Topic: Acorn M.2 FPGA based GPU Accelerator - page 65. (Read 73507 times)

Please, no. Guy is annoying af. Just my opinion!

Yes, that is a very good idea. I'll have a think about how we could make that possible.

The key issue at the moment is getting supply of the FGPA's, I have 2 x developer kits on the way but in general there is very limited supply in the marketplace.

Similarly with Acorn, they are still pre-production at this stage and I have spoken with David at SQRL's and there is expected to be some supply available in 3-4 weeks time.

Once I have at least 1 x FGPA and 1 x Acorn in hand I'll organise the eval.

Okay so if the max amount of 4x-16x slots on your board is 3, and you have one m.2 slot, ideally you should have 2 video cards and 2 acorns working together, and use the rest of the slots with the 1x risers for normal mining (if you want). Let me explain how I'd do it.
One acorn in the m.2 slot, obviously.
If you had been using that slot, here's what you could buy to move the SSD to an SATA port without cloning it (this might help someone else): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/NI5L-High-quality-PCB-B-Key-M-2-NGFF-SSD-to-2-5-SATA-Converter-Adapter/32797563020.html
2 video cards and one more acorn in an adapter can go in any of the slots that provide 8x/4x
Here's an adapter that will do the minimum required: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/JEYI-SK4-M-2-NVMe-SSD-NGFF-TO-PCIE-X4-adapter-M-Key-interface-card-Suppor/32785472313.html
And then to get at any of the 1x slots you've blocked with the video cards, I'd use these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Newest-Sale-PCI-E-X1-Extension-Cable-Riser-Card-Extender-USB-3-0-Transfer-Cables-PCI/32861850204.html
There are other SKUs of that same adapter at that same bitCON store (lol) but this is the only one with free shipping (that only works if you order 1 at a time). If you're okay paying a lot more for faster shipping you can save a few cents switching to a different sku or using the mobile app to pay. I also saw them on amazon.com under the ubit name. I don't know why these aren't more popular; they're really hard to find. I wouldn't use the $2-3 cables to extend those slots as those are really trashy looking, and will definitely break eventually. I wouldn't risk connecting the usb direct to the 16x slot from your other riser, use the included one without power and then the complete 1x to 16x riser chained to that. A bit messy, but safe.
Everything I've written assumes you can run your board in pci-e v2 mode. If it's not stable and you need to use v1 you have to use one less acorn because your 4x slot is now useless to it. You also might want to double check that using slots on your board doesn't fuck with the bandwidth to the m.2 slot. I checked https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z170A-GAMING-PRO-CARBON/Specification and it looks fine -- it only disables SATA ports 5/6 when you use it, which is easy to work around.

I think this is the kind of transparent collaboration that a lot of people have been looking for.  This is the kind of thing that will push a lot of people past the speculative barrier.  Well done and thank you!

Of course, looking forward to actual follow through and results.  And I would be more interested in use cases illustrating GPU enhancements (1070, 1080, 1080ti here) as opposed to the somewhat limitedly accessible BCUXXXX FPGA.

Oh... and if anyone is looking to expand on this and include more testers I would recommend Vosk Coin. 

Any idea when the Acorn's will be available? 

Do your own research, people.

I did some. I didn't find out anything new about the Acorn, but I know more about the people behind it. I tried the same thing with the DwarfMiner. It wasn't quite as fruitful of a search.

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20160221/NEWS/160219936/software-developer-squirrels-looks-to-start-tech-hub-in-north-canton

Am I interested in the Acorn? You bet!   If it gets anywhere close to the general claims made so far by GPUHoarder, it will help.

Am I going to send this guy money before he demonstrates in some manner what it can do? Not on your life. How many of you pre-ordered the DM T1 without knowing it only worked on AsicBoost enabled pools?

When (I don't think it's an 'if', now) GPUHoarder demos some concrete numbers and deployment info, I'll make a decision based on facts, not 'gee-whiz'. Would I like to see reviews by trusted forum members? Absolutely. Third-party verification is never a bad idea.


Mine on!

having it with 1 or 2 bcu1525 and an acorn2 would be a good way to show what it can do.

or having it with an acorn2 and some of my 1080ti's would also by a good way to demo it


lastly is a mixed system possible  say 1 or 2   BCU1525 FGPA's  an acorn2 and  a few 1080ti's

this last one would appeal to a lot of miners like myself with some  gpus on hand and boosting the setup with an acorn2 and a fpga or 2.

For many  your 16 fpga + acorn2 = too much $$$

but a combination  of 1080ti + acorn2 + BCU1525 FGPA is possible and attractive

No hype riding here, just providing real products that work real well.

Thanks philipma1957.

I will be able to send you a BLACKBOX system for review, but without GPU's or FGPA's installed.

The BCU1525 FGPA's have not shipped yet so its impossible to ship a fully loaded one even if we could.

I am 100% confused.


Right, so I have two rigs with 7 RX 570's on. Each hooked up with a 1x-to-16x powered riser. Very standard mining setup.
The mobo is MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon. PCI-E Gen 3. Three of the PCI-E slot are PCI-EX16 (support x16/x0/x4 or x8/x8/x4 modes).
The M.2 slot (currently unpopulated) is "1 x 2280 Key M(PCIe Gen3 x4/SATA)".

What should I do/expect from an Acorn in that slot?

It's up to the bitstream developers, but GPUHoarder really hates fees. Whatever his team produces might actually be free.

They'll publish interfaces for other devs to use, so those ones might have around 4%, which is what the first bitstreams for the BCU FPGA are targeting.

KJS sent that to me for a one month test run and demo it was a very nice piece of gear.
He fully trusted me with the gear and when demo was done along with the thread I shipped it back to him on my dime. but kept a month of mining profits.

