Topic: LTC FPGA discussion! - page 7. (Read 23636 times)
Since yesterday ?
Any new developments?
Well, I hope you have great success. 
When we finish the production units we will be publishing full documentation for scrypt/salsa fpga development and hardware implementation.
As for updates, we are making some revisions to the layout this week my dev told me today.
As for updates, we are making some revisions to the layout this week my dev told me today.
That is absolutely fantastic news! When you are referring to documentation, do you mean you will release the source, including both the software implementation and the hardware implementation including both the schematic and gerber files, all under a GPL or MIT license, or am I possibly misunderstanding something? Regardless, best of luck with this project!
Initially, is this being payed for out of your own pocket? If so, that is quite possibly a very risky endeavour, especially if you are paying someone else to do the design! I am sure that the community is extremely thankful for you taking on such a large initial cost.
How are you getting around the higher memory requirements for scrypt? Are you soldering DRAM onto the PCB, or will you be using DIMM's, allowing customers to add more memory if they wish?
Xilinx or Altera?
I cant disclose the details yet, but when we do get production units in hand we will publish whatever we can without endangering our business plans. However, our goal is to grow ltc as a whole so anything we do will be to further that goal.
When we finish the production units we will be publishing full documentation for scrypt/salsa fpga development and hardware implementation.
As for updates, we are making some revisions to the layout this week my dev told me today.
As for updates, we are making some revisions to the layout this week my dev told me today.
That is absolutely fantastic news! When you are referring to documentation, do you mean you will release the source, including both the software implementation and the hardware implementation including both the schematic and gerber files, all under a GPL or MIT license, or am I possibly misunderstanding something? Regardless, best of luck with this project!
Initially, is this being payed for out of your own pocket? If so, that is quite possibly a very risky endeavour, especially if you are paying someone else to do the design! I am sure that the community is extremely thankful for you taking on such a large initial cost.
How are you getting around the higher memory requirements for scrypt? Are you soldering DRAM onto the PCB, or will you be using DIMM's, allowing customers to add more memory if they wish?
Xilinx or Altera?
Also interested in an FPGA board for LTC!
I am also somewhat experienced with Altium for PCB design and I have dabbled in some non BGA FPGA designs. I would be happy to help in any way that I can!
Actually, is anyone here interested in possibly making an open source FPGA litecoin miner? I know next to nothing about FPGA programming, only a tiny smidgen of VHDL/Verilog, and also next to nothing about how to implement a scrypt based miner in any HDL. If we use a a BGA device with a reasonable amount of pins and not a very small pin pitch, then we can even use OSH park for 4 layer PCB's!
I am also somewhat experienced with Altium for PCB design and I have dabbled in some non BGA FPGA designs. I would be happy to help in any way that I can!
Actually, is anyone here interested in possibly making an open source FPGA litecoin miner? I know next to nothing about FPGA programming, only a tiny smidgen of VHDL/Verilog, and also next to nothing about how to implement a scrypt based miner in any HDL. If we use a a BGA device with a reasonable amount of pins and not a very small pin pitch, then we can even use OSH park for 4 layer PCB's!
When we finish the production units we will be publishing full documentation for scrypt/salsa fpga development and hardware implementation.
As for updates, we are making some revisions to the layout this week my dev told me today.
Also interested in an FPGA board for LTC!
I am also somewhat experienced with Altium for PCB design and I have dabbled in some non BGA FPGA designs. I would be happy to help in any way that I can!
Actually, is anyone here interested in possibly making an open source FPGA litecoin miner? I know next to nothing about FPGA programming, only a tiny smidgen of VHDL/Verilog, and also next to nothing about how to implement a scrypt based miner in any HDL. If we use a a BGA device with a reasonable amount of pins and not a very small pin pitch, then we can even use OSH park for 4 layer PCB's!
I am also somewhat experienced with Altium for PCB design and I have dabbled in some non BGA FPGA designs. I would be happy to help in any way that I can!
