Is it truly economically beneficial to run to FPGAs right now ?

[silverbox]

This place seems to have plenty available ~$400-415

http://www.gadgetneeds.net/gigabyte-radeon-hd-7970-gv-r797oc-3gd-video-card/

unfortunately we can't ship to your location

[jjshabadoo]

FPGA's just don't make any sense due to how quickly the technology is developing. It has not even come close to being fully adapted for mining from what I can tell. So yes tech changes rapidly, but nothing changes more rapidly than it does in the very early phase. How much has happened to miners for gpus to increase gpu efficiency lately ? Not much because the people writing the miners have maxed it out..

I expect quad FPGA boards to be doing 1.2 GH/s and cost 700-800 bucks in 3-4 months.

[Miner99er]

FPGA's just don't make any sense due to how quickly the technology is developing. It has not even come close to being fully adapted for mining from what I can tell. So yes tech changes rapidly, but nothing changes more rapidly than it does in the very early phase. How much has happened to miners for gpus to increase gpu efficiency lately ? Not much because the people writing the miners have maxed it out..

I expect quad FPGA boards to be doing 1.2 GH/s and cost 700-800 bucks in 3-4 months.

HAH, I wish.

[kano]

FPGA's just don't make any sense due to how quickly the technology is developing. It has not even come close to being fully adapted for mining from what I can tell. So yes tech changes rapidly, but nothing changes more rapidly than it does in the very early phase. How much has happened to miners for gpus to increase gpu efficiency lately ? Not much because the people writing the miners have maxed it out..

I expect quad FPGA boards to be doing 1.2 GH/s and cost 700-800 bucks in 3-4 months.

HAH, I wish.

They will.

[Serenata]

FPGAs is a "new thing" in Bitcoin mining, so it is expected to get cheaper. But it will not if everyone sits around and waits for that. What I would suggest is that we buy FPGA boards, to stimulate the market, BUT lets not bet high on them.

Another thing to note, is the warranty period. I believe every mining device should be under warranty for the whole period until the device's break even. If an FPGA board dies well before break even, it's a lose-lose-lose-lose situation. In this field, FPGAs ar far behind IMO compared to GPUs

Last but not least, the reselling price should be taken under consideration. An FPGA board, is specific to Bitcoin mining. If anything happens in that field (e.g. new and better board comes out, bitcoin fails, etc), no one would want to buy it. On the contrary, GPUs can be sold quite easily and are independent on bitcoin.

[BFL-Engineer]

FPGAs is a "new thing" in Bitcoin mining, so it is expected to get cheaper. But it will not if everyone sits around and waits for that. What I would suggest is that we buy FPGA boards, to stimulate the market, BUT lets not bet high on them.

Another thing to note, is the warranty period. I believe every mining device should be under warranty for the whole period until the device's break even. If an FPGA board dies well before break even, it's a lose-lose-lose-lose situation. In this field, FPGAs ar far behind IMO compared to GPUs

Last but not least, the reselling price should be taken under consideration. An FPGA board, is specific to Bitcoin mining. If anything happens in that field (e.g. new and better board comes out, bitcoin fails, etc), no one would want to buy it. On the contrary, GPUs can be sold quite easily and are independent on bitcoin.

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[Serenata]

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.
Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Making your units OpenSource in case of bitcoin failure, is definitely a big plus, lowering the investment risk for current and potential customers.

[MXRider]

No one has mentioned how hard it is to get a 25GHash/s GPU mining farm up and running. You need a separate place for them, your house re-wired, tons of extra cooling and probably a lot of other stuff I don't even know about.

I would say that <10GHash/s with GPUs is more profitable
Everything else with FPGAs

[Gomeler]

No one has mentioned how hard it is to get a 25GHash/s GPU mining farm up and running. You need a separate place for them, your house re-wired, tons of extra cooling and probably a lot of other stuff I don't even know about.

I would say that <10GHash/s with GPUs is more profitable
Everything else with FPGAs

Very true. I am renting a separate location due to the power and cooling requirements associated with mining under GPUs in quantities more serious than a gaming desktop. Some people will have the space for that but apartment dwellers are screwed 

[Syke]

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.

What industry buys used Singles for greater than the purchase price?

[rjk]

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.

What industry buys used Singles for greater than the purchase price?

Presumably anyone that can use a pair of fast FPGAs in a compact box? If I could re-purpose it as a WPA crack-in-a-box, I would pay a grand for it to go driving around cracking WPA in realtime.

[nedbert9]

FPGAs is a "new thing" in Bitcoin mining, so it is expected to get cheaper. But it will not if everyone sits around and waits for that. What I would suggest is that we buy FPGA boards, to stimulate the market, BUT lets not bet high on them.

