Nanominer - Modular FPGA Mining Platform

[Azelphur]

This one it's linked on wondermines page

Azelphur,

do you know how much power does it use? 

three thousand bucks is not so pricey given a 7970 is around 550 USD and gives around 600MHs.

if this one is 6x a 7970 in MHs but uses 1/5th of that power it would be a good card to mine on.

best regards.

spiccioli

Not sure, but the max the power supply can draw is 250W, so less than that.

[spiccioli]

Not sure, but the max the power supply can draw is 250W, so less than that.

Azelphur,

thinking a little more about this it seems that the card doesn't have power cables, so per pci-e specs it should use a maximum of 75W (from pci-e slot), but 3.6 GHs for 75W is too good to be true :/

btw, you say that OP has such a card mining on your private pool, can you or the OP give any proof of this claim?

spiccioli.

[Azelphur]

Not sure, but the max the power supply can draw is 250W, so less than that.

Azelphur,

thinking a little more about this it seems that the card doesn't have power cables, so per pci-e specs it should use a maximum of 75W (from pci-e slot), but 3.6 GHs for 75W is too good to be true :/

btw, you say that OP has such a card mining on your private pool, can you or the OP give any proof of this claim?

spiccioli.

Yes, the FPGA was mining on my private pool for a short period of time and I measured it at about 4GH/sec but due to a software bug it had 100% rejects.

We're actually working on getting something up and running right now with the goal of getting some screenshots and photos up on this thread. Stay tuned

[wondermine]

I greatly appreciate the support I've received to date, and I feel I have a responsibility to all of you putting faith in this project to keep you all up to date on a weekly, if not daily basis. The thread will be where you can find updates.

Here's the first of many:
Lately, in a fury to prove I can do even half of what I claim, I've been working on rigging old code and old interfaces to my DE4-230.  This has been frustrating, and a waste of time. Sp, as far as proof goes: Azelphur is setting up his DE0 Nano, once it is ready we'll program it with my core and send y'all some screenshots.  That will provide you with some basis.  I'd love to have my DE4 going but honestly, that time is better put to use with me programming the new core.
Just as sort of an idea of where this project is going, I'll be exploiting the available DSP cores on these FPGAs to save logic and be able to fit more SHA on one chip.  In the case of the Cyclone IV, this will still provide some performance gain, on the Stratix even more so.
The problem so far has been that JTAG interfacing with the DE4-230 (my board) is... not well supported.  Fact is we shouldn't be sending data over JTAG anyway, so I'm going to let screenshots from Azelphur's FPGA support the project here, and I'm going to start writing Nanocore's serial interface so that when it does release there will be no issues with getting things set up or incompatibilities regarding JTAG chains etc.

Thanks again to all the contributors, and as always I encourage support, and the asking of questions!

[nelisky]

I'm a bit confused here... so is the DE0 working well and pumping the 75MHs or is that the expected hash rate?

Also the DE4 dev board at 3k US$ seems to be (much) cheaper than the individual chip, from what I can tell. What's up with that?

[wondermine]

I'm a bit confused here... so is the DE0 working well and pumping the 75MHs or is that the expected hash rate?

Also the DE4 dev board at 3k US$ seems to be (much) cheaper than the individual chip, from what I can tell. What's up with that?

No, that hashrate is a projection, based on DE4 data, and estimated when using DSP.

As far as the discrepancy between actual chip cost and dev board cost, I'm not sure, I noticed that myself on Digikey.  No idea.

[Inspector 2211]

Also the DE4 dev board at 3k US$ seems to be (much) cheaper than the individual chip, from what I can tell. What's up with that?

As far as the discrepancy between actual chip cost and dev board cost, I'm not sure, I noticed that myself on Digikey.  No idea.

You find that a lot: For instance, Xilinx now has a Kintex-7 eval board for $1700, with a (device-locked) copy of the design software thrown in, but when you look up the price of the Kindex-7-325 that is on the eval board, it is well above 2 grand.
Thus, I'm not surprised.

[pieppiep]

Is the price for the chip for 1 piece?
Maybe the board manufacturer gets a bulk price for buying more than 1 at a time?
Maybe the board manufacturer gets a discount for making the chip easier accessable? (I know for a fact a single chip is useless to me, with a complete board I can try to do something)

[wondermine]

Uploaded a preliminary block diagram for Nanominer.  It can be found here: http://nonverba.org/nanominer/
The page lists a number of discrepancies between what is planned/proposed and what appears in the diagram, however it should give you an idea of what I'm working on.
I know this doesn't give too many hints on internals, more just structure, but again it's preliminary.  I'll upload .vhd files as I write them and that should improve the picture you all have.
Finally, I'm going to try to write as much of this using non-proprietary code as I can; however if I run into the necessity to use Altera IP, I will exclude it from the project source with instructions on how to add it (think restricted drivers in linux) and pseudocode to replace it.

Update: I have an unrolled SHA core fitting alongside interface logic on a Cyclone IV DE0 Nano.

[Intention]

Kind of makes me wish I stayed in Comp Eng.  Even though it's been 2 years the block diagram wasn't that hard to understand - it's the VHDL that'll get ya

[Dexter770221]

There are no DSP modules in C IV. Only multipliers and thats have no use in SHA256 algorithm. So, who is wrong? You or Altera documentation?

[torusJKL]

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
[...]

From what I can understand wondermine has no functional prototype yet. So it loks like somebody else was mining at your private pool.
I'm not saying that he is a scam but that he's numbers are not confirmed yet.

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

Wow, that was a fast delivery service. Only a few hours after the initial post. Did you order it before the post? How could you have known? Coincident? Neighbors?

