High Efficiency FPGA & ASIC Bitcoin Mining Devices https://BTCFPGA.com

[Kingfihserb90]

Will the new ASIC devices use the same command line mining software or will there be a gui for us neophytes?

BFGMiner
CGMiner
MPBM

Will all be supported for sure. I have been talking to DrHaribo about possibly supporting BitMinter which is a java based web gui type thing
but to be honest I am not to crazy about supporting closed source stuff. I told him I will think about it and get back to him


spending the day working on getting the new office space ready - will be doing customer service this evening so if you are expecting an email from me - you will get it tonight.

Otherwise I am available by phone right now if anyone needs me 315 514 0269

ttyl

Thanks for the quick reply, I am definitely interested in 2-3 of your 54 boards, I will send an email with further questions tonight.

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[sturle]

Respectfully, the first issue is that BFL and bASIC are both selling a tethered device which means it must be connected to a desktop PC, Laptop PC, or other mobile device.
...
The average desktop PC at idle consumes about 150watts.
...
So you are never actually running a BFL device with a mere 60 watts. You are consuming 60 watts plus the overhead for the tethered PC. At best your total power consumption is greater than 60watts. Either it is at 30watts extra or closer to 210watts.

This little gem should have more than enough CPU power to run typical mining software at less than 0.5 W.  It includes both wired and wireless network in addition to an USB port.  I just got one off eBay at less than 25 USD.  The board itself is so small, it is probably enough space for it inside the ASIC miner box.  Wifi makes the miner a nice portable space heater.  (If the miner is in a metal box, you need to add an external antenna to get reliable wifi.)

Edit: Fixed link

[sturle]

maxconnections=1000
...

Your not kidding.....

You quoted more than 1000 lines to say this?  Are you the AOL guy who destroyed Usenet in the last part of the 1990ies?

More nodes will not make block chain downloading faster, btw.  It will start downloading from a random node (one of the first), and download each block sequentially from that node.

[Bogart]

if you do reach 1000 connections you will crash.

I would suggest that the client should normalize values in the config file that might cause it to crash to the nearest sane value (while noting it in the debug output or a logfile or something).

[sturle]

maxconnections=1000

This is asking for memory corruption and or FD exhaustion that will cause it to crash and potentially corrupt your wallet. Good luck with that.

is there an optimum #connections for a solo miner using linux?

I use maxconnections=16 and 8 addnode lines adding the largest pools and blockchain.info.  This reduces the risk of uploading a new block to ten slow nodes before finding a well connected one.

[jborkl]

maxconnections=1000
...

Your not kidding.....

You quoted more than 1000 lines to say this?  Are you the AOL guy who destroyed Usenet in the last part of the 1990ies?

More nodes will not make block chain downloading faster, btw.  It will start downloading from a random node (one of the first), and download each block sequentially from that node.

you are wrong,

I am uploading proof to youtube and will link to it.

25% of the block chain in less than 5 minutes

52% at 8 minutes

http://youtu.be/PooHFyIu--w

I even included the two idiots talking about cupcakes

This was a fresh install on a computer never having bitcoin on it before

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2250606222.png   <---slow connection also,

72% after 30 minutes

and the client self regulates as far as I can tell, so when it gets overloaded it cuts back- self preservation of the node

anyway, maybe one person will get use out of this and I am done talking about it. 

[||bit]

Will the new ASIC devices use the same command line mining software or will there be a gui for us neophytes?

BFGMiner
CGMiner
MPBM

Will all be supported for sure. I have been talking to DrHaribo about possibly supporting BitMinter which is a java based web gui type thing
but to be honest I am not to crazy about supporting closed source stuff. I told him I will think about it and get back to him


spending the day working on getting the new office space ready - will be doing customer service this evening so if you are expecting an email from me - you will get it tonight.

Otherwise I am available by phone right now if anyone needs me 315 514 0269

ttyl

Bitminter probably has a good reason to keep it closed, just like a asic board maker might have a good reason to keep some things private about how they do business. The interface & user friendliness of bitminter is unique and people apparently like it. Just look at the relative size of pools. If it were open code, then someone could just copy the code, change the appearance, and compete with their pool with the same user friendliness (which is one of the features bitminter apparently applied effort to develop).

Anyway, it's all I use now. My rack of BFL singles have been doing well on it, and mining is consistent with calculations based on difficulty using bitminter. I have one of your hardware on order, and have been thinking to order more. Hopefully you will support bitminter.

||bit

[PuertoLibre]

Respectfully, the first issue is that BFL and bASIC are both selling a tethered device which means it must be connected to a desktop PC, Laptop PC, or other mobile device.
...
The average desktop PC at idle consumes about 150watts.
...
So you are never actually running a BFL device with a mere 60 watts. You are consuming 60 watts plus the overhead for the tethered PC. At best your total power consumption is greater than 60watts. Either it is at 30watts extra or closer to 210watts.

