Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board

[ShadesOfMarble]

@yohan: You (your team) are doing an incredible job.

[1714126588]

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[this time]

If anyone is actually considering cancelling, I will take your place in line.

[Lethos]

BFL claims they can deliver ASIC miner doing 40Ghash/s for 1300$.

They can claim anything they want. They did the same with their first BFL units too, they were quiet a bit off what they first promised.
People still bought them, it took ages to get to market and people paid up front.

Like anything from them from now on, I'll believe it when I see results, and probably wait a long time to ever see it.
I'd rather stick with Enterpoint, if an ASIC model comes later it will always be from them.

Yes, ASIC is faster than FPGA, but it's not that much faster. So no I don't believe their numbers.

[Doff]

I'm quite happy with mine, my complaint more has to do with my dislike for windows and in no way the product. Ill be patiently waiting for a Linux Cgminer version.

Thanks,

Doff

Thank you to those that support us and understand that we are still in a development phase still only 50 days since conception. To moaners you are free to cancel your pre-orders for whatever reason. We are also free not to supply either if we feel that the unit will not be of use to a customer and or the support of such a customer is detrimental to our other customers. We will strive to deliver what is best for the main base of customers and that will take a little time. I think I said right at the beginning I said the target to have most of the development done was the end of June and hence the early adopter pricing until then. I don't think we have seriously deviated from what we have said we would do in any aspect. We will also aim to keep you all informed about the good the bad and even any ugly as best we can and that is an ongoing part of our business ethics. Fundamentially I think we have the best FPGA hardware platform in the Bitcoin market. You are free to disagree on this this. It's just my personal opinion.

State of the Nation time:

CGminer will continue to be updated and we will release sources. We don't have any problem doing that or any commercial reason to withhold those. There is no commercial value in them to us as such. This might take a few days.

Bitstreams - Are on-going but hard to predict progress in any exact fashion. Our same staff working on this have been involved in improving our line and same goes for CGminer improvement and it is a compromise between spending time on one over the other. Generally this is improving and the design team are pulling back from manufacturing related tasks and more time is now going to the actual development stuff. So far there is no reason to expect that we won't have a unit into the 700-800+ Mh/s if not a lot better.

Hardware - We are switching over to the smaller heatsinks now in production. There are still a few units with the taller heatsinks to ship so you may get one of those. Results with the lower heatsinks are pretty much as expected and thermal perfomance is very good. We will try the option of additional rear cooling in a couple of weeks time and that is likely to be beneficial given what we have seen with our thermal imager.

We are hoping to have an alternative stacking pillar aimed a push-pull fan arrangements later this week or maybe the week after. We still need to source a fan bracket for that and it is on-going and no timeline on that as yet.

We are hoping to fit in the first simple power distribution board design this week and to make some shortly afterwards. The performance version with Ethernet support I don't have a timeline for as yet or a even full specification for as yet. It will come in it's own good time.

Shipping - We are maybe 1 week behind on our schedule but there is a reasonable chance we will catch this up in June and we are working to achieve this. Fundamentially we have made a lot of progress this week in moving to a smooth flow line which can deliver much more.

Yohan

[MXRider]

Yes, ASIC is faster than FPGA, but it's not that much faster. So no I don't believe their numbers.

Me neither. That's way I'm asking Yohan's opinion on this. BFL is a shady company so I'm not buying from them. I rather quit mining. I bet we all can mine with FPGAs at least until the reward halving before BFL gets any ASICs to customers.

"This time" don't get your hopes up, I'm not going to cancel my order.

[sadpandatech]

So there is no way to hash at the moment? Someone fancy uploading the cgminer mod for me?

Staring at a flashing red LED and 4 orange ones

I'm hashing fine with the usb drivers from Enterpoint and cgminer 2.4.2 from official source.

[gyverlb]

+1

Yohan with all the bitching about CGminer wouldn't it make more sense to go with MPBM as it was designed for FPGA miners right from the start?

MPBM is GPL too...

I've never own a FPGA miner so never used MPBM, I suspect many people use cgminer for that reason too. As cgminer's feature set is impressive, I doubt much would be gained by switching to anything else (I'd welcome a feature set comparison to prove me wrong).

[bulanula]

+1

Yohan with all the bitching about CGminer wouldn't it make more sense to go with MPBM as it was designed for FPGA miners right from the start?

MPBM is GPL too...

I've never own a FPGA miner so never used MPBM, I suspect many people use cgminer for that reason too. As cgminer's feature set is impressive, I doubt much would be gained by switching to anything else (I'd welcome a feature set comparison to prove me wrong).

MPBM is the cgminer of the FPGA world.

cgminer is for GPUs and should stay that way.

Now every time he releases an update I have to download some bogus bitstream crap I will never ever use.