The idea of donating is that it's an optional payment to support the developer.... he's not punishing anyone.

People who donate the stated amount will get support from him.
So even though this is a voluntary payment there is some service attached to it.
I would have expected from people in this forum not to support services like PayPal by proposing better prices when using those services over Bitcoin.

[muyuu]

Sounds like an interesting project.

Why do you ask for $10 when using PayPal or 3 BTC?
With PayPal after fees (3.5% + ~$0.60) you'll get a bit more then $9.
Whereas 3 BTC have currently a value of ~16.50.

Wouldn't it be better to reward BTC payers and not punishing them?

And how do you plan to verivy who as donated while only providing 1 Bitcoin address?

+1 was going to post exactly this.

[Intention]

Sometimes I wonder if this forum promotes circle-jerking.

Now on topic: From what I understand Azelphur does know wondermine in real life (correct me if I'm wrong) however Terasic ships boards out in 2-3 days with their expensive and only option for shipping.  The comment about making a $10 donation or 3 in BTC is odd but whatever we've all said things that don't quite sound logical.  Through the power of communication wondermine gave me my own special super secret address to send contributions to so that he can keep track of them, it isn't hard.

I also heard that this guy's a Canadian therefore he can't be trusted. Now I demand +1's and a pat on the back - and for the super skeptics I just recently got torches and pitchforks in stock 

[Azelphur]

From what I can understand wondermine has no functional prototype yet. So it loks like somebody else was mining at your private pool.
I'm not saying that he is a scam but that he's numbers are not confirmed yet.

He had a not very functional prototype on the DE4, it was running but had 100% rejected shares as I mentioned.

Wow, that was a fast delivery service. Only a few hours after the initial post. Did you order it before the post? How could you have known? Coincident? Neighbors?

I met him on IRC in #bitcoin a few days before this thread was made and have been trying to help him out in any way I can since.

People who donate the stated amount will get support from him.
So even though this is a voluntary payment there is some service attached to it.
I would have expected from people in this forum not to support services like PayPal by proposing better prices when using those services over Bitcoin.

I'll look into this

[wondermine]

There are no DSP modules in C IV. Only multipliers and thats have no use in SHA256 algorithm. So, who is wrong? You or Altera documentation?

You're right, the cyclone series only has access to multipliers.  DSP will only be implemented on the Stratix series cores.  However, Cyclone devices can take better advantage of their BRAM, which I will be working with.

As far as me "not having a working prototype", that's not entirely correct.  I have a modified version of fpgaminer's code running on my DE4-230 immensely quickly, and recieving 100% rejections, which is why I'm trying not to flaunt it too much and rather work on a new core.  A new core which I do not have a working prototype of.  So we're all clear.

For anyone who has issues with shipping times, either for themselves or others, you might try checking out Digikey, who almost always does next-day shipping, and does in fact carry both the Cyclone III and Cyclone IV DE0 Nano devices.  I'm told with some arm twisting of their sales staff you can even get free shipping on the C IV version.

For anyone who had an issue with the donation amounts, I switched them (1 BTC or $10 CAD).  They were always a simple recommendation, and continue to be.  If you feel like donating 0.1 BTC, I will be no less grateful than if you donate 10.  Please contact me if you'd like a specific address to send donations to so that I can keep track.  To donate anonymously, the address is in my signature or on the webpage.

[Syke]

I know it sounds a little funky, but there are a number of optimizations I've been able to achieve, and of course that quoted number *is* an estimate

How did you arrive at that estimate? The DE4 and DE0 are very different products. Search this forum for BFL to get an idea of how accurate FPGA estimates turn out.

As far as me "not having a working prototype", that's not entirely correct.  I have a modified version of fpgaminer's code running on my DE4-230 immensely quickly, and recieving 100% rejections

That sounds like you have a non-working prototype. How do you know it's hashing at all if you have 100% rejects? Have you developed an "immensely quick" random number generator?

[fizzisist]

As far as me "not having a working prototype", that's not entirely correct.  I have a modified version of fpgaminer's code running on my DE4-230 immensely quickly, and recieving 100% rejections

That sounds like you have a non-working prototype. How do you know it's hashing at all if you have 100% rejects? Have you developed an "immensely quick" random number generator?

Have you fed the FPGA test data and seen what comes out?

[wondermine]

For your protection, when requesting a bitcoin address or engaging in any secure communication with me, ensure that my messages are PGP signed.  My public key is hosted on the usual servers.
If you receive sensitive information (i.e. financial, bitcoin or not) from me without a PGP signature, please politely request one that is PGP signed.  The chances are that I just sent the email from my iPhone and forgot to sign it, but there's always the possibility it's fraudulent, so just let me know and I'll resend the email securely.

As for test data, I've run the firmware in ModelSim and it puts out good data; as far as what happens once it's touched the script, I'm not sure, and my effort is better spent making a core that communicates without the use of JTAG.  If you want to be mining with an FPGA in the interim, the code here works for most people, I understand: https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner

[film2240]

What's the progress of this project? Do we have working shares from these FPGAs yet? What hashrate do we have now from the cheapest model (claimed 75 MHash speed) in use? (As these can differ from expected maximum.)

What is the price for that FPGA? Where do these FPGAs ship from if I intend to buy in the future (I ask because I'm in UK and shipping may be quite expensive if from North America to UK plus import tax in UK as well as its an electronic item according to customs I think)?

How do you get these FPGAs up and running out of the box? Which interface do they use (USB,PCI-E,e.t.c)?

Is i true that you can build your own FPGAs by buying multiple chips/sockets and put them all onto 1 PCB? If so how do I go about it.

If some of these questions have already been answered,then please point me in the right direction,thanks.