This little gem should have more than enough CPU power to run typical mining software at less than 0.5 W.  It includes both wired and wireless network in addition to an USB port.  I just got one off eBay at less than 25 USD.  The board itself is so small, it is probably enough space for it inside the ASIC miner box.  Wifi makes the miner a nice portable space heater.  (If the miner is in a metal box, you need to add an external antenna to get reliable wifi.)

Edit: Fixed link

Sounds like you have possibly found a viable candidate to remove the extra tethered wattage. Any idea how to configure one for bASIC or BFL mining hardware?

[sturle]

maxconnections=1000
...

Your not kidding.....

You quoted more than 1000 lines to say this?  Are you the AOL guy who destroyed Usenet in the last part of the 1990ies?

More nodes will not make block chain downloading faster, btw.  It will start downloading from a random node (one of the first), and download each block sequentially from that node.

you are wrong,

Yes, partly.  It will start downloading from the first connected node, not one of the first.  From main.cpp:

Code:

        // Ask the first connected node for block updates
        static int nAskedForBlocks = 0;
        if (!pfrom->fClient && !pfrom->fOneShot &&
            (pfrom->nVersion < NOBLKS_VERSION_START ||
             pfrom->nVersion >= NOBLKS_VERSION_END) &&
             (nAskedForBlocks < 1 || vNodes.size() <= 1))
        {
            nAskedForBlocks++;
            pfrom->PushGetBlocks(pindexBest, uint256(0));
        }

If you want it faster, just use the torrent.

I am uploading proof to youtube and will link to it.

25% of the block chain in less than 5 minutes

Eh?  I don't think you know what a proof is.  A video on YouTube can not prove anything, and there are a lot more amusing videos to watch.  Code is the only possible way to prove this.  And if it is the first 25%, it would surprise me if it took any longer than 5 minutes.  Try showing the 25% last blocks.

Tip: Keep netstat -tc or tcpdump port 8333 running while downloading, and see how many peers you get a lot of data from.

[Miles Bennett Dyson]

If I already have one order, will new orders I make be added to the end of the order/shipping queue or the same place as my first order?

[psilan]

If I already have one order, will new orders I make be added to the end of the order/shipping queue or the same place as my first order?

This was answered earlier and it was yes. I am not sure if this has changed due to popularity.

[Epoch]

Sounds like you have possibly found a viable candidate to remove the extra tethered wattage.

While reducing 'tethered wattage' is always desirable in a general sense, don't lose sight of the specific numbers; the cost of running 'inefficient' hosts may be less than you think.

Take an example: an 800Mhps FPGA miner will generate $3/day. My i7 3770K full-size PC uses 90W at idle (I have measured it with a Kill-A-Watt meter). Of course I would not suggest using this as a host, but for illustrative purposes a 90W PC running 24 hours/day will cost about $0.25/day in electricity (2.2 kWh, $0.11/kWh). That's 8% of the mining income. If you happen to run multiple miners off that same PC, the cost of running it becomes an even smaller portion of the mining income. And if you are talking about running a bASIC, the cost of running a 90W PC becomes largely insignificant.

So if you were to use something like a Raspberry Pi, that uses only a few watts, to host your mining hardware, you'd be able to save at most $0.20/day or $0.25/day compared to a full-blown PC. Monthly, that's a savings of $6-$7. That may be significant to some people, and insignificant for others. I host my hardware using a small 25W Zotac Zbox, which I also use for my day-to-day computing tasks; this works well for me.

[sturle]

This little gem should have more than enough CPU power to run typical mining software at less than 0.5 W.  It includes both wired and wireless network in addition to an USB port.  I just got one off eBay at less than 25 USD.  The board itself is so small, it is probably enough space for it inside the ASIC miner box.  Wifi makes the miner a nice portable space heater.  (If the miner is in a metal box, you need to add an external antenna to get reliable wifi.)

Sounds like you have possibly found a viable candidate to remove the extra tethered wattage. Any idea how to configure one for bASIC or BFL mining hardware?

Check out this thread.  The router he uses is physically very different, and his setup looks quite messy, but the software setup would be pretty much the same.

[-ck]

... and getting to the end of the day - yep the Mh/s has dropped a couple and the HW % has also dropped

(5s):493.5M (avg):834.9Mh/s | Q:787  A:10442  R:26  HW:121  E:1327%  U:11.2/m

MMQ 0: 40/39/41/36 C  | 656  M/835  Mh/s | A:10443 R:26 HW:121 U:11.24/m

Gives: 1.14% HW errors - and with my settings it should end up between 1% and 0.75% but hopefully still above 830Mh/s

Still looks OK IMO - and in case anyone felt like trying it, the pull has been there for 7 hours:
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/pull/319
(and there's plenty of comments about some of the changes in there )

To actually get my git changes to the current code it's in my mmq branch:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/tree/mmq
(but it calls itself 2.8.3)

Still plenty of work to be done of course ... but it should work fine now on any linux
Any bugs found - please let me know

The main cgminer branch now includes this updated MMQ code thanks to Kano. Version 2.8.4 should work fine with MMQ on linux now.