Actually, is anyone here interested in possibly making an open source FPGA litecoin miner? I know next to nothing about FPGA programming, only a tiny smidgen of VHDL/Verilog, and also next to nothing about how to implement a scrypt based miner in any HDL. If we use a a BGA device with a reasonable amount of pins and not a very small pin pitch, then we can even use OSH park for 4 layer PCB's!
What? Who told about pre-orders? I remember jasinlee stating they will not accept pre-orders
What happened?
What happened?
The only thing I would consider close to a preorder is an investment group. And to date there is not one setup and I am to date I am funding everything myself.
Well, do let us know if you're interested in anything like that.
What? Who told about pre-orders? I remember jasinlee stating they will not accept pre-orders
What happened?
What happened?
The only thing I would consider close to a preorder is an investment group. And to date there is not one setup and I am to date I am funding everything myself.
What? Who told about pre-orders? I remember jasinlee stating they will not accept pre-orders
What happened?
What happened?
Pretty sure there still are no preorders. People are just stating they're interested..
What? Who told about pre-orders? I remember jasinlee stating they will not accept pre-orders
What happened?
What happened?
also interested
I wonder how this is coming along. I've known that they were working on fpgas long before this thread started. It seems at this rate it might take forever for them to come to market with a product.They are being very hush hush with the development.
I feel sorry for the guy that drops 30k on GPUs, then they announce production the day after. A little update every now and then would be cool. O understand you are trying to be first to the market and don't want to give away any trade secrets, but please throw us a bone!
I feel sorry for the guy that drops 30k on GPUs, then they announce production the day after. A little update every now and then would be cool. O understand you are trying to be first to the market and don't want to give away any trade secrets, but please throw us a bone!
Interested as well
Is there a mailing list or something for this?
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So I'd be very interested in the Litecoin mining gear - especially FPGA kit that consumes very little power. I have the risk appetite for this game as I've already shown, but the ASIC situation has me very wary of allocating further capital at Bitcoin mining equipment. I'm bored of GPUs and having my main house sweltering through winter at over 30 deg C with the windows open in winter (!!!!), and whilst a fancy rack of tens of GPUs can be used *right now*, I've also paid the electricity bills for a couple of quarters of constant use of such devices. They have very very substantial operating costs. A fancy FPGA assembly with 25-100 modular boards, whilst fun in terms of geek-appeal, also has the big benefit of not costing significant amounts of money to run.
Finally (phew...) - is there something genuinely innovative and unique to your approach that gives you no competition, so that I should be seriously starting the process of considering allocation in your direction? What is the barrier preventing my existing cluster of Spartan-6 FPGAs being repurposed with cheap plug-in auxiliary boards and a new assembly plus bitstream (I won't play Internet Engineer, I'll simply ask my old college mate who does this for real, at a senior level - but I assume there's *some* hack possible to give additional working memory to my Ztex 1.15x boards... my 1.15d boards already have more resources to begin with though).
Would your boards have fallback value too? Litecoin aren't worth much right now, so if your approach resembles the BTC experience where the FPGA units have around the same performance as a mid-range GPU but consume less than 1/10th the power, but cost more than the GPU up front, as a business case the time horizon is quite far away. This risk becomes more acceptable if the devices have intrinsic value (can be repurposed, or worst case, the chips recycled). Even better would be the ability to mine Bitcoin at low power, when transaction fees are the main mining income from *that* particular currency, if LTC doesn't work out.
I once had a couple of thousand LTC floating around before my pool arranged auto-trade for BTC, and now the pool has stopped merged mining I've renewed my interest in LTC and have set up a few test rigs for 400-500khash. However, with the price of electricity, I want to be 100% FPGA and ASIC by the end of Q2. It's only a small operation after all, and I don't want the significant ongoing cost, heat and noise of GPU rigs.
