Topic: Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board - page 112. (Read 286370 times)

Good to hear some progress, Yohan. You said you used the Icarus bitstream, which is like firmware for these boards, right?
But what bitcoin mining software did you use? CGMiner?

Nothing formalised yet on the UP/DOWN but there will be and I will talk a bit more about planned functionality of this interface in a few days time. It will be a simple straight forward 1-1 wiring in the main up/down configuration but many other things are possible.

That's better news than bad news.

And:

We got first results today using one of the standard Icarus bitstreams and we do have a small problem using the standard bitstream in that we appear to have TX and RX crossed over incorrectly between the 2 FPGAs in the chain so we believe the second FPGA was not getting commands correctly. We will modify one board to check if this is correct over the next few days.

On the one half of pair that was working it was running at the 190MH/s that was expected of that particular bitstream using a standard clocking arrangement. We can sort out the TX/RX issue in a number of ways - a bitstream hack to swap TX/RX, a straight rebuild, or a whole new virgin bitstream option. We are working on all 3 of these options. It's more annoying than a major problem as it would have been nice for an Icarus bitstream just to drop in and work as a demo.

Todays test was purely about getting the bitstream and comms working and not in any way a performance test and it just ran at standard settings. We didn't do any serious measurements today on heat and power but the FPGA we were working with appeared to be in a good state and wasn't too hot.

There won't be any work on this tomorrow and probably a limited amount on Friday so don't expect much more until early next week.

Yohan

Let's hope performance is 960MH/s minimum with Ed's bitstream or up to 1200MH/s+ with bitfury bitstreams.

Hey, one can dream......

Yohan, any estimate on when you will be able to post performance numbers?

Happy with that, was expecting that to be an answer to come along. I'm sure that will be confirmed soon.

Everything that works with Icarus. CG Miner for example.

What software do can we expect to be using on these?

they look really nice! I can't wait to get them 

It's the best looking fpga of the market, I cannot wait to get mine.

Lets hope performance reach 800Mh/s

yohan,

they look really nice and if they hash as much as they're nice we're ok!

spiccioli.

Same here. I hope they will release some info this week.

I am still waiting for some real world numbers for their bitstream performance before I plunk down my order.

Do you have a pinout spec for all those little headers?

This is how the first 100 complete units will look. After then it 10mm lower.

****PRE-ORDER FOR JULY CLOSED. WE MAY HAVE EXTRA CAPACITY LATER BUT NO PROMISES****

http://www.bitfury.org/xc6slx150.html

I would highly recommend getting in contact with this group here. It is not clear from what I've read if they have a bitstream available but they appear to be onto something with the formula of many smaller rounds versus the fit as many big rounds as one can on the chip..

cheers

Update Time

Ok the machines have started and the first Issue 1.1 boards came of the line on Friday. We have been doing basic testing on them and doing work on our Controller design. That basic testing is now complete and our line has been given the green light to continue with the rest of this week's planned build of 50 boards.

We have now started to look at the bitstream solution and software interface. We are going to try and complete this within a few days but as it is a development there is always a chance of a problem. However during these few days we are looking to ship a few boards to developers of bitsreams/software and anyone that feels that they are in that category, and have not already flagged that to our sale team, should do so if they want a very early board. Early access developers should be happy to programming FPGAs with programming cables as that will be the way for at least a few days to program these boards. I am expecting the first boards to ship on Friday/Monday to Developers.

We are now in a good position on component supplies and we will be looking at the finer detail of the schedule in about 1-2 weeks time when we have a clearer view of how the assembly and test lines cope with the new board. We should start updating you all on when your boards are likely to arrive.

Our order book for July is nearly full and I expect that to close before Friday and we will quote September or later thereafter. There is a possibility of pulling some time back but we won't make any promises at this stage. We are not promising anything production wise for August currently as it is a major UK holiday time and our production levels will be substantially lower. However there is likely to be some August production but we need to do a proper calculation of the holiday effect and that will take some time to do. Some staff have not booked holidays yet and that is a moving effect as well that we are not certain of as yet. I may revise this delivery advice once we see how the lines cope with the Cairnsmore1 in numbers but that is a bedding in and learning process that we still have to do.

Generally we are meeting our aggressive design and production start up schedule and I hope everyone is happy on that. It is a bit rough and ready at the moment but I did say it was likely to be that way at the beginning less than 5 weeks ago when we announced the board concept and that will improve over the coming few weeks.

Email response times will be slow on the 24th May as we are running a major training event in conjunction with our partners on our general product lines.

We should start asking some of you for your initial payments late this week or early next.

Yohan

Next thing we know that thing will be counting up haha.