Topic: FPGA Miner Design for Sale to Someone willing to Market It (Read 8481 times)

Any news on this ? Have we invented the water fuelled car yet ?

Well, there are things I have come up with for a biz of mine (I actually have one now) and wouldn't want to provide any "proof" in case someone wanted to take the idea. From what I've read, the OP didn't really talk about what FPGA they were using or how they were setup. I think its perfectly normal for them to be protective of something like that, right? Again, they just want some feedback, they don't want validation.

Most ppl arent stating its a scam, but after a week of asking, not a single video or even picture has surfaced. I think its legit to raise some red flags. Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof, yet all we're asking is a simple cellphone video or something.

I think if this proves to be true, all the members giving this guy a hard time should be banned from purchase. I mean, seriously, you are like fire-ants- piling it on. So what if someone comes on making claims? If he is full of junk, it will come out, if not, YOU will look stupid for making assumptions.

Let them have the chance to prove it. Don't call them "scammers", they never asked for anything from us other than an opinion about their product.

I think if this is true, the value would be great.

Thank you ! And keep off the drugs man.

I feel bad for Gavin now....  he is probably getting PM'ed

The gentleman did say they had a working prototype, hell even a couple of pictures would be good enough for me to at least keep interest in this thread.  did someone say vaporware?

Your arguments are bedazzling, I am having the urge to partake in highly stimulating substance abuse to keep up with the complexity and depth of your intricate and extremely valid explanation that analyzes, details and refutes every single information you refer to in such rapid and complete rhetorical performance!!!

This is too good to be true people, wake up. This is like 1000x better than what we already have now. It is impossible.

If this proves to be true and if he fabricates them (I didn't get it if he is going through with this or not), $600 would barely get you a small one. The prices on the first post are for production. Double that and you get your price.

I will buy whatever $600 can get me, for the best performance, whether it's 1 big one or multiple small ones.

EDIT: And provided it's retard friendly.

So right now it's just vaporware?

Wake me up when you posted that video on youtube.

AH... now it looks better...

From what I've seen, $375 is not completely out-of-the-question for a mid-range V6 in high vol. But yeah, to be taken seriously, you are going to
have to post a lot more details. Share the mrp/twr like we've been doing here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/btcminer-open-source-bitcoin-miner-for-ztex-fpga-boards-215-mhs-on-lx150-40047

It is not trivial to build a 800MH/s design. In the larger V6 parts, the build times, and routing delays, become rediculous,
at least with the best current public RTL. ArtForz seems to have some secret optimizations, but so far he's not sharing.

-rph

OK. OK. I hear you all loud and clear. Nothing will please this skeptical crowd except for an endorsement from a respected member of the community. I understand and am not offended. I'll switch my focus to people like Gavin tonight to assess the business potential and ultimately get a review of our first prototype. If you like what you see then, maybe you'll decide to buy one. Thanks to those who provided constructive posts on this thread.

If this was true then it really would be the holy grail of fpga mining LOL !

maybe he doesn't really have a real prototype running yet, it's all in the brains.

I will personally never get into fpga mining. electricity cost for me is $.08/kw/h. Plus I write off electricity for my home business 

good luck unloading fpgas if bitcoins ever die (hopefully not!)

I'll humor you.

This is your competition. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/x6500-custom-fpga-miner-40058 180 MH/s, 15 watts, $610.

Yours, 750 MH/s, 15 watts, $370 plus markup, let's say $610.

You are claiming more than 4x the price/performance level. They have several dozen people who put down money for pre-orders. You would sell hundreds, easy, if you could produce them. But you won't, because you're either scamming on purpose, or you've miscalulated ... a lot. It is, without a doubt, too good to be true.

Thank god , because I was just about to compare the OP to the Nazi's simply to invoke Godwin's Law . Let's kill this farce.

Um...

And that would be the end of this thread.

This, is what we call spinning.



PS: Nobody gives a freaking shit as to how you're to cool your 60w mythical device.

