Topic: Nanominer Announcement - page 2. (Read 11693 times)

Yeah as long as it isn't a $25 part, I'd find it handy to have since I wouldn't be using a host system to run it.

I'd agree with you but it's not the best screen around, the cost is certainly negligible.  It's more so that someone using it as a standalone device can see what's going on with their miner without having to plug it in anywhere.

1 Mainboard, +4 Addons.
Expected power budget is 11W/board, but I'll try to cut down if possible.

Certainly seems competitive, at least compared to the current gen products available. What is the expected power budget, including the additional components?

So is it mainboard + 3 addons for a total of 4, or is it + 4 addons for a total of 5? If it is a total of 5, it would be 1Ghash for $1425 + shipping.

How does $325 USD + shipping sound for the main board, and $275 USD + shipping for expansions?

Features (Main Board):
-LCD Display
-200 MH/s Hashrate
-Xilinx Spartan-6 XC6SLX150 FPGA
-Standalone Functionality
-More than capable of running ucLinux (2MB Flash, 8MB SDRAM, ARM M4-Cortex MCU)
-Modular Expandability
-Reconfigurable to do as you like, not just BTC mining
-USB and Ethernet interfaces
-Maximum 4 Expansions per Main Board (Firmware Imposed)

From the sounds of it, you'd be willing to pay a little extra for some bonus functionality.  Let me go back to the drawing board a little bit, and see what I can do about offering something that does it all on-chip, so that you can plug it into your router etc. at home and have it mine without a host.  USB will remain available for those who don't have an extra port on the router, and WiFi will be an *option* too, though it'll tack on a little money.
After some review, I'd like to make it clear that there will be a maximum of 4 expansion boards per main board. (Note that a specialized jumper tech is in the works, this number may increase)  This will be a limit imposed by firmware, and you can modify it if you like, but it will be unsupported.  The price of a main board won't be *that* much more, so getting 1 GH/s per mainboard-and-four-expansions isn't too bad for the price.  Not to mention the fact that it's modular.
As far as what my offering has that others don't, the modularity and Ethernet, as someone mentioned, are a plus.  Now, standalone functionality and WiFi capability will also be a bonus.  All of this in addition to the fact that my prices are competitive, if not cheaper than the going rate for FPGA miners.
Let me lay down a schematic that allows for standalone operation and I'll let everyone know what the price is looking like, so y'all have a better idea.  Spoiler: It will be more expensive given that it is standalone, but I can tell that that would be convenient for some of you, so I'll check it out.
Keep an eye on the post, and thanks for your comments!

Well. the icarus are some sort of expansion boards, there is only the mainboard missing, and i bet ngzhang would be able to design such a board.

None of the other boards have Ethernet, and only some offer any kind of expansion - not to mention that this one is the first to offer any sort of modular expansion.

Then what would distinguish your proposed system from the X6500, Icarus, or Ztex boards already out there?  It seems to me you are just re-inventing the wheel with what you propose.  That's great if you can manage to do it for less than they are charging, though I suspect that will not be so easy. 

The board, as advertised, already has USB and Ethernet functionality and connectivity with the firmware.

Yes, perhaps an expansion card with LCD capability could be arranged, no they are not that expensive.  Perhaps I will add a communications port for peripherals that can be purchased seperately on these counts (LCD, SD, etc.) without having to include them in the project and make the whole thing more expensive.  I will not, however, impose features on people.  It will be barebones, then will have the capability to expand with whatever fancy parts you'd like to have.

watching

Peltier chips are able to cool things well, but they suck up enormous amounts of energy and spit out a heck of a lot of heat.

earlier today I was pointed in the direction of Xilinx Zynq 7000 EPP which are ARM processors with an FPGA on die, and including an accelerated SHA256 hash engine. However I couldn't determine what level the FPGA matched at.

Anybody seen this, as I've been informed a european company is doing something in this region with lots of chips on a board? I don't have any other details beyond the chip.

marked

How about using thermogenerators to power wireless and cooling fan or a peltier? Once programmed via USB then they only need to connect to a power source.
See micropelt.

You are right, and indeed I was quoting SDRAM prices.  I just edited my post to reflect this.

Such largisch SRAM is expensive, and you need several Chips,  SDRAM  would be better solution, as several MCUs have already the requiered Interface.

Why not add a USB controller (controller IC plus socket available for not more than $4 and maybe 1 square inch of board space)?  USB host mode gives you a lot of flexibility to add any device you can find or write a driver for in the future.

You can get cheap LCD displays on eBay for around $4 for a 16x2 model.  Of course you'll need some headers to mount it, but that shouldn't add more than another $2 or $3 to the price tag.

Same thing goes for an SD card socket (or microSD if you want to reduce the board space required).  Around $3 is all it costs for the socket and you don't need any other support chips that you don't already have for other circuitry.

What other peripherals?  Oh, an ethernet port.  Microchip makes some suitable controller chips for about $4 (SPI interface).  Add a socket for under $2.

The SRAM SDRAM hurts a bit more.  For 32MB (32-bit wide), we're looking at maybe $15.

So altogether that's around $35 extra in parts to the price tag to be able to run embedded Linux and thus support full standalone operation.

It occurs to me that you could make two models.  One master model which is capable of standalone operation.  One slave model which can plug into a master model and extend it's mining capacity (and save you up to $35 in parts at the same time).  Since there's no need for a high speed bus between master and slave (they would operate as separate miners), you'd have a lot of flexibility in how you implemented that as well.

Maybe as addon cards those would be suitable? People could choose which features they want included, the extra cost in base product is the added headers and design.
Would that work?

If something running without any host machine would be something you're interested in, I'll look into modifying the design.  It means it's going to probably cost a little more (not tons, but some).  It also means I'll switch over the MCU I'm using to something more effective for the job.
As far as an LCD, that's doable, as long as you understand that it's going to make it cost more.  Same with, say, WiFi compatibility.  Add about $20 per "feature" like this to the price of the unit (main board, that is).

If you're going to localize the ethernet communication to create a standalone unit, why not throw a cheap LCD and driver on the board to indicate hash rate, etc.