I really wish people would stop calling FPGA's ASICs. Baikal (so far) has only made FPGA mining rigs. There is a huge difference between an FPGA and an ASIC. An FPGA is not that much different from a GPU. Anyone can get one. Anyone can buy a Zynq FPGA board from digikey for $89-$199, or a higher end one for more money, and if you take a little while to learn how to program it, you can hash any algorithm except equihash & ethash. Furthermore, your ROI will be better than a GPU in almost every case, in some cases dramatically better (as Baikal showed with the X10 and Giant-B).
ASIC's on the other hand are NOT available to everyone. First you need the software (Synopsys, which costs $500K), then you need at least $3 million USD for the first batch of chips (assuming you can find a billion dollar fab that wants to run your project), and most likely the first revision fails and needs at least another $3 million for another revision.
So:
CPU's + GPU's + FPGA's = available for everyone, can be programmed by anyone with extremely low cost or free tools
ASIC = extremely expensive and not feasible for an individual
I'm working on my own FPGA rig and I suggest other people do the same. It also allows you to stay ahead of the curve, especially on smaller altcoins. Baikal is good at making FPGA mining equipment, good for them. Embrace change and advancement.
And for those who are wondering, 60W for 20,000 hash on Cryptonight is absolutely feasible for a single FPGA with multiple external SRAM's.
And for those who want to develop their own FPGA rigs, make sure to analyze the algorithm(s) you want to implement, and choose the best board for the task in terms of the amount of internal memory the FPGA has vs. the amount of logic cells & DSP slices.
ASIC's on the other hand are NOT available to everyone. First you need the software (Synopsys, which costs $500K), then you need at least $3 million USD for the first batch of chips (assuming you can find a billion dollar fab that wants to run your project), and most likely the first revision fails and needs at least another $3 million for another revision.
So:
CPU's + GPU's + FPGA's = available for everyone, can be programmed by anyone with extremely low cost or free tools
ASIC = extremely expensive and not feasible for an individual
I'm working on my own FPGA rig and I suggest other people do the same. It also allows you to stay ahead of the curve, especially on smaller altcoins. Baikal is good at making FPGA mining equipment, good for them. Embrace change and advancement.
And for those who are wondering, 60W for 20,000 hash on Cryptonight is absolutely feasible for a single FPGA with multiple external SRAM's.
And for those who want to develop their own FPGA rigs, make sure to analyze the algorithm(s) you want to implement, and choose the best board for the task in terms of the amount of internal memory the FPGA has vs. the amount of logic cells & DSP slices.
I wish I had your time and skill.
