Nanominer - Modular FPGA Mining Platform

[wondermine]

I'm developing a new system-on-chip FPGA miner, Nanominer.

Overall the unit is faster than any current FPGA BTC rig, and it's modular so it can be applied to the DE0 Nano all the way up to Stratix cores.
It uses (optionally) a microcontroller to manage getwork and queueing while the FPGA focuses on hashing. This allows you to run it with extremely low power consumption, even on a cluster.

At an estimated $0.92 per MH/s, this core is definitely worth the while.
I have a modified core running on a Stratix IV at 3.6GH/s, and am redesigning the core from the ground up to allow for similar usage on the lower end FPGAs.
I'm asking a $10 (or 1 BTC) donation for lifetime licensing to the core (it will be something I maintain, optimize, update with the new silicon every little while).  However, it will be available, free of charge, open source. Donations will help keep it fresh and fast.
Donation now entitles you to the source code, the binaries, and 1-on-1 support (as much as I can give it).  The timeframe totally depends on how much I can get donated, so please be generous!

For more details, including contact information, and what is available now, go to http://www.nonverba.org/nanominer

Thank you for your time and interest!

Just to be clear, the top current mining rate of this core is 800MH/s on a Stratix IV GX FPGA.  Look at later posts for more information.  Thanks!

[1714020230]

1714020230

[Azelphur]

I can confirm the 3.6GH as he had it running on my private pool server for a little while ( Although a software bug caused it to have 100% rejects ). By my math (Guestimation based on submitted shares, ((shares/total_seconds)*4294967296=4.3GH/sec) the hash rate was a little higher though

Already put my donation in and bought a DE0 to play with, hopefully this is the start of some really interesting stuff

Also, you can preorder DE0s preconfigured plug n play DE0s on his site here if your interested

[ummas]

Can you provide somme   photos and screens from your software ? would be helpfull in the proces of making decission.

[pazor]

welcome!

[n0ne]

wondermine
Whitelisted
Newbie

Posts: 2

Seems Legit.  

Whoise on url,
Domain ID:D164535655-LROR
Domain Name:NONVERBA.ORG
Created On:27-Jan-2012 07:40:47 UTC
Last Updated On:27-Jan-2012 07:41:41 UTC
Expiration Date:27-Jan-2013 07:40:47 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Active Registrar, Inc. (R1709-LROR)
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:ADDPERIOD
Registrant ID:ACTR1201272274
Registrant Name:Whois Manager
Registrant Organization:Whois Proof LLP
Registrant Street1:PO Box 4120
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Portland
Registrant State/Province:OR
Registrant Postal Code:97208-4120
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.2024700599
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+1.8663666681
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:nlbm61pzl@whoisproof.com
Admin ID:ACTR120127176
Admin Name:Whois Manager
Admin Organization:Whois Proof LLP
Admin Street1:PO Box 4120
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:Portland
Admin State/Province:OR
Admin Postal Code:97208-4120
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.2024700599
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:+1.8663666681
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:lnbm61pzl@whoisproof.com
Tech ID:ACTR1201279912
Tech Name:Whois Manager
Tech Organization:Whois Proof LLP
Tech Street1:PO Box 4120
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:Portland
Tech State/Province:OR
Tech Postal Code:97208-4120
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.2024700599
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:+1.8663666681
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:lnbm61pzl@whoisproof.com
Name Server:NS1.ACTIVE-DNS.COM
Name Server:NS2.ACTIVE-DNS.COM

[Intention]

So he registered the domain 2 days ago I don't know what the big deal is - I don't have a bunch of domains already registered for services I haven't thought up of yet.

If you bothered to really look into it his contact info is a University email address.  If something goes wrong you have his name and where you can find him for most of the day I mean unless of course that email account is really his /conspiracy.

[n0ne]

So he registered the domain 2 days ago I don't know what the big deal is - I don't have a bunch of domains already registered for services I haven't thought up of yet.

If you bothered to really look into it his contact info is a University email address.  If something goes wrong you have his name and where you can find him for most of the day I mean unless of course that email account is really his /conspiracy.

Sure, I register domains all the time too. But he is also a new user with 2 posts, and he's using whoisproof.com to hide. He comes in here to ask for money. I love to see development in FPGA, believe me. But don't come in here asking for money and making empty promises with a  new website made in HTML.

To many Red flags.

[Intention]

To be fair I don't understand CSS it's way after my time.

When I spoke to wondermine it's not like he was forcing his FPGA solution on me.  I plan on purchasing the core probably by the end of the week and ordering a board through a retailer.  He suggested other types of FPGA's that I could use and where to purchase them and other possible solutions.  In fact to purchase the nano board from him pre-configured isn't a horrible deal considering it's actually cheaper through him if you consider the shipping from the retailer.  Granted having photos of it going would be nice and I still have my suspicions however from the sounds of it I'm the only person who actually got in contact with him.

[n0ne]

To be fair I don't understand CSS it's way after my time.

When I spoke to wondermine it's not like he was forcing his FPGA solution on me.  I plan on purchasing the core probably by the end of the week and ordering a board through a retailer.  He suggested other types of FPGA's that I could use and where to purchase them and other possible solutions.  In fact to purchase the nano board from him pre-configured isn't a horrible deal considering it's actually cheaper through him if you consider the shipping from the retailer.  Granted having photos of it going would be nice and I still have my suspicions however from the sounds of it I'm the only person who actually got in contact with him.