Maybe you are new here? Everyone at the forums is very suspicious of new services. Say you come up with a simple widget that displays MtGox's price and you announce it here. No one will install it and you will get 5 replies asking for the source code to check that it isn't malicious.

There have been many problems and scams in the Bitcoin world. You have to earn people's trust if you want to be taken seriously.

Gavin Andresen leads the development team of the official client, but I guess that a simple video will do for now.

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Teraminer, just grab your cell phone and shoot some video of the FPGA in action. If you have one running it shouldnt take 10 minutes of your time. That should be good enough proof to assert you are not just trolling. In theory, it could still be a more elaborate hoax, but I kinda fail to see the point in anyone doing that.

Thanks for these recent replies as they highlight a benefit that I had not considered. It seems that not only are the electricity costs a factor but the noise and heat pose significant discomfort to the miners. We would strive for a passive heat sink (no noise) but the 60W estimate for the high-end product may require a fan. We'll see.

My impression so far is that if we build this, it would be significant enough that miners would really go for it.

Also, I've learned that you miners are a skeptical group. Therefore, our first order of business would be to have a reputable set of miners evaluate our early prototypes. Is there a short list of people that you recommend we work with to get a review that would satisfy the masses? I heard mention of "Gavin"? Any others?

I apologize if the original post was misleading. When I stated production costs, I was talking about the cost to manufacture the board as opposed to price to sell the board. I realize it wasn't worded well. I will change the original post to be more clear that these are manufacturing costs.

They virtually produce little noise and heat compared to a GPU running 24/7 at 99% load etc.

The OP is just coming here and saying all these incredible sounding figures. It is like somebody telling the auto industry they can make an electric car with 1000 km range and very cheap cost 10000 dollars. Simply impossible with current tech. That is why we are so skeptic. If this is true then by no means send Gavin or somebody a little bit of evidence then we can talk about scaling your production process to cope with all of us buying this and selling our ATI cards etc.

I like the heat as it keeps my office in the garage warm but dear god the fans make a racket dont they. Still its free heating so I try not to moan to much as winters in the UK suck.

How do these FPGAs mesure up on the noise/heat front?

Exactly my point too. Too damn good to be true. Would so love to get rid of these heat and noise making GPUs near my bed.

Im going to be humble on the internets   you have a point so..

As a miner if this was actualy for sale in a polished state ready to rock and roll and not an investment scam I would certainly buy the 3000 mhash/s model.


Happy ?



Still bullshit and belive me no one wishs it wasnt the case more than me I would love somthing like this.

Lets recap at first you make some exaggerated claims in your OP along with 'unbelievable' prices.
Then you proceed telling everybody that this are your production costs while mentioning nothing in the sort at first.
You tell us that you have made a working prototype 'on off-the-shelf' equipment and now suddenly all that's left is a proof of concept.

ok I admit it IHBT... can we move on now 

I don't mine. I don't plan on start mining until there are small low power FPGA/sASIC/ASIC solutions available that I can fire up and forget. No whining fans, no noticeable heat output.

I don't plan on ever mining for profit. I would run such a system to help support Bitcoin. While I can't quantify any numbers for you, I'm quite sure there are others who - like me - are interested in Bitcoin as a social and political experiment more than as an "investment".

With all that said, without ArtForz or ztex at least considering your numbers to be plausible (Mhash/s as well as price) I belong to the wait-and-see crowd. Impressed and interested, if true.

Well the problem is this : these figures are way too optimistic and so much better than current production models and the like that people are doubting them. If this was indeed real then I would totally consider dumping my GPUs because of the less noise, less consumption of energy, no need for host computer and all the clutter that comes with it etc. The only downside would be the cost ( which imho is totally reasonable even at 3000 bucks for the big 3000 mhash/s model as it is just at the magical 1$/mhash point ) and problem that this cannot easily be used for other things like GPUs can etc.

BUT at the current climate anybody who buys further mining hardware is a complete and utter idiot AND these values seem to good to be true and possible in real life etc. AND you give no proof or any evidence these figures are possible. Hence, people saying it is a scam.

