Topic: Nanominer - Modular FPGA Mining Platform - page 6. (Read 18923 times)

You find that a lot: For instance, Xilinx now has a Kintex-7 eval board for $1700, with a (device-locked) copy of the design software thrown in, but when you look up the price of the Kindex-7-325 that is on the eval board, it is well above 2 grand.
Thus, I'm not surprised.

No, that hashrate is a projection, based on DE4 data, and estimated when using DSP.

As far as the discrepancy between actual chip cost and dev board cost, I'm not sure, I noticed that myself on Digikey.  No idea.

I'm a bit confused here... so is the DE0 working well and pumping the 75MHs or is that the expected hash rate?

Also the DE4 dev board at 3k US$ seems to be (much) cheaper than the individual chip, from what I can tell. What's up with that?

I greatly appreciate the support I've received to date, and I feel I have a responsibility to all of you putting faith in this project to keep you all up to date on a weekly, if not daily basis. The thread will be where you can find updates.

Here's the first of many:
Lately, in a fury to prove I can do even half of what I claim, I've been working on rigging old code and old interfaces to my DE4-230.  This has been frustrating, and a waste of time. Sp, as far as proof goes: Azelphur is setting up his DE0 Nano, once it is ready we'll program it with my core and send y'all some screenshots.  That will provide you with some basis.  I'd love to have my DE4 going but honestly, that time is better put to use with me programming the new core.
Just as sort of an idea of where this project is going, I'll be exploiting the available DSP cores on these FPGAs to save logic and be able to fit more SHA on one chip.  In the case of the Cyclone IV, this will still provide some performance gain, on the Stratix even more so.
The problem so far has been that JTAG interfacing with the DE4-230 (my board) is... not well supported.  Fact is we shouldn't be sending data over JTAG anyway, so I'm going to let screenshots from Azelphur's FPGA support the project here, and I'm going to start writing Nanocore's serial interface so that when it does release there will be no issues with getting things set up or incompatibilities regarding JTAG chains etc.

Thanks again to all the contributors, and as always I encourage support, and the asking of questions!

Yes, the FPGA was mining on my private pool for a short period of time and I measured it at about 4GH/sec but due to a software bug it had 100% rejects.

We're actually working on getting something up and running right now with the goal of getting some screenshots and photos up on this thread. Stay tuned

Azelphur,

thinking a little more about this it seems that the card doesn't have power cables, so per pci-e specs it should use a maximum of 75W (from pci-e slot), but 3.6 GHs for 75W is too good to be true :/

btw, you say that OP has such a card mining on your private pool, can you or the OP give any proof of this claim?

spiccioli.

Not sure, but the max the power supply can draw is 250W, so less than that.

Well, if you can reach 75MH/s from Cyclone IV 22k then big congrats, you are a FPGA god. Chip itself costs something around 35$ (144 QFP easy to solder) + PCB and some parts 15$ = 50$. Thats better result than Spartan6 LX150 widely popular over here. With a 500$ you can easily build board with 10 chips and 750MH/s. Quiet nice... if its true of course...

Azelphur,

do you know how much power does it use? 

three thousand bucks is not so pricey given a 7970 is around 550 USD and gives around 600MHs.

if this one is 6x a 7970 in MHs but uses 1/5th of that power it would be a good card to mine on.

best regards.

spiccioli

This one it's linked on wondermines page

wondermine,

which version of the DE4 board are you referring to?

and how much does it consume?

regards.

spiccioli

The idea of donating is that it's an optional payment to support the developer.... he's not punishing anyone.

I like this idea but instead of a DE4 (large PCI-E board),I wonder if someone could 'chip in' for a nano USB version of the FPGA miner (75MHash/s but still a very big boost for my laptop as I do research on there as well as mining) which I can then test as I wish to get into FPGAs as long as the software required is free and easy to program with.Thanks.Of course it'll be silly to expect people to hand me a sample for nothing so I'll make it worthwhile for people If I'm chosen (like write a review of it,do tests in situations that I'm typically in,benchmark it in someway,find new ways to run it,e.t.c).Just thoughts like the previous poster.

Does the Nano FPGA have a small amount of memory to store settings when the power is off.Does this require extra cooling (passive/fan cooler) as well? Can a small overclock be applied (I don't want to go crazy with the OC as I do research as well as I don't want a fried piece of silicon).

Additionally, I was thinking that if people would like to "chip in" and buy a DE4 among a couple of people, I could help arrange that for people.  I've been speaking to Terasic about possible deals.  You can email me if youre interested in buying part of a DE4 (that is to say, part of 3.6GH/s+).  Just a thought, I haven't worked out logistics but this might be a good way to do it..?  I'd just make the arrangements for y'all to meet, maybe somewhere to run it from since DE4s require subscription software to program.  I dunno, again, just thoughts.

I'd like to see how this turns out.That nano USB FPGA miner looks like a good replacement for my Old GPU (I plan to cash in).I also like the 3.6GHash/s FPGA but thats too pricey.Maybe you can extend your range and add a medium powered FPGA (not too weak,not to pricey),plus give academic discounts (as I work in an academic type place) if possible.I wonder if it's possible to create a PCI/PCI-E version where I can just slot it in to my PC (make it PCI-E x4 or something so I don't need extra power plugs) with a straight forward interface (and no install controller type app that lets me mine straight away and just give pool and login details).

Thanks.
Keep up the good work OP :-)

All of this is exactly right. 
The project's not ready yet but I will sell preconfigured, prebundled hardware (accepting preorders now).  It'll be a matter of following a few simple instructions, then plugging it into USB.
And you're welcome to donate and wait on progress, I have some good leads that might allow for a working module (not perfect, but hashing at a decent rate) over the next week or so.  More to come.

---

As far as the amount to donate, you're right, if you'd like to donate BTC email me and I'll give you your own address to donate to.
The amount is up to you, if you have 1BTC or even 0.5 lying around, every bit helps!!! This will be open software when it is finished so don't worry about your contribution not entitling you to a license.

There is a reason that we don't do this.  If we were to shuffle threads we think are scams into such a section, users might not do their own due diligence because they are under the false impression that we are looking out for them.  Or worse, that we could actually know about all of the scams before they came across them.

No, sorry.  Cavet Emptor.

I believe that on his webpage you can pre-order a DE0 Nano pