Topic: I propose to develop an FPGA chip for altcoin miners. (Read 187 times)

lol...good luck raising the 100s of millions needed to develop and tape out and produce silicon of a custom FPGA chip at a sufficiently low enough node to make economical sense. There is a reason why there are only a few FPGA companies and they sell their chips in the 1000s.

 

Yes, you are right - this is a very serious project. In our country they say "this is not selling seeds in the market".
But in our country there is another proverb: "The pots are not molded by holy clergymen." This means that even very complex work (for example, spacecraft) is made by ordinary people.

About millions.
At the initial stage, when I will develop a logical cell and a transport cell, a lot of investment is not necessary. It is enough for me one ordinary salary.

Further, when we have cells and there will be a grid of cells that can be shown in a visual simulator and give it a simple program - you will see that everything works. Then it will be possible to connect another 1-2 engineers, so that together with them we would finalize the devices necessary for the chip: input / output, clock frequency oscillators, data distribution, block control, programming bus, memory blocks.
At this stage, you will need to pay 2-3 engineer salaries.

Now we will have a ready chip, its simulation, source code and testbench.
There comes the third stage - the manufacture of the prototype. This is a multi-project wafer. If you make a project on technological standards up to 22 nm, I think $ 100,000 is enough.
While porting the RTL code to the topography ... while photolithographic plates are being made ... while test chips are being manufactured - we develop a motherboard for the chip and produce several test samples + we write a test bitstream for this chip for any cryptocurrency we choose.
After that we get the chip, we program it and we get the result of its work.
According to the result of the work we make calculations of productivity and economic advantage.

Then you can attract third-party investments, because people will see the real prototype and its capabilities. I do not think that the modern cryptoindustry will not be able to collect several million dollars if it is confident of a profitable result.

And the risk in this project is minimal. I already wrote about this.

Thus, in the early design stages, you need only a few thousand dollars to pay a couple of engineers.
Next you need about $ 100,000 for the manufacture of test chips and motherboards for it + bitstream development and testing.
Everything. These are all costs that early investors will incur.

And the result - it will be a guarantee of solid income from the mining of altcoins or the sale of miners on the FPGA.
I don’t think that Bitmain or Canaan companies regretted designing chips. But it all began with the same idea as here. Then there was an industry request for ASIC. Now there is an industry request for cheap FPGA. Nobody is doing this yet.

So it needs to start doing this now !!!
If we don’t start doing this, then someone else will start doing it later and remove all the cream from the market.

About the best minds.
For FPGA, it doesn’t matter how complicated the cryptocurrency hashing algorithm it processes. FPGA has a fixed device.
The question is: how much LUTs is available on the chip for programming, how much RAM is available on the motherboard, how much static cache memory is available on the chip and what is the frequency of operation.
My job as a developer is to make as fast cells as possible. Everything else is a long-standing standardized problem, which is solved in many micro-electronic devices. For example, even the integration of the ARM core into a chip is no longer a secret innovation. Much of this is already ready. It is only necessary to take and connect together.

In our country they say: "The wolf is not as scary as it is depicted in the pictures." This means that many tasks that seem very difficult are actually simple. Only one thing adds complexity to them — few people take on these tasks.
But do you really think that it is too tough for us?
If the crypto-community can finance the development and manufacture of the test chip + board, then I will prove that we can do it!

Yes. But you're talking about a very serious, ultra-skilled startup that will burn millions in a blink. Not easy, not low risk. The expertise needed to stand any chance of success is considerable. Sure that experience exists, but even the best minds get tripped up by the speed of change in crypto, the market instability, etc, etc.

Oh, I understand, you are talking about discounts.
But I do not understand why the difference between $ 9 and $ 1949 is not obvious to you ... This is the abyss.
In addition, do not forget that Xilinx makes its boards for the general needs of the industry, and not for the needs of cryptocurrencies. And in the case of your project, you can make them the ones that are needed in the cryptocurrency sphere. For example, with a large amount of RAM, with thicker data buses, with other frequency bands. For example, with microcells, you can put an oscillator on a chip, which will produce from 5 to 10 GHz clock frequency, and on Xilinx chips you will never overclock.

I suggest you to develop your own sports car and drive along roads where YOU want a speed of 300 km / h for a total of $ 10 for each trip.
But YOU tell me that for each trip you can buy a regular bus for $ 2000 (with a discount) ... which goes only along the planned route at a speed of 60 km / h.