Seems though I have a choice - stick to Bitcoin, big risk, 'pre-order' nonsense with ASICs... or consider the first application of FPGA tech for the LTC blockchain. The fact that I've already lost on an ASIC 'pre-order' makes the BFL option rather unpalatable. But I'd like to keep mining - on a socioeconomic level, cryptocurrencies are a big deal to me philosophically, and part of me (less rationally) likes the 'silver to BTC gold' analogy of LTC. I'll be keeping an eye on this - when you're ready to take beta-level investors then I'd be interested. I'm no VHDL guru but I ported Stefan's (Ztex) toolchain to Mac OS X 64-bit 10.6.8 a while back, so am competent hacking the software side of things.
So I'd be very interested in the Litecoin mining gear - especially FPGA kit that consumes very little power. I have the risk appetite for this game as I've already shown, but the ASIC situation has me very wary of allocating further capital at Bitcoin mining equipment. I'm bored of GPUs and having my main house sweltering through winter at over 30 deg C with the windows open in winter (!!!!), and whilst a fancy rack of tens of GPUs can be used *right now*, I've also paid the electricity bills for a couple of quarters of constant use of such devices. They have very very substantial operating costs. A fancy FPGA assembly with 25-100 modular boards, whilst fun in terms of geek-appeal, also has the big benefit of not costing significant amounts of money to run.
Finally (phew...) - is there something genuinely innovative and unique to your approach that gives you no competition, so that I should be seriously starting the process of considering allocation in your direction? What is the barrier preventing my existing cluster of Spartan-6 FPGAs being repurposed with cheap plug-in auxiliary boards and a new assembly plus bitstream (I won't play Internet Engineer, I'll simply ask my old college mate who does this for real, at a senior level - but I assume there's *some* hack possible to give additional working memory to my Ztex 1.15x boards... my 1.15d boards already have more resources to begin with though).
Would your boards have fallback value too? Litecoin aren't worth much right now, so if your approach resembles the BTC experience where the FPGA units have around the same performance as a mid-range GPU but consume less than 1/10th the power, but cost more than the GPU up front, as a business case the time horizon is quite far away. This risk becomes more acceptable if the devices have intrinsic value (can be repurposed, or worst case, the chips recycled). Even better would be the ability to mine Bitcoin at low power, when transaction fees are the main mining income from *that* particular currency, if LTC doesn't work out.
I once had a couple of thousand LTC floating around before my pool arranged auto-trade for BTC, and now the pool has stopped merged mining I've renewed my interest in LTC and have set up a few test rigs for 400-500khash. However, with the price of electricity, I want to be 100% FPGA and ASIC by the end of Q2. It's only a small operation after all, and I don't want the significant ongoing cost, heat and noise of GPU rigs.
Seems though I have a choice - stick to Bitcoin, big risk, 'pre-order' nonsense with ASICs... or consider the first application of FPGA tech for the LTC blockchain. The fact that I've already lost on an ASIC 'pre-order' makes the BFL option rather unpalatable. But I'd like to keep mining - on a socioeconomic level, cryptocurrencies are a big deal to me philosophically, and part of me (less rationally) likes the 'silver to BTC gold' analogy of LTC. I'll be keeping an eye on this - when you're ready to take beta-level investors then I'd be interested. I'm no VHDL guru but I ported Stefan's (Ztex) toolchain to Mac OS X 64-bit 10.6.8 a while back, so am competent hacking the software side of things.
I am not the dev for the vhdl, but my understanding (although probably limited obviously) is that the boards you referenced do not have enough LE's ALM's and are not fast enough. You could use them but you would be getting 20kh/s or less each board. Which depending on the amount of them you have available and the fact that they are paid for, it may actually be worth using them. As for modular, that is one of our goals, but that will come around when we finish the production units. As for the being burned by the ASICs, that really sucks, and was our motivation to not mislabel our investors as preorders. Its unethical. As for porting to mac, we may take you up on that, none of our devs really like dealing with apple
How about Linux? I'll be one of your first customers.
Do not forget me 
Add me to your list of interested partys
Thanks
Thanks
I take my Hat off to you Sir!
Extremely Interested!
Count on Pre orders from me!
Cheers,
A Middle Earth, LTC Miner.
Extremely Interested!
Count on Pre orders from me!
Cheers,
A Middle Earth, LTC Miner.
interested, subscribed to this
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