Another thing to note, is the warranty period. I believe every mining device should be under warranty for the whole period until the device's break even. If an FPGA board dies well before break even, it's a lose-lose-lose-lose situation. In this field, FPGAs ar far behind IMO compared to GPUs

Last but not least, the reselling price should be taken under consideration. An FPGA board, is specific to Bitcoin mining. If anything happens in that field (e.g. new and better board comes out, bitcoin fails, etc), no one would want to buy it. On the contrary, GPUs can be sold quite easily and are independent on bitcoin.

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Good news.

[kano]

Just curious ... what exactly is gained from open sourcing it? (if BTC fails)

Do you mean that it is impossible to put in any new firmware without some special encryption key?

Or is there some other thing that would be gained from opensource?
Since if BTC fails, the only use for them would indeed be to program them to do something else (or somehow sell the FPGA's in them that are apparently worth something like $2000 new in the USA but a fraction of that in China)

At the moment the missing information is directly related to BTC (which would not be much use if BTC fails)
Creating an actual bitstreams has been done here by others already of course and since we all know what the FPGA is (EP3SL150) that's not really an issue.

[rjk]

Just curious ... what exactly is gained from open sourcing it? (if BTC fails)

Do you mean that it is impossible to put in any new firmware without some special encryption key?

Or is there some other thing that would be gained from opensource?
Since if BTC fails, the only use for them would indeed be to program them to do something else (or somehow sell the FPGA's in them that are apparently worth something like $2000 new in the USA but a fraction of that in China)

At the moment the missing information is directly related to BTC (which would not be much use if BTC fails)
Creating an actual bitstreams has been done here by others already of course and since we all know what the FPGA is (EP3SL150) that's not really an issue.

Have you been able to load your new bitstreams?

[kano]

...
Have you been able to load your new bitstreams?

I haven't tried.
I did ask for the details of the command, from Sonny, to load them (and made it clear that I was one of the cgminer people) but he replied that they wouldn't tell me that (or anything else that we don't already know) so I guess I'm just gonna have to get someone to open EasyMiner in reflector and post the source.
(Maybe BFL think that only people with windows should buy Singles?)

But that has nothing to do with my post.
My post was directed at the statement that they would opensource it if BTC fails
(and the rather ludicrous statement that you could sell them for more than you paid for them if BTC tanks)

If there is any encryption going on then I would suspect the bitstreams themselves are already encrypted.
If it is just EasyMiner encrypting the files before it uploads them, well, then, that secret wont last very long.

P.S. anyone want to point me at the best site to make a Windows XP boot USB?
(Yes I do have more than one spare unused valid Microsoft Windows XP license that I will use)

[rjk]

...
Have you been able to load your new bitstreams?

I haven't tried.
I did ask for the details of the command from Sonny to load them but he replied that they wouldn't tell me so I guess I'm just gonna have to get someone to open it in reflector and post the source.
(Maybe BFL think that only people with windows should buy Singles?)

But that has nothing to do with my post.
My post was directed at the statement that they would opensource it if BTC fails
(and the rather ludicrous statement that you could sell them for more than you paid for them if BTC tanks)

If there is any encryption going on then I would suspect the bitstreams themselves are already encrypted.
If it is just EasyMiner, well, then, that secret wont last very long.

As I said in another post, it shows that they have more faith in BTC NOT FAILING than you or others do.
The bitstreams I believe are encrypted, but I don't know whether they get decrypted by EasyMiner before sending them to the device, or whether they are delivered to the device still encrypted.

[kano]

I edited that straight after posting it ...

[rjk]

Do you mean a live (PE, Preinstalled Environment) USB, or just an installer? If a PE is enough, Microsoft provides a free Win7 one with the WIAK (Windows Automated Installation Kit), but it is a massive download. Oops, it requires a Windows install just to create the boot ISO before using it lol.

XP is kind of difficult to install via USB, but there are a few guides on the net. If you want a pre-tweaked version, a good one can be found at the Bay: torrent/7180951/

[bulanula]

Do you mean a live (PE, Preinstalled Environment) USB, or just an installer? If a PE is enough, Microsoft provides a free Win7 one with the WIAK (Windows Automated Installation Kit), but it is a massive download. Oops, it requires a Windows install just to create the boot ISO before using it lol.

XP is kind of difficult to install via USB, but there are a few guides on the net. If you want a pre-tweaked version, this is a good one: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7180951/Windows_XP_Professional_SP3_32-bit_-_Black_Edition_2012.4.12

I thought warez was illegal on this forum ?

Content like this can get bitcointalk.org banned under laws like SOPA / PIPA ...

[rjk]

Do you mean a live (PE, Preinstalled Environment) USB, or just an installer? If a PE is enough, Microsoft provides a free Win7 one with the WIAK (Windows Automated Installation Kit), but it is a massive download. Oops, it requires a Windows install just to create the boot ISO before using it lol.

XP is kind of difficult to install via USB, but there are a few guides on the net. If you want a pre-tweaked version, a good one can be found at the Bay: torrent/7180951/

I thought warez was illegal on this forum ?

Content like this can get bitcointalk.org banned under laws like SOPA / PIPA ...

It isn't warez if you have a key.