That's good to hear. Maybe this is a terrible launch, or it's a scam. It could of been better to get the conversation going and give more information instead of starting off asking for money. Both of the 2 post he has, is him asking for $10/3btc to get on his boat... Pretty terrible way to start a project.

We'll see where this goes.

[Costia]

also, Azelphur, the guy who confirms he has a rig - was inactive since june and returned to the forums right on time.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61500.0

[n0ne]

also, Azelphur, the guy who confirms he has a rig - was inactive since june and returned to the forums right on time.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61500.0

Haha! Not looking good!

[norulezapply]

Looks too good to be true... so it probably is.

[Costia]

this forum needs a scams sub forum - so all the confirmed scams can be moved there

[jake262144]

You're right with the thread jail, Costia. Sure could be useful to sanitize the forum whilst keeping old scam attempts visible to the general public.
Naturally, OP and his supporter have been reported and account access check-up has been requested.

[Azelphur]

wondermine
Whitelisted
Newbie

Posts: 2

Seems Legit.  

If your worried about rep. Just google my name, check my DNS whois. It's all there. I'm very stalkable (Please, no unfriendly stalking). Some of you may have seen me in the IRC channel, I don't frequent the forums very much, but I'm in IRC.

My DE0 Nano arrived today, here's a photo.

I can confirm that I had "something" on my pool doing 4+GH/sec by my math, and from my long talks with wondermine he seems legit.
Also, yes the website is new, he set it up specifically to host the nanominer project. I was around while he was doing that

All that said, anything like this is going to come with a certain amount of risk, that much is obvious. Myself, I think that if he was trying to scam people, there are better ways than asking for $10 donations on the bitcoin forum. I've put my money where my mouth is and I've donated ($20), and gone and bought a DE0. Personally I think this is going places. I could end up looking stupid, or I could end up on the front of a FPGA revolution. For $10? It's totally worth the gamble in my opinion. But ultimately that's up to you

[wondermine]

This is a project that I'm taking on in addition to university as well as a number of other large commitments.  This week has been reasonably quiet and has given me the chance to start playing with BTC mining firmware, so yes, the domain was registered recently.
I didn't realize it was in such bad form to ask for money for a project off the bat; I'm used to communities like IndieGoGo where the idea is you crowdsource and do exactly that, ask for support right away.
Additionally, me reselling FPGAs/controllers for a meager markup on my site perhaps wasn't the best way to glean confidence, but I thought it might be helpful.  If you don't have confidence in my ability to ship you bundled hardware then don't buy hardware from me, it's readily available online, and it doesn't exclude you from buying my core.  The hardware bundling was just to make it simpler for people.
All that said, this is obviously a very different community than IndieGoGo etc, and I don't mind changing the way I think about things a little.

So...

Apologies for being what is evidently too forward.  The reason I'm asking for support is this project isn't going to get off the ground without it, and I like this idea.
If your lack of confidence stems from a technological issue; i.e. you don't believe I can get the rate I claim, I'm happy to discuss why I'm saying certain numbers and what my methodology is. These rates are not written in stone, but are estimates based on what I've been seeing with my own FPGA running heavily modified fpgaminer.  The new core will perform better.
If the lack of confidence is from me having a page written in hastily coded PHP (no, I don't have time for a big production of a website), or a domain name that I registered in the last few days, then I guess you'll have to wait and see if this project yields anything.  Unfortunately in the case that most people "sit back and watch", it's a catch-22, and this won't get off the ground.
Thanks for reading.

(P.S. I don't mind if there's a link to the whois, or a portion of it, but honestly, it's a little long and gives this thread a tl;dr sorta feel, mind editing that...?)

[Azelphur]

Just as an extra FYI, it was my idea to ship the bundled hardware rather than his. I felt that people would benefit from having "plug n play" hardware.

[gmaxwell]

I spent some time talking to wondermine in private on IRC.   He shared his uni email address with me— I don't see that there is any reason to think there is overt scamming going on here (especially with the use off the shelf development boards).

That said— it's always good to be skeptical— the performance he's seeing isn't consistent with what other people have gotten on Altera, and a high apparent hash rate with rejected shares could be the result of an honest bug reporting all the nonces as shares.   "Extraordinary claims require at least ordinary proof"

Certainly there is plenty of room for improvement in HDL for FPGA miners. This is an area of work that should be encouraged (especially if the results will be opened up!) and we shouldn't let our prudent skepticism get in the way of that.

[makomk]

Wow. 75 Mhash/sec is fairly impressive for a DE0-nano if you can pull it off. I've got one sitting on my desk mining away and have only managed to get it to 25 MHash/sec - and that's using the entire FPGA, some slightly mind-warping optimizations, and a whole bunch of luck. (The Altera toolchain actually reckoned this'd use more resources than the FPGA had available.) Plus I had to upgrade the cooling and power regulation circuitry and power it off a wall-wart rather than USB to get that. The stock DE0-nano uses linear regulators for everything, which means that for every milliwatt the core consumes three times as much power is dissipated by the voltage regulators as heat.

I can confirm the 3.6GH as he had it running on my private pool server for a little while ( Although a software bug caused it to have 100% rejects ). By my math (Guestimation based on submitted shares, ((shares/total_seconds)*4294967296=4.3GH/sec) the hash rate was a little higher though

Speaking from personal experience, I tend not to count anything as working until its shares are being accepted. It tends to be the most thorough test.

[Costia]

from a bit of searching on google looks like your 25Mhash is a world record for the DE0-nano
most people rate it at ~10Mhash (old posts from last year or something like that)