[kano]

... and just in the context of that, anyone having trouble with MMQ's stop mining on linux suddenly unexpectedly (on any miner program)
See the end of this update to the FPGA-README in cgminer:

The large green block of text at the end
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/pull/320/files

Actually I'll quote it

On many linux distributions there is an app called modem-manager that
may cause problems when it is enabled, due to opening the MMQ device
and writing to it

The problem will typically present itself by the flashing led on the
backplane going out (no longer flashing) and it takes a power cycle to
re-enable the MMQ firmware - which then can lead to the problem happening
again

You can either disable/uninstall modem-manager if you don't need it or:
a (hack) solution to this is to blacklist the MMQ USB device in
/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-usb-device-blacklist.rules

Adding 2 lines like this (just above APC) should help
# MMQ
ATTRS{idVendor}=="ifc9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0003", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"

The change will be lost and need to be re-done, next time you update the
modem-manager software

TODO: check that all MMQ's have the same product ID

[PuertoLibre]

Sounds like you have possibly found a viable candidate to remove the extra tethered wattage.

While reducing 'tethered wattage' is always desirable in a general sense, don't lose sight of the specific numbers; the cost of running 'inefficient' hosts may be less than you think.

Take an example: an 800Mhps FPGA miner will generate $3/day. My i7 3770K full-size PC uses 90W at idle (I have measured it with a Kill-A-Watt meter). Of course I would not suggest using this as a host, but for illustrative purposes a 90W PC running 24 hours/day will cost about $0.25/day in electricity (2.2 kWh, $0.11/kWh). That's 8% of the mining income. If you happen to run multiple miners off that same PC, the cost of running it becomes an even smaller portion of the mining income. And if you are talking about running a bASIC, the cost of running a 90W PC becomes largely insignificant.

So if you were to use something like a Raspberry Pi, that uses only a few watts, to host your mining hardware, you'd be able to save at most $0.20/day or $0.25/day compared to a full-blown PC. Monthly, that's a savings of $6-$7. That may be significant to some people, and insignificant for others. I host my hardware using a small 25W Zotac Zbox, which I also use for my day-to-day computing tasks; this works well for me.

I agree with everything you said, as I mentioned the same point you made a few pages ago when Inaba (BFL_Josh) was bringing up the power use issue.

You should contact Inaba (BFL_Josh) and ask him to be nicer to Tom over the power issue. The power issue is really only relevant for a mining device when it nears its End Of Life cycle.

[jjshabadoo]

Belaboring the wattage for ASIC is silly as it will be largely irrelevant as the cost of electricity is practically static for most people.

Let's say an ASIC device costs you $20 a month to run. Well if you're only mining 2 bitcoins per month let's say at today's price($12 or so) you're only making $24 a month - 20 = $4 a month.

So let's say a competitor sells a device that's twice as energy efficient ? woopee you now make $14 a month.

The whole deal with ASIC is the initial sunk capital cost and how quickly difficulty will rise, coupled with the price of bitcoins when/if you sell them.

Electrical cost is largely irrelevant.

The biggest threat to return on investment is difficulty skyrockets and/or bitcoin price crashes.

The other threat is manufacturers getting into a price war and selling 50-60 GH for like $200. This of course ties into difficulty.

A great ASIC vendor would allow previous buyers to have a right of refusal on future batches if there is a significant price drop, or a deeper discount if you are already a customer. This would be the best way to help protect your initial customer's investment.

[Inaba]

You have got to be kidding me.  You think there's no difference between making $4 per month vs $14 per month?  Really?

Power usage is *everything* when it comes to ASIC.  If you think it's not, you have no grasp on the economics of mining.  ASIC is not CPUs, it's not GPUs and it's not FPGAs.  It's the end of the line for mining technology for the foreseeable future.  What you buy today is what you'll be using in 3 years so long as it's still profitable.  That profitability is determined solely on how power efficient it is. 

If you buy an ASIC device that uses 2x the power as another device for roughly the same price, you might as well throw most of you money into a hole and burn it. 

[Syke]

Power usage is *everything* when it comes to ASIC.

Wanna bet?

[jjshabadoo]

Ok Inaba.

When your fixed cost is extremely low and your initial capital outlay is high, that fixed cost becomes largely irrelevant.

It doesn't matter anyway, because you're deluded if you think any ASIC which will ship in the next couple months will be competitive with future products in three years.

Try doing an Internal Rate of Return and plug in your expected device power usage and then do one with power doubled. You'll see that when all factors are considered, electricity is largely an irrelevant cost.