You should add a poll to this thread. I'd probably buy one of the high end boards when it's ready and if I'm convinced then that it's not a scam (sending a prototype to a trusted person like one of the core devs might be a simple solution to get the required trust).
I think you'd sell quite a lot as this basically would kick most gpu miners out of the game (at least those who pay for their electricity).

ElectricMucus and RobertRibbeck,

Throughout this thread, I have continually reminded that we have a working proof-of-concept and some good component pricing locked down. We're just trying to decide whether to take this all the way to production. You should know that we would not take a dime from anyone until we had a product to sell. If there was a large-scale miner that was impressed by our demo and was willing to put some skin in the game to get temporary exclusivity, we'd consider it. That arrangement would be useful to mitigate our personal risk, that's all.

My questions on this thread are helping us to understand the potential demand for this solution. We'll use this feedback in our decision to go forward or not. No scam. No money exchanging hands. Thanks nmat for getting it. Just looking for an intelligent discussion regarding the value of such a product. It doesn't do anybody any good to continue doubting our abilities or motives. Just assume that we can prove our targets once we move away from the dev kit and build the first prototype. I know this is hard for some but I'm trying to have a productive conversation on the forum. Treat it like an "academic" conversion if that makes it easier for you.

Again, assuming a 2x markup over costs mentioned, would the typical miner be likely to replace their GPUs with this product. What sort of penetration do you think it could make in the global hash rate? I'm hoping that this is the place where mature BitCoin miners might offer some advice and guidance for us.

Am I missing something? He isn't asking for money. The question is: if I was selling these, how many would you buy? You don't pay to answer. Besides, if you are wasting your time posting to call this a scam, you might as well give a real answer.

When he comes asking for money, you can tell him to get lost. Right now, it isn't the case.

LOL. Proof or it didn't happen.

Untill proof is provided then your wasting everyones time.

I'm interested in FGPA as a miner however  your posting ....




Wish scammers wouldn't toy with us so.

Proof wont be coming but hey I would love to be wrong.

You claim to have working prototypes, can you ship one to Gavin or some other core development team members so they can verify that the thing actually exists and works as claimed?

-MarkM-

bottom line
Right now you are offering a pig in a poke

nothing to ship or show
Can you really expect others to layout hard cash on a promise
Especially when you yourself are reluctant to input any CASH

been there done that
you gotta front the money & grow form there

I wish I got rich on Just selling my idea's but thats not how starting your own business works

I doubt anybody will take you seriously till you provide some proof of your claims.

I suspect that everything you posted was made up on the spot, me thinks you don't have a running prototype or even self-written code.

So, if you were selling these:


I would buy one entry-level board (or maybe one high-end if it doesn't have a fan and if I get a pre-order discount ).

Note that this applies to today. If you come up with this in two months I might have a different opinion. This is a risky investment for miners too.

PS: I know that I am not a big investor, but I thought I'd show my support anyway.

Thanks to some of you who took the time to think about the potential market. You all have cited the same risks that I've mulled over. There is the risk that someone else may come up with a better product, the price of bitcoins may drop through the floor, miners might be afraid to purchase something that doesn't have a value beyond mining, etc. In line with one of the earlier posts, the current mining capacity is about 15,000 GH/s. If 5% of that capacity switched to our high-end product, that would be the sale of 250 boards. I wonder how likely that is?

We have enough money to design and build 50 prototype of the high-end board so we really don't need any investment from other partners. However, that doesn't mean that we want to invest all that time and money into something that will leave us holding the bag when the music stops. I don't like to go into something unless I see a reasonable chance of success so I was looking for someone fully plugged into the BitCoin community to assess the potential and ultimately help sell it. If I knew that I would sell 500 high-end boards, I'd start building right now on my own. I understand that all new ventures have risk, so I guess I'd like to get a handle on the level of interest.