Do you see what we are talking about different things?

you can get a vu33p on a mining board for 1949$, this was done by pushing xilinx to lower prices. You absolutely can get proven chips discounted at volume pricing.

I need a chip that I can program with self modified code for some future tech A.I. pm me

You can’t spend your money on bringing existing chips cost down and deving for existing boards. FPGA chips are developed by only three companies:
Xilinx;
Altera;
Actel.
Only two of them produce chips that are used for mining. Only these companies set the price of their chips and boards. And this price is very high. Chips cost from a few hundred dollars to two thousand. Boards cost from a thousand dollars to several thousand. Such a high price is based on the fact that these companies have no competitors.
You cannot come to Xilinx or Intell, and say to them: "Take our money, but lower the price of your chips and boards" ...
And now for the second question:


If you develop a chip of your own design, then its cost for all project participants will be only a few dollars apiece. Board will cost $ 20-50 apiece. The payback of miners collected on such boards will be 100 times faster. Now you need to spend 1.5 - 2 years in order to recoup one board with a price of $ 6000. Boards of own production will require only 1.5 - 2 weeks for payback, and then - net profit.

Now the most important thing is about risks.
The risk is minimal.
1) Development can be conducted in an open way for investors. Even if one of the developers dies, other developers will be able to continue this business.

2) Development is not complicated, because FPGAs are based on small and simple blocks that multiply on the board. We can start with very simple chips, and then when they start to make a profit, add complexity to them by adding more complex elements, such as ARM cores or special controllers.



3) This development is multifunctional, because it allows you to reprogram FPGA to another cryptocurrency. Even if cryptocurrencies are in decline, these FPGA chips can still be sold, because they can be used in any other areas of electronics.

As you can see - the risks are practically reduced to zero. The only thing that investors spend in this case is time.

BUT! If investors can come to an agreement and create a company, they can become another player in the microelectronics market alongside Intell, AMD, Xilinx, Altera ... And this promises very high returns.

People who now earn on cryptocurrencies do not invest their money in high technology, although I know that they have enough money to pull such developments. Because of this, their future is foggy and all fluctuations in the price of cryptocurrency are reflected in them. Microelectronics is a stable and growing industry. The future is robots, artificial intelligence, automated systems, autonomous plants ... and chips are needed everywhere ...
Think about it.

Lots of fpgas out and available for purchase. Why would we risk capital on developing new tech. Why not spend you resources bringing existing chips cost down and deving for existing boards.

Hello guys.

I want to offer YOU all the joint development of a new FPGA chip specifically for mining cryptocurrencies.

We all know that the performance of modern FPGA chips in mining of altcoins is superior to GPU. However, the main limiting factor is the price of modern FPGA chips. The high price of chips and boards on them is based on the fact that there are only a couple of developers of these chips in the world, who, moreover, do not focus on the mining market for altcoins.

However, ordering FPGA chips in production costs the same as ordering ASIC chips. This means that if we develop our own FPGA chips, we will be able to order them at TSMC very cheaply and create FPGA miners based on them. At the same time, the very good news is that FPGA does not need to be ordered using the 7 nm technology. The best samples today work at 16 nm, and since we can save on the price of each chip, we can produce effective mining chips for the 45 - 22 nm technology. The combination of their price / performance / energy efficiency will be higher than that of modern industrial FPGA or GPU.

Two development options are possible:
1) Open development;
2) Closed development.

What we have:
1) Developers;
2) Experience in developing devices for cryptocurrency;
3) Understanding the requirements for a target FPGA device;
4) Consultants for SoC and FPGA.

What is needed:
1) Financing development.

With permanent funding available for 1 year, it is quite possible to start a working device.

Ok. I will not be long to paint the nuances. The offer is open to both investors and developers who are willing to participate in the project. The form of cooperation can be chosen according to the results of discussion and a general decision. Technology development can also be considered any. At the first stages of development, large investments are not required, but it must be borne in mind that ordering the first test chips at the factory using multi-project wafer technology (MPW) and manufacturing the motherboard can cost up to $ 100,000.

Thus, I am interested in whether there are those among YOU who may be interested in this topic and who are ready to finance it.

I sincerely ask those who are accustomed to call everything “scum” and “fish shit” to pass by this topic. It does not organize a new ICO. No money is collected here. Here, no one wants to fool anyone. This topic was created solely in order to understand whether the community is interested, and if the answer is yes, under what conditions is it possible to create such a project. It's all.
I hope for your understanding.

Respectfully,
Vitaliy Monastyrskiy.