It is a bit too much to ask him for the 60k rig to do the same thing.

but I know that ethos software and KJS and ohgoditsagirl and gpuhoarder all have said they have had working relationships and they do not speak badly of each other.

I know KJS sent me a 6k machine to test run and trusted me and I was good to him and did what I was supposed to do.

So I feel this gear is real  and I am mostly bitching that they missed deadlines and I do not know what to do  with my coin/cash/gear ratios mostly due to this delay.

If I am 25k in cash 10k in coin and 20k in gear do I just wait and wait and wait.  or do I sell more gear or do I want to change my mobos buy more  ryzen 2700x and x470 boards.

At the moment I was hoping to just keep my 1080ti's and use acorn2 for a boost
I did not want to move into fpga's

Thanks. For the Acorn/GPU miner software, will there be a dev fee and if yes, how much will it be?

You guys can save some money and make a free wire transfer to Squirrels at transfer.xe.com
It saved me about $100 on one BCU, for example. It will be nice when the acorns are available as bank wires are quite annoying for smaller transactions. If you decide to add a riser card or your friend asks you for an acorn a day late it's really not going to be nice paying those fees again. Plus you don't even have to drive to the bank if you do it this way.

Simply sign up, and then create a new transaction, filling in your grand total from the invoice where it says "you want:", after making sure USD is selected. It will calculate the amount in your local currency so you can compare to your bank at this stage.
Continue to the next screen, and select destination country "United States". Take the information from your invoice and fill it in here. For example, but please refer to your own invoice:
Recipient's name: Squirrels, LLC
Recipient's address: 121 Wilbur Dr NE North Canton, OH 44720 USA
Bank account number: 233220xxx (please copy from the invoice!)
ABA Routing Number: 044000037
(other bank details should fill in and match the invoice)
Reference: (Your invoice #)
Reason for payment: "Goods/Services"
Continue through the process to commit to this transaction at your quoted rate.

Then, at your bank website:
Create a bill payment to xe's partner company for your country using the 'pay to' as the name of the bill or payee, and your unique 'client number' for the account number. You don't need to put the reference to quote anywhere. This information will be in a pdf they have on the site and also e-mail to you.

Optional
Call xe and let them know the purpose of the transfer to ensure no hold is placed on the xfer due to any suspicions of money laundering

If your bank doesn't have the required payee to send the money as a 'bill payment', you can upload a voided cheque to xe and they will link directly to your account to debit it, but this will take about a day for them to set up.

My transfer went from my bank to xe (HIFX Canada) in 14 hours. The wire was sent 6 hours later, and payment was confirmed by Squirrels about 40 hours later, which is pretty good for having bank holidays in both countries this week.

my thoughts on this https://1stminingrig.com/is-gpu-mining-stronger-than-ever-acorn-m-2-fpga-based-gpu-accelerator/

You should assume that 1x risers are not supported. It's already been made quite clear the acorn is not going to be useful in that situation unless you run it by itself, not talking to the GPUs.
PCI-e v1 should work fine if your board provides 8 lanes to the integrated m.2, or you can use an 8x to m.2 or 16x to a dual m.2 adapter, plus your slave card(s) are in 8x slots. The math is really obvious and simple -- if you want to use half-speed pci-e from what is suggested, then double the lanes. If you use pci-e v3 it doesn't speed up the acorn so that will still need x4, but the video cards could get away with 2 lanes. There's no reason you should ever need a 16x riser to the video card!
I'll try to figure out which algos are which state 256/512 but it's more complicated than that - you should expect a 1060 to get a bigger boost than a 1080 Ti, for example.

lyra2rev2 - 256 bit
lyra2z - 256 bit
neoscrypt - 256 bit
equihash based (zhash etc) - 256 bit
cryptonight based (v7, heavy, light) - 256 bit
phi1612 - 512 bit
x16r/s - 512 bit
phi2 - 512 bit
x17 - 512 bit
tribus - 512 bit
skunk - 512 bit

Very good points. I would also like to add that there seems to have been more emphasis on, shall I say, smaller coins (and newer algos) but I would welcome some clear numbers for, lets say, ethash and other algorithms like it. This is an issue for those who are deciding if GPU mining is still viable or we should all just give up and buy ASIC miners. For the record - I am very happy with Z9 mini so far.

Can you clarify the algo(s) you are talking about when you mention "MH" in general? I know you specify bit state but personally I have no clue which algo uses which bit state...

Also, some real-life practical examples for people with existing rigs would be very useful - most of us got multi-GPU rigs chugging along - typically with x1 risers - and it'd be good to know what we could expect if we plugged an Acorn into the M.2 slot.

Finally, a maybe a "how-to" guide to extract the max out of an Acorn for an existing rig, considering all the parameters you mentioned, eg. "should we change PCI gen settings in BIOS", or "should we replace one of the 1x-16x riser with a 16x-16x riser on one of the GPUs to get the lift" etc.

I still believe that at least 70% of the time of these interviews are his interruptions, attempts on jokes and other fluff. Such a waste of, quite often, more than two hours of the time. He has good interviewees but wastes their time on pointless chat and his interruptions

You guys shouldn't be so harsh about Seth's interviews -- there's nothing wrong with his style. He's done lots of helpful interviews lately shedding light on the FPGA projects and mineority, plus got a few coin teams to talk about their projects goals, use cases, how they feel about decentralization, proof of useful work, and other interesting stuff. As for the FPGA interviews being light on technical details, that's to be expected at this early stage when bitstreams are being developed and hardware is still being finalized. I'm not sure why you are even asking for a video showing the hardware running when it's been stated so many times that performance metrics are not being made available yet, and the reasons have been given why.