In all honesty, how many would YOU buy if it were available today. Also, do you know the names of large scale miners that might be interested in pre-ordering some boards (with cash held in escrow until product delivered) to gain early exclusivity, etc?

P.S. All work on this product has been done on our own time from our own homes. The only things that came from employers are technical and industry knowledge. It's hard to leave that at the door.

And here's the problem. If you sell the design to someone else, they aren't going to get favorable pricing from Xilinx. Also, it is doubtful YOU can get favorable pricing from Xilinx as Teraminer, LLC.

Also, it sounds like you developed your product using resources from your primary employer.

I call BS on these figures. If it looks too good to be true then it probably is 

Cost price: "High-End board achieves 3,000 MH/s @ 60W for $1,050"

That's about 1.5 bitcoins per day, or $7.20 minus the cost of electricity.  How much could such a board be sold for while ensuring a decent return for investors?  Maybe $2000.  That requires 9 months of hashing to pay back the purchase price, not including power and the PC the board would be connected to.  9 months before a single cent of profit is made.  Not too bad, but I can see why investors may be reluctant to put serious money into the project even if they believe the optimistic numbers.

The calculation of course is only based on current prices.  Some might say mine today and sell for a lot more than $4.80/btc next month or next year, but really no one knows how much a BTC may be worth.

TeraMiner, why dont you just post a video of the board in action?
Sure you could fake the output, but an ordinary troll wouldnt bother.

As for how many youd sell; God knows. I dont think it would replace GPU mining overnight, GPU's are common as they serve other purposes, it that sense its also less risky as an investment.  You can buy and if needed, sell AMD gpu's with minimal loss of investement, Im not sure how much a market there is for second hand FPGA's if bitcoin comes crashing down.

Still, currenty the bitcoin network provides almost 15,000 GH/s. If youd manage to capture just 1% of that, you are looking at 100s of boards.

That so called unlimited detail sounds like fractal compression. I would've thought though if the fractal approach was going that well we'd hear about it from other sources too though.

-MarkM-

THIS ^^^^

Atleast until this alleged history is demonstrated conclusively.

No, you're some anonymous person posting on an Internet forum. You have zero credibility.

All the "serious miners" would get a few of those. I can't tell you any exact numbers, but since the current hash rate is 12.25THash I would say that we are talking of a few 100's, at the very least.

But there is another problem: prices have been dropping for 3 months. It went from $20 to $4. We really need new investors in the market to keep the price from falling. If the price doesn't rise, people will not make hardware investments in mining because it won't be profitable.
On the other hand, if Bitcoin survives another year, the production will be halved to 25 BTC per block. Theoretically, that would a remove a huge selling force from the market.

Long term investments with Bitcoin are tricky. If you are considering putting effort and time into making this, you must understand that you are risking a lot. There are no guarantees of what will happen a year from now.


PS: Take this guy for example. That investment was what? $50000? He alone would get 25 high end boards if you were selling them in June.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik

comes near that target


I sent you a mail introducing myself. However its now sleep time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik

Yes, we've seen LargeCoin and they are one of the reasons why we have hesitated. That and the thought that the BitCoin market may dry up has us wondering if we should continue. Since we've already established that many people doubt the characteristics of our target product, let's change the discussion to one of business prospects.

Let's assume that we "magically" build a product as described in the first post and offer it for sale at a price that was maybe 2x the cost to build. What kind of market do you think there would be for such a product? Are we talking the sale of 10's, 100's or 1000's or boards?  Does anyone have an opinion on that? Please include some of your reasonings, too.

Thanks in advance.

People at LargeCoin might be interested.

No that means you need to troll harder.


Maybe ask these guys: http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/ 

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. We have a very promising proof-of-concept, not an actual product to sell. We're looking for a business partner who appreciates the potential the BitCoin market and will help us make a run at this. Do you think there is a better place to look for such a partner than the BitCoin forums? If so, please let me know and I'll check it out. Based on everyone's reaction, it looks like this would sell itself. Maybe we don't need to think so much about how to make a business out if and just go ahead and build it ourselves.

