asic miner with very low power consumption like GPU before thinking of any that I can really use in a motherboard, the problem with asic is power consumption, there isn't any graphic card yet taking 1500watt to 2600watt....

[arielbit]

I'd rather dream for an asic miner with very low power consumption like GPU before thinking of any that I can really use in a motherboard, the problem with asic is power consumption, there isn't any graphic card yet taking 1500watt to 2600watt....

1500w-2600w asic via usb riser(gpu riser) is very doable, the problem is the "standard" of PC, it means there is a OS, CPU, hdd/sdd, rams, PSU.

i mean, the asic manufacturer would sell a 3500w desktop psu along with an asic? a 2000w unit cannot be 6 inches beside another 2000w unit, usb riser will be 1-2 meters to be ideal with the PC motherboard at the center. (4pcs ASICs.. up, down, left and right that's the best setup LOL)

or

the asic manufacturer sells an asic with a psu, that says in the manual, "only to power the gpu riser and the asic itself"?

there are many points of failure with this kind of market, a lot will be RMA'd or rejected RMA due to wrong pcie insertion, PSU power cabling, and cooling negligence for users (asics already designed the air flow)


analogy: same thing with routers, you could use a PC and install an OS for internet routing (with all the disadvantages of PC hardware) or just buy a compact, low power, low failure rate, small size routers.

we long time miners can really do it if it is sold to us, but imagine the newbs and FOMO miner idiots that would flow to the mining space due to bullruns hehe, these idiots account to majority of miners during bullruns, imagine that they can impact gpu prices during bear market LOL

[Nighthog]

Someone would need to make it themselves if they can get access to the ASIC chips.

Gotta go the business route yourself if you want this made. I don't see the current manufacturers wanting to bother with it as it would be less profitable than a large single unit machine.

Maybe a GPU vendor wants to dabble into it if they can buy the Intel BTC ASIC chips directly. But it will be cost prohibitive. And not sold to consumers directly as the other Mining cards without contacts.
Most likely will be a one off production run and then abandoned for lack of sales because of cost/performance.

[CocolinoFan]

Agree with OP.
An PCIe ASIC card would be sick, I would buy for sure.

[FP91G]

Agree with OP.
An PCIe ASIC card would be sick, I would buy for sure.

Let's assume that Chinese engineers can take one of the boards with ASIC chips and make it compatible with a PC via a PCIe interface. The ASIC uses powerful fans to cool the chips. Will you turn your PC into a noisy monster?
Such a board will economically lose to ASICs.

[JayDDee]

Agree with OP.
An PCIe ASIC card would be sick, I would buy for sure.

Let's assume that Chinese engineers can take one of the boards with ASIC chips and make it compatible with a PC via a PCIe interface. The ASIC uses powerful fans to cool the chips. Will you turn your PC into a noisy monster?
Such a board will economically lose to ASICs.

None of that applies to using ASICs in a custom system vs using ASICS with a PCie (or USB) interface in a commodity system. ASiCs are ASICs no matter how they are used.

[FP91G]

Agree with OP.
An PCIe ASIC card would be sick, I would buy for sure.

Let's assume that Chinese engineers can take one of the boards with ASIC chips and make it compatible with a PC via a PCIe interface. The ASIC uses powerful fans to cool the chips. Will you turn your PC into a noisy monster?
Such a board will economically lose to ASICs.

None of that applies to using ASICs in a custom system vs using ASICS with a PCie (or USB) interface in a commodity system. ASiCs are ASICs no matter how they are used.

In this I agree with you. ASIC is a standalone device and does not need an additional interface, except for connecting a LAN cable. If we connect some kind of mining device to the motherboard, then it will be an analogue of a video card or FPGA.