Topic: Mini Rig card = 2 x Altera Arria II EP2AGX260 - page 2. (Read 39245 times)

Actually, the 3.0 spec allows up to 150 watts, but there are few boards that support that.

Pre-3.0 specs are 10 watts all the time, up to 25 after boot, and up to 75 on request of the installed device, I believe, if what I read is accurate.

Yeah, but you're limited to 150w total across the entire motherboard. Same reason you're boned if you try more than two 5970/6990/7990 and aren't using powered risers.

Can't pcie slots provide up to 75W of power?

With the way the minirig is assembled, they couldn't make it that way with backplanes anyhow, it'd require actual cables.

A PCI-E-based board dedicated to mining would essentially just be an existing two or four Spartan 6 board with a serial to USB chip plugged into a USB to PCI-E host chip and all power supplied off a PCI-E 6 pin plug fabbed on a standard PCI-E board shape.

Backplanes are expensive. Reusing SATA is the cheapest industrial internal connection by far. Its cheaper than using DB9 serial connections as well.

As for you being unable to afford it... well, thats the way it is. These parts cost money. There is no cheap solution.

Maybe I misread you, but are you implying that a 15,000 dollar mini-rig could be made cheaper by not using SATA cables for their I/O (which doesn't actually use SATA, just the cables)? Or are you just wanting a PCIe FPGA that you throw inside your computer just like a video card?

SATA cables are far cheaper than a rigid backplane solution. They also allow flexibility in creating your own layout or putting the stuff in your own case, if that's what you want to do too.

As for SATA connector's that's quite interesting, but it leaves me another question: as far as I understand, there is no need of high speed communications to feed the FPGA/ASIC and it's always needed a PC to access the pools and feed the jobs, so, why don't they use the PCI bus inside the computer? Or even the PCIe?
Other designs I've seen in this forum, use Molex connectors, and I still don't get it, why not ISA/VESA/AGP/PCI/PCIe type connectors?
IMHO, it would simplify the creation of rigs with a new and easily expandable design.
You could have a backpane which would get the work with some very cheap microcontroler (even a PIC with Ethernet shield?) where you would plug in small boards containing only some kind of eprom to provide an unique serial number (so the microcontroler would forward the work to the proper chip) and the FPGA/ASIC itself.
Even the power bus would be standard and could be populated with fan connectors.

Sorry if the question seems too stupid, I'm just trying to understand why people chose the designs they have, which seem to increase greatly the costs, reducing the resale value.
All the designs I've seen are too expensive for me, as far as the cheapest FPGA I've seen, capable of mining, costs $300, way more the ~$150 I would be able to spend.

re SATA plugs: they're just reusing an industry standard connector. It has enough pins to run serial over, so its fine. External 4x SATA/SAS has often been ran over Infiniband connectors because its cheaper and higher quality than using eSATA, and I've seen other things reuse SATA plugs. Its not particularly a new idea.

You can't reuse ASICs because they're designed specifically to ONLY for this. Thats why its an ASIC.

BFL FPGAs COULD be repurposed, but BFL requires encrypted bitstreams.

Latelly, I've been seeing pictures of BFL's in this forum with an Sata connector.
I even saw one picture some one posted with lot's of connectors and, although I realised their purpose is to provide a communication link, the first thing I thought they were was to connect an hard drive and create hardware encryption like this one: http://www.cast-inc.com/ip-cores/encryption/sha-256/index.html
So, two thought rushed through my brain:
- Why can't we use one of this to mine?
- Why can't we re-purpose BFL's and *ASICS to do hardware encryption?
The latest thought would impact the resale value, right?

I'm wonering if it is considered by BFL to be a thought of miners to purchase the Singles and/or Mini-Rig to maintain some kind of resale value in the event that bitcoin has some hypothetical collapse (somehow). Specialized ASIC's would have no resale value whatsoever, whereas having high end Startic chips wouldn't be as bad.

Thats funny, I originally wrote 20, but thought that was too low for some reason.

eBay, the only place you can get $600 parts for $25 just because its an enterprise part and some IT department in some company somewhere is in a protracted war against their accounting department.

I'm not sure, but wasn't it 1.05GH @ 20W.
However, I understand what you want to say and I also have my doubts.
Let's see with what they really will come up. The technical data (e.g. MH/W) will show us what technology they are using....

LOL no not quite. I meant ringing up Altera and saying "Yo, we want 10K chips, start the foundry pls"

And my board was bought on eBay, that's how I got it cheap.

They also announced 1gh in 40 watts.

Yes, Altera has the Hardcopy program.
But BFL has stated to announce full custom ASIC's.
An Altera Hardcopy solution is not the thing which is named a full custom ASIC.
 

Doesnt Altera offer Hardcopy? BFL could very well be selling ASICs.... just SASICs instead of the kind we wanted.

Well if they have access to wafer chip manufacturing, then why would they manufacture FPGA when they can do ASIC ?
I think more likely they got a good deal on these chips somewhere.

I remember guy with Extraordinaire rig, had a part that was advertised for $2k officially, yet a phonecall got it for $600.

Yes, I'm sure they do.

Ah yes, and subscribing 

YABMTTF (yet another BFL message thread to follow)