Laughable.

Such people would just launch a site and mailing list, provide detailed information on a finished product instead of creating a thread in this forum and bragging about made up prices.

I am glad to see such enthusiasm for our price per performance. However, keep in mind that these are costs to manufacture. The selling price will certainly be higher, depending on the business model that we take. Please stop asking to buy one (or many!) as we only have a proof-of-concept, not an actual product for sale. I would also like to point out that you guys are WAY off on FPGA pricing. I have several direct quotes from FPGA vendors over the years that are far superior to your assumptions. You guys must be looking at pricing from distributors. You have to go direct to get good pricing. Anyway, the point of this post was to look for interested business partners who are willing to work with us to take it to market.

Just a little bit of background on us. We are seasoned designers with long job histories with companies like IBM, Altera and others. It is certainly healthy to doubt technologies that seem a bit beyond the curve of today's solutions. But sometimes the right details line up at the right time. As people contact us for more information, they will get to know who we are and see that we are completely up front. We'll start with a demonstration of the design on the development kit, review the code and resulting FPGA tool output for the target device. We'll share documentation, schedules and actual quotes for component pricing.

You could imagine some interesting go-to-market strategies like self-mining until the difficulty gets too high, then offering the board for sale, etc. We just need someone with the right background and amount of time to take this to market. We're good engineers but we're not ready to take on the full challenges of a new business at this time. I'm sure you can understand that.

afik this has todo with the much more useful dsp slices and the more efficient far routing (more so)  in the virtexes.

I seriously doubt the prices as well. On mouser they even offer them in large numbers with an insignificant discount.

high troll factor ITT.

That sounds right on the edge of being pratical in place of say a 5870 or 6990 depending on the cost of such a pcb but no way i can see that getting cut down to less than 400 dollars

and how much would those cost exactly?

Yup, 750Mh/s on a 240 is pretty easy. On a 195... tight. on a 130 or 75? Doubt it.

are any of the virtex 6 fpga's actually capable of this? i thought they might be using stuff from here but it's not even avlable yet http://www.achronix.com/

Uh, yeah, that was my point.  If they sold parts to everybody at the price he claims to be getting, Xilinx would be losing enormous amounts of money.

  ... sniff, sniff.

i'd dump all my radeons right now if those figures are half right but some proof of existence would help

You might want to re-read the OP with that UK university background in mind.


I'd suggest contacting ztex who's already making and reselling a similar product:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/btcminer-open-source-bitcoin-miner-for-ztex-fpga-boards-215-mhs-on-lx150-40047

ill pay 3000 for the high end board =p

Your numbers are so far out of line from what others have previously scoped out using the same hardware platform that I am dubious at best. The Carl Sagan quote "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" comes into play here.

Post some verifiable proof, then folks might actually consider investing.

Piling on top of the "These guys are getting completely insane discounts from xilinx or this is BS" crowd.

It is possible to have huge discounts if there is volume, otherwise it is quite doubtful, maybe the OP can sell a few of their products, I don't mind paying a premium as I do understand that engineering samples cost quite a bit more.  I am willing to buy, test and give feedback here on the forum.

Me and my wizard buddies have done the same thing.  We are very smart and we have some powerful magic that makes our price point even better.

We only have one board but it does 900 MH/s @ 10 Watts.  Our cost is only $29.95 per board, if we buy two or more.

We are looking for someone to market our boards because we don't like to work too hard.  Wizardry isn't about money anyway.

We can't share anymore details because we haven't made them up yet.  Just send us some money and we will help you put together a good marketing story.

Sam

Sounds like a complete scam.
Only 7 posts and ridiculously exaggerated figures.

I'd stay well away from this guy.

