Topic: Nanominer - Modular FPGA Mining Platform - page 4. (Read 18944 times)

Good job, first step made.
finger crossed, and i`m waiting for more. 500 is really not much....

Having just wandered over to GLBSE for the first time, I (personally) find the interface not very intuitive. Their support forum doesn't seem to be exactly jumping either. There is mention of a GLBSE 2.0 about to go live 3 weeks ago, but no announcements that it has. I can't seem to find a faq or how to guide or any such documentation on how to actually use the site either. "user account does not exist"...Then what have I been doing with the 'register new account' page, ffs?

/rant

@Wondermine, use the funds as you see fit. They are for the furtherance of this project, in whichever you way you deem best. I cannot offer any practical advice on GLBSE one way or another. I've heard of it and the general concept behind it, but I've (obviously) never used it.

Good to see some #'s 

People have wanted to see some progress so:



This is modified fpgaminer code getting 125MH/s on one unrolled core.  Like the picture says, 4 of this core will fit on a Stratix IV GX 230, yielding 500MH/s.  I've been working on this all day, and will continue tomorrow, I'll post a 4-core variation then.

I know 500MH/s for a $2995 board isn't real impressive, but you can refer to the resource allocation to see why.

This figure doesn't touch what the performance of Nanominer will be once we implement DSP, custom SHA-2 core, and cluster computing (i.e. A helper FPGA alongside a high-power one to get the best use out of each for the least power & money).

We've got big things coming, people.

I would hold off on glbse.  I have plenty of negative experience with it.  I'll elaborate later.  I'm on my phone

O. WOW. a note on GLBSE, make copies of your user id number, and public and private keys...save em in notepad, or what ever you use.

So you all see GLBSE listing as a wise step? I'm not real familiar with it, you'll have to gimme some pointers .

And screenshots are coming asap, it's gonna be here as the work gets here, the code I'm working in is verilog and I'm much more fond of VHDL...

Thanks!

http://blockexplorer.com/tx/e6f0b3a332b712a90dcdeb9dfd3329e2881023046b2ef3c5c09607fdea2fc6ea#o1

And now you have that much BTC. Use it wisely.

Of course I did not meant to ask you to distribute educational hardware,  I'll look into what they require for educational pricing.

I'd see a lot of people going for a few DE4 if it can do 3.6ghs,  the 400 price difference would make up for lower consumption ("Singles" would uses 345w for same hashrate)

Also there is much more fun to be had on a dev board than that BFL Single, I could even see some resale value.

Nano isn't necessarily cost effective, it's just easy to get into at $89.  The Stratix IV I'm using (DE4-230 board) is $2995 retail.


This core is future-proof in that it's not set up for one core, it can be configured with generics to be implemented in any core.  The only reason we're using the Cyclone IV is that Terasic has their cheap DE0 Nano available and it has a Cyclone IV.


Assuming you all want screenshots that show me getting more than a measly 200MH/s out of a Stratix IV, I'll post them once I have them.  That said, as I type this I'm staring at Quartus, waiting for my compile to run.

As far as a funding thermometer, that's a good idea.  I'll get on that once I have a reasonable MH/s figure for you all to look at, I get the point, you guys need proof, and that's not a problem for me.  What kind of rate would help you all see that we're moving towards something reasonable?  And please note: I don't be posting Nano MH/s rates yet, I have a DE4 and I will be posting DE4 rates until I have a Nano. 

I'm in the process of setting up multiple cores, optimizing speed, using the DE4's DSP, and other improvements, so I don't want to prematurely post screenshots.  If there's a threshold (say, 400MH/s or something? please tell me) then I'll post screens once I pass that threshold.

How much does that Stratix IV cost,  What exact model is it ?

Is it much more cost effective to go nano ?

To future-proof why not use CycloneV?  Too expensive? Can you add something to your site saying exactly where you are regarding $$ and/or BTC? Essentially you want a collaborative project. In that case you need to be open about all the funding details. A funding thermometer seems to be a simple approach to letting people know what's been raised so far.

look at the photos in offtopic thread... could it be not real
the old lady convinced me it is

But is bfl real?

BFL has better Mhas/$ but worse Mhash/W. BFL should be idiot proof, and nanominer is in the development phase.

Am I missing something or this is better than BLF ?

Give us somme screen to prove that and get more donnation BTC...
simple ?

Alright, everyone, we've got accepted packets with the modified fpgaminer firmware, now I'm just optimizing it.  Made a couple mistakes
of my own and had to fix some things, but I'll have some nice big MH/s figures on that modified code later this afternoon!

Running heavily modified fpgaminer I can still pull 3.6GH/s out of my Stratix IV without using DSP, however this does not yield accepted shares.  I tested the core and it hands out correct numbers (SHA-2 wise anyway), but the script to interface may not be working properly.  I've spoken with makomk and gotten another python based script but the JTAG library doesn't (apparently...) support the Stratix IV GX 230 toolchains (even when added from the Altera site, it's a little buggy, Azelphur and I spent some hours trying to debug it).  This means I'm stuck with the Tcl that doesn't seem to be working.

If anyone is interested in looking at this:
https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner

Especially the miner.tcl and related scripts, maybe you could tell me what is wrong with the way data is being sent.  I've said before and I'll say again, I'm not much good at scripting, I'm far better at realtime and hardware, so if anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Nanominer is not yielding packets yet because it's not supposed to yet; I'm still working out the kinks in the SHA-2 core and it'll be a little while before I add on the circuitry to manage bitcoin mining in particular, much less develop the microcontroller interface.

What kind of rate are you getting on the core now on any of your FPGA's?

You bet!


And thanks for the donations people, this is a great kickstart!  I'll keep you all posted.