Large-format FPGA people won't bother with most commodity hardware in such a manner. They know the value of their time, and want something fast and reliable, so they choose something turnkey like LargeCoin. Watercooling is difficult at best, and FPGA based bitcoin miners don't really have a standard way of mounting a waterblock, for example.

Who would those large-format FPGA people be? LargeCoin doesn't exist yet and I am not aware of any other turnkey products in existence.

By the same logic, Google would also choose something turnkey instead of off the shelf hardware, since they know the value of their time.

There are only around $43 million worth of Bitcoins in existence now and we all know the estimated network hashrate. What percentage of any of the two would you consider "large scale"? And how much would it cost to fill these "large scale" dreams with the two imaginative products LargeCoin and Rig Box or other turnkey solutions you know? (I am not even asking how long you'd have to wait and what risk you'd have to take before they can start generating any ROI)

Could it be that those "large scale people" that have powers we mere mortals don't posses only exist in our fantasies? Last time I looked even "syndicates" started to invest in FPGA boards and keep an open mind, but nothing else.

You guys are two of the few most knowledgeable people posting on the forums. I have been here only for a few weeks but I do read a lot of your posts. Thanks for your valuable contributions, really.

As for water cooling, thanks for your clarification. Makes my planning a bit easier since I can just cross out water cooling.

A single large 20 GH/s or 50.4 GH/s unit would be less (technical) hassle, definitely. But if it fails, your complete income stream comes to a grinding halt and you are a the mercy of people you don't know. If you have multiple of them, it's a bit different. If in contrast one of your few hundred FPGA boards fail or a fan and a USB hub, you replace it with minimal down time and minimal cost. A price worth paying in my opinion.

And if you are not in Vancouver or Kansas City, shipping will be a nightmare, very risky and costly (admittedly more so for a rig box which will be bigger than a 1U case, not only because of the 2 external PSU). So, unpredictable downtime (but very likely to be weeks) in a worst case scenario, untested and unproven hardware, unpredictable release date (they only exist in the developers mind after all), unreliable company history and track record (maybe not LC but BFL). At the moment at least.  This all might change. Or not. I am not pro nor con, I am just saying.

As person willing to invest some cash (that I had to work for) at this moment, FPGA is a much safer bet. There are a hand full of products to choose from and many of the variables are known. Power consumption, heat, delivery time, cost, source codes are available, FPGA types are known, third party miner support, people already having small and medium size clusters, and more. It may not be the final solution, but sitting around waiting for better times has never lead to anything good, has it?

I wouldn't mind filling a few racks with FPGA boards *NOW*. FPGA also allows you to grow slowly by adding smaller units one by one. You don't have to wait and put all your money on the new turnkey solutions and do nothing in the meantime. And putting your money on FPGA right now doesn't mean you can't upgrade to something else later on. This will probably never stand still. Current bitstream/design is being improved all the time (and may see an unexpected boost soon if I didn't understand this wrong), Artix 7 is on the way, other companies have FPGAs too, sASIC apparently being worked on, maybe somebody else has something different up his sleeve, who knows. Exciting times ahead, and you have to keep an open mind. At least that's how I see it.

Icarus is open source, Ztex has a licensing program, there are a few other Spartan 6 based designs available here on the forum, X6400 I didn't look at. But it seems to me if you invest time & money (not just money), you could build a cluster with equivalent hashing power for a price not far away from the so-called turnkey solutions. While having total control over the whole process, instead of relying on claims and promises of third parties (if anyone is interested in this feel free to PM me - don't worry I am not selling anything, just looking for like-minded or technical interested persons).

And after all, we are all in this for Bitcoin, so we don't mind "getting our hands dirty". If I'd want to just 'invest' money and lean back, then GLBSE or more traditional stock markets are probably a better option, or even speculating on Bitcoins. I would think a typical investor would agree, I don't think the availability of a turnkey solution will change that.

antirack I think you are missing the point.

ztex boards have very low power density.  1 chip = 9W.  Cooling 9W with waterblocks is going to be horribly expensive. 

Now BFL boards 1 chip = 80W is starting to get to the power densities where it gets interesting.  The problem is BFL has made water cooling impossible.

So you have high thermal output chips which are impossible to water cool and low thermal output chips which don't make any economical sense to water cool.  Starting to see the problem.

Now if BFL so a "naked" single with no heatsink, power supply case, or fans and knocked $50 off the price well I would be watercooling that tomorrow er "4-6 weeks".

Oops missed that.

Yeah I do think there is some value in building your own cluster but I wouldn't want to build out a large amount of Spartan-6 nodes.  Artix-7 should be in volume production by Q1-2013 and be offering 50%-80% higher MH/W and at least 30% to 50% better MH/$.  

The only point to buying 100 or so ztex boards now would be to have a template for rapidly building another unit based on Artix-7 boards.  Buying 100 boards now likely would let you talk ztex into selling you entire first run of Artix-7 boards.


Simply put unless you have very high power costs the BFL Single are (at current price) to hard to simply ignore.  Yeah BFL has mismanaged the launch horribly, the multiple fans and cut cases is a total hack job, and they use more power but they are still impressive in terms of total hashing power vs total cost.

Well we can agree to disagree then.  Spartan-6 launched almost 4 years ago.  So the corner comes every 4 years or so and you are 80%+ of the way to the next corner.

the new heatpipe design of the singles may very well have a mounting system that would lend itself to aftermarket cooling solutions.