Doubtful. I cant find precise die sizes anywhere, but looking at pictures from various Virtix 6 chips, Im guessing they range somewhere between <200mm and 500m2 (better estimates welcome). At 40nm they arent going to cost xilinx anywhere near those quoted prices to produce them. THe die size and process used match that of typical range from lowend to highend GPU's, and given the nature of FGPA's its almost certainly cheaper to produce them as GPUs (higher yields, due to redudancy, low power etc). List prices may be high, but thats just due to the relatively low volume and high fixed costs.

I like the sound of the entry and higher end FPGA boards.Is there an academic discount for those? As I go to uni sometimes. Still a good price for the power use/performance.Can you ship to UK? I'm interested as long as the prices stay good and that they live up to the claims made on here.Are those boards multi-FPGAs that are also overclocked? Because the pricing seems rather too good to be true.1 of those FPGAs would the equivalent of several GPUs if I had several HD6950s all OC'd (the higher end board would be equivalent to several of those).

Amazing if true.What payments do you take?

I want one!

I can assure you that there is no scam here. I did manage to get "large company" pricing on these parts because I do so much business with Xilinx. The low pricing is really what made our design so promising. You must know that companies like Xilinx and Altera treat their component pricing as confidential information. While I feel comfortable listing the full BOM costs on this public forum, certain details need to be discussed more discretely. Also, I did spent several months designing and optimizing my own hash algorithm from scratch. I've been designing chips for over 20 years so I really enjoyed the challenge.

I understand that there will be doubters but we have a development kit already running (with a smaller version of the FPGA) and have ISE runs that show the target device will hit the stated performance. I don't mind if there are doubters as that reinforces the advantage this solution offers. If you have a serious interest in making a product out of this, go ahead and email me at [email protected] to arrange further talks. You might be surprised that we're just a few normal engineers who don't have the bandwidth to build a company around this cool product.

So do I, and so do a lot of other people around here.

The only way your numbers add up is if (1) Xilinx is losing enormous amounts of money on you (if so, congratulations!) or (2) you have found some way around the laws of thermodynamics and the DC Switching Characteristics data sheet.

I call scam unless you match some Xilinx part numbers to those hashspeed claims.

  - e

I do have many years of working with Xilinx in my day job. I have a commitment from them to sell enough chips to build 1.5 TH/s worth of boards. We also have a pretty optimized design that allows us to make the most of the Virtex-6 technology.

Entry-Level board achieves 750 MH/s @ 15W for $370

Sounds like your company's main asset is the ability to buy chips from Xilinx at an absurd discount.

You sure they'll let you "sell" that ability to somebody else?

If so, the buyer would make more money forgetting bitcoin and just make a killing reselling Xilinx parts via this deal.

  - e

A couple of engineers with day jobs have been working on an FPGA miner with the intention of creating a product that would change the mining equation. We formed a small company that we call TeraMiner. We've developed a hardware and software solution that raises the bar on mining performance while lowering power significantly. We have a prototype running in our homes today using an off-the-shelf FPGA development kit. As it turns out, we've become very busy in our day jobs and have decided that it would be best for us to see if anyone in the BitCoin community has the time to take this product to market. Here are the highlights of what a "productized" version of our design would look like.

• PCI Express connectivity for high density installation into industry standard servers
• Entry-Level board achieves 750 MH/s @ 15W for $370.
• High-End board achieves 3,000 MH/s @ 60W for $1,050.

 
    
These manufacturing numbers are based on actual pricing we secured from Xilinx for their Virtex-6 product line. Selling prices would certainly be higher, to whatever the market will bear. We have also negotiated future technology improvements and price reductions through 2012. Details of the major components used in this design will be provided to interested parties.

We are prepared to discuss the details with anyone interested in creating their own line of BitCoin mining products. The level of engagement may vary from simply providing the source code of our current IP all the way to the delivery of a production-ready prototype. The details of these deliverables and associated costs will be provided to those who contact us at [email protected].

Keep in mind that we started this business with the intention of going to market with our own set of products. But now that our day jobs have become too demanding, we're just looking to pass our design on to someone prepared to take it to market. Please contact us at [email protected] for any further information.

Thanks for reading.