Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board

[Lethos]

We might get a bitstream into the board this week based on a re-build of standard stuff but for higher performance one of our own is probably about 4 weeks away. That's also dependent on what else we have to do in the next few weeks on other projects. There may be third party solutions available before our optimised solution is available. So don't expect spectacular bitstream results from us this week. You are going to have to be a bit patient on this. Our target this week is ensuring that the in-built programmer is totally rock solid, getting the production line more optimised, actually shipping boards and trying to get a standard bitstream working to our satisfaction. That's all on top of a large number of UK people being on holiday this week.

Although we have not had a massive amount of time to work with standard bitstreams but we have had some progress and can get a test nonce to run now using our CGminer based test harness. We still have some coms issues to resolve and that is the main area of work this week at the bitstream level.

Are you planning on keeping your bitstream opensource and viewable via something like github?
Something many bitstream developers have done for other spartan 6 based boards.

[rampone]

OFFTOPIC:

God Save the Queen!

I was so amazed, when i saw a picture series of her shaking so many politicians hands... presidents come and go, the queen stays on and on.

to enterpoint: wow, pre orders are filles until September. Congrats.

[Keninishna]

Is there an ETA on ship time? I don't wanna have you guys rush or anything but time is money. To me it looks like 2-3 weeks from now.

[yohan]

Depends where in the queue you are what your ETA is. At the moment we are not far off our indicated shipping dates.

On bitstreams we probably won't release our advanced versions bitstream source code. There will be far too much work simply to hand this away to our competitors.

[DILLIGAF]

There will be far too much work simply to hand this away to our competitors.

I think most would be fine with that as long as it is not the same stupid idea behind the endertyrell bitstream of a central server that everything has to go through to use. Where you get to enjoy looking at your expensive paper weight when the inevitable downtime/DDOS against it happens.

[Keninishna]

Depends where in the queue you are what your ETA is. At the moment we are not far off our indicated shipping dates.

On bitstreams we probably won't release our advanced versions bitstream source code. There will be far too much work simply to hand this away to our competitors.

Yea, I have no idea where I am in queue but I put in a pre-order pretty early, (2nd page of this thread I think?) How are you planning on securing your advanced bitstream? I ask because it may be best to implement something like the AES key to the hardware now while its in production vs having to send the boards back for programming later. Of course simply not releasing the source code could prove difficult to port the bitstream to other boards but maybe not since its all just LX150s anyways.

[yohan]

Update

Ok today saw the first bitstream in operation working correctly in all FPGA positions. We found a magic combination of coms stability and tool settings to allow a Icarus style bitstream to build. Now don't to excited as to achieve the coms stability we made the serial interface and hash core all run on a common clock of 50MHz so that's way off on the performance. However we are migrating this now to 100Mhz operation as the next stage and crossed fingers that will work. After that we will improve the coms modules and fix the problem properly so we can go faster again.

We needed a small tweek for stability on the in-built programmer but that tweek has worked and we are now checking that is ok on a large sample of boards.If that sample test proves positive we will move to full shipping release tomorrow.

[spiccioli]

Update

Ok today saw the first bitstream in operation working correctly in all FPGA positions. We found a magic combination of coms stability and tool settings to allow a Icarus style bitstream to build. Now don't to excited as to achieve the coms stability we made the serial interface and hash core all run on a common clock of 50MHz so that's way off on the performance. However we are migrating this now to 100Mhz operation as the next stage and crossed fingers that will work. After that we will improve the coms modules and fix the problem properly so we can go faster again.

We needed a small tweek for stability on the in-built programmer but that tweek has worked and we are now checking that is ok on a large sample of boards.If that sample test proves positive we will move to full shipping release tomorrow.

Yohan,

goood news!  Are you using a miner to test them or are you feeding them by hand, so to speak?

spiccioli

[Gomeler]

Great news. The frequent updates are a welcome sight/read. Best of luck ramping up those core frequencies 

[yohan]

The way we test these is a test harness that is derived from CGminer but runs in isolated mode. So it sends in commands in the same and we check with the golden nonce that it all works.

[yohan]

Our final early ship offer has gone out this morning. Anyone that had a June indication should have had one of these. If you think you should have had one check your spam box and if it's not there do contact us. From the end of next week we will be ship order balances in the order we received them. If you placed more than 1 order those orders will be available roughly on the schedule that was indicated to you. I think we are now on day 42 since we announced the concept and started work(do correct if I can't count, it does seem a lot longer) and I am pleased with the delivery of the design from our team.

We have taken the product a long way this week and we think that we are a few days away from showing at least a major percentage of it's potential. Building bitstreams is so much fun (not) but we will have more design team staff, and machines, available from next week with the Cairnsmore1 shipping to make that happen. We might also have a few surprises yet for our competitors but I would want to do an entire BFL so I will leave you to salivate over what that might be.

Oh heck I'm going to do a BFL and not tell you about it but it's entirely the answer to the meaning of life and boundless prosperity and we are probably never going to deliver it.

On a more serious note we have been doing some load tests on the board and the heatsink and fan combination, in the standard setup, is working extremely well. Some of the design features that we incorporated to deliver heat to the rear of the board are also working well. This will actually be of significant benefit in stacking arrangements either with fans in conventional fashion or push/pull side blow that will take air over the rear side. We also think a small rear heatsink could be of benefit there and we will actually try that out in the next few weeks. Rear heat extraction maybe also be a good way with water coolers but more on that after we do some more experiments. Don't expect this data for at least a few weeks.

Production wise we are moving out of the fairly hap hazard thing that is initial production week. We are still improving the processes and even the test equipment and that will be an ongoing process for a few weeks yet. Aligned with that should an increase in numbers of units delivered every week.

[rjk]

Need pics of stacking arrangement and interconnect cabling, stat. Need my fix of hardware pron, FPGA pictures thread does not delivar fast enough.

[wildemagic]

Still havnt recd a msg about my order delivery time, email'd pm'd etc.

Whats happening Yohan ?

kind regards

[Garr255]

Need pics of stacking arrangement and interconnect cabling, stat. Need my fix of hardware pron, FPGA pictures thread does not delivar fast enough.

+1

[yohan]

Still havnt recd a msg about my order delivery time, email'd pm'd etc.

Whats happening Yohan ?

kind regards

Sorry about that. If I found the correct entry you should a response now. It was entered on the pre-order but the response email somehow didn't get out.

[wildemagic]

cheers mate

[yohan]

Need pics of stacking arrangement and interconnect cabling, stat. Need my fix of hardware pron, FPGA pictures thread does not delivar fast enough.

I will try and deliver some more hardware porn later today after we get todays shipment out. It's going to be a bit busy today.

[punin]

This shipment will be issue 1.1?

[yohan]

All customer boards will be Issue 1.1 or later.

[Keninishna]

Need pics of stacking arrangement and interconnect cabling, stat. Need my fix of hardware pron, FPGA pictures thread does not delivar fast enough.

This is a few pages back on stacking:


Yoahn after this initial shipment of a single board to 50 people when is the next shipment due? Also do you have performance numbers? thanks.