hi photon
could give a rough estimate in time and dollar of a machine based on recent chip to achieve something around 100 giga/s/system?
thanks
Taking a look at Mouser, an Altera Stratix V, a 28nm FPGA with 2560 logic blocks (the smallest in the Stratix IV family they sell) has a chip price of $8,317.00 PER CHIP, with no quantity discounts.
I have no experience with programming FPGAs, but lets say you get 10x the performance of the local community favorite the Spartan 6 LX150 FPGA, while using 1/5th the power requirement. (basically impossible with only 2560 logic blocks)
This gives you 4 GH/s per chip while consuming 4W (keep in mind im pulling these numbers out of my ass), 1GH/J this puts you on par with BFL's estimates for power consumption.
Problem is, you unit now costs $124,755 JUST FOR THE FPGAs. To be comparable with a BFL Single in speed and power consumption.