MPBM got backup pool, bitstream upload, switches MHz ( dynamic overclocking ) basically it rocks for FPGAs and cgminer is bogus for FPGA.

Just use MPBM !

[TheHarbinger]

I believe Enterpoint is providing top notch customer service in the development of Cainsmore so far. There are other FPGA vendors who have also provided excellent service and Enterpoint is at least up to or exceeding that standard.

It was made CLEAR that these first issue boards would not be shipped in a fully optimized condition. Therefore the $640 price point. Obviously those of us who are purchasing these will participate in the process of optimizing these boards. This is similar to receiving a beta version of a video game for free and providing feedback about bugs,etc.

Enterpoint DID NOT make you pay up front like some other vendors in the community. They asked for payment when the boards were ready to ship.

Enterpoint DID NOT suggest these boards would have a bitstream ready to go upon first batch of shipments.

Enterpoint DID make good on their development and delivery schedules within a reasonable margin of error.

Enterpoint DID keep all of us informed as to each point of progress during the manufacturing phase.

Enterpoint HAS continued to be open and honest in their communication about any problems/developments in the software/firmware.

I would hope the bitcoin community would be capable of showing a reciprocal respect by providing professional feedback as to what needs to be improved and continue to support this new vendor in a courteous manner.

+1

Yohan with all the bitching about CGminer wouldn't it make more sense to go with MPBM as it was designed for FPGA miners right from the start?

I didn't see any bitching.  All I saw was a notice that Enterpoint had failed to comply with the license requirements for fair use and distribution of cgminer.  It wouldn't have mattered if they had done it with MPBM, then they would have been in violation of MPBM's license agreement instead of cgminer.

It was a mistake they made to release a compiled version without the source and license.  They pulled it and said they will comply with the license when it is re-released.

Hardly "Bitching".

[Luke-Jr]

MPBM is the cgminer of the FPGA world.

No, that's BFGMiner.

[bulanula]

MPBM is the cgminer of the FPGA world.

No, that's BFGMiner.

Spare me the self promotion.

What is the difference between cgminer and BFGMiner ?

Maybe officially endorsed by BFL ( in the Mini Rig screenshots ) 

[Luke-Jr]

MPBM is the cgminer of the FPGA world.

No, that's BFGMiner.

Spare me the self promotion.

What is the difference between cgminer and BFGMiner ?

Maybe officially endorsed by BFL ( in the Mini Rig screenshots ) 

BFGMiner works better on FPGAs.

[yohan]

Ok CGminer (windows) is back and with source code.

As to BFL our consumer protection authorities always say if something looks too good to be true then it probably isn't. Technically those hashing rates could achieved in ASIC but I don't think the financial model stacks up. The technology they would have to use in my opinion would be very expensive. In my personal opinion it has the appearence of a ponzi scheme. Even if they somehow have a large enough market to make the financials work why would they hand away profit by pricing so low. They could offer x2 hashes per dollar and kill all of the competition off easily not x16 as they are. That does not stack up at all especially if a real VC is envolved. I know enough about them to be pretty certain on that.

Press releases without dates and real names smell like a very rotten fish.

BFL as far as I am aware don't have any timeline for delivery. It might be they are gathering orders and planning an ASIC development then based on holding peoples money to fund it. if that is what they are doing expect a very long delivery and maybe never a working product. It's not uncommon for ASICs to need one or more respins and that can be a very large amount of money and time.

As to doing an ASIC ourselves. It might be done in 6 months but that would be pushing it even by our standards. However I will say I don't think we have seen the best FPGAs can bring as yet. Not by a very long way. That's almost a BFL style statement and you can all ponder that one. Not to boast in any way but merely a statement what the team have done in Bitcoin, in the shape of Cairnsmore1, is extremely simple compared to what we do in size and complexity for the general HPC marketplace. Don't confuse that with being a poor product. I am exceptionally pleased with Cairnsmore1. It had a design target and we have mostly met that in the target timescale. I do think is that we probably have the most capable FPGA product in the Bitcoin market. None of you have not really seen what it is capable of doing as yet. I know several people have praised our product and I am glad at that response. It is always our target to please customers and the team have a large amount of pride in achieving that result. As an example very few people yet have the data for say the thermal performance and I can say it appears to have done everything that we aimed to do in the design. Particularly the rearward heat projection. That's not there by accident. The front heatsinking within the limits of the Spartan package is also working extreme well. The F12 fan can almost not be heard and absolutely blasts heat out of the board. I have personally taken a board without fan running at 80 deg to 30 deg in about 1 minute by turning on the fan. That's good measure of how good the fan/heatsink combo is.

Anyway one more piece of speculation for you. Anything that BFL can actually bring to the market we can almost certainly compete with with assuming we choose to do that. That's more a commercial decision that anything and if we had projects of better return we might do them in preference. I would say if I was running BFL I should be doing the same. That's one of the things that does not make sense in their offering. I don't need to say any more. You all have common sense I hope and you should use that and think through the difference between the way we run and BFL. I'm sure Enterpoint will still be trading in 10 years time which more that I can say for other companies.

Yohan

[rampone]

the moaner says: No moan, just full ack, Enterpoint never "bfl"d us (taking money and then make us wait for the hardware). At BFL  you had to pay in front and wait longer than the time from idea to delivery of the product, than cairnsmore (okay, bfl hashed quickly at delivery, but THIS IS NO MOAN!, also a lotta time left)
The hardware product is built with foresight to multiple use cases (diff power, power distribution, stacking, up and down link instead of usb). Also I tried to heat up the board a bit by running it with the fan switched off. As soon as you start the fan again its almost "directly" at ambient temperature. Cooling wise its pretty perfect, the fan is a good choice.

Does the board have temperature sensors for the fpga? Or will you check via the error rate for overheating fpgas? (Thinking of a fan failure/slow down (Should be some time until that happens with arctic cooling fans))

And a comment to the bfl asic release: For my opinion its a little too sarcastic (jalapeno---usb powered coffee warmer...)

[yohan]

There are temperature sensors next to every FPGA and we can sense fan speed on every fan header. Those features are not enabled as yet but will come eventually.

[rampone]

There are temperature sensors next to every FPGA and we can sense fan speed on every fan header. Those features are not enabled as yet but will come eventually.

+1. And sorry for moaning yohan.

[gyverlb]

MPBM is the cgminer of the FPGA world.

I've heard of it yes.

cgminer is for GPUs and should stay that way.

I don't see why.

Now every time he releases an update I have to download some bogus bitstream crap I will never ever use.

I'm not sure I understand.

MPBM got backup pool, bitstream upload, switches MHz ( dynamic overclocking ) basically it rocks for FPGAs and cgminer is bogus for FPGA.

• cgminer has backup pools in one of its multiple pool support modes (in fact it's the default).
• Bitstream upload, I don't know about.
• Switches MHz, IIRC I've seen users of cgminer discussing how it works, so it surely is included.

Has cgminer backup pools support was the main reason why I switched from DiabloMiner 10 months ago, I very much doubt you know cgminer enough to help me form my opinion if you cite this as an advantage for MPBM...

[ebereon]

I tested some switch positions of the 4 dip switch-banks, one for every fpga.

 _________
|              |
|              |
|   1      3  |
|              |
|   2      4  |
|_________|



Switch position shipping:
1 = 1234 -> on
2 = 1 -> off, 234 -> on
3 = 1234 -> on
4 = 1 -> off, 234 -> on
That was hashing @ ~50Mh


This setup mean's for me only fpga 1 and 3 is active. When EP-cgminer is working, the orange led's turn off and flashing red only on fpga 1 and 3. fpga 2 and 4 stay at orange led. Blue led turns on when a share is found. Orange led turns on when longpoll breaks actual work.(?)  

Attention! That's only the information from my own tests and i think it works like that.

To turn on the other two fpga's just switch the dip 1 -> on on fpga 2 and 4, then they will do something, but please turn the board off before you do it. I turned off the power AND the usb.
In this position the blue led will turn on, on fpga 1 and 2 (also 3 and 4) at the same time when a share is found.

I thought every fpga should do his own work and tested futher.

My switch positions now:
1 = 134 -> on, 2 -> off
2 = 1234 -> on
3 = 134 -> on, 2 -> off
4 = 1234 -> on
That is hashing @ ~100Mh

I really don't know if that make's sence, but my unit is now hashing @100Mh instead of only 50Mh. Every fpga turns on his blue led when a share is found.

Some technical information about the dip switches and led's would be nice  

[yohan]

If I remember right all the dip switches are on(or maybe all off) except on SW3 and SW4 where the second bit in from the left (controller/cable end side) on both of those. All of the boards should have gone out with the correct settings already set. I don't have a physical board with me that would allow me to be more descriptive. Basically SW2/3/4/5 follow a polarity inverted Icarus setup. First and second bits from left are all that matter. I don't think the last 2 bits are used.

SW!/SW6 I think all switches should be set the side nearest the board edge. Some of the bits here control frequency and you can tell from the red LED flash rate if you get one of those. Others control JTAG functions.

I'll try and get a marked up picture to explain this on the website. It's just a job that needs doing.

[ShadesOfMarble]

So, who got this board running with Enterpoint-CGMiner? I'm trying to (Win7 64 / WinXP 32), but always get "Test failed ... get 00000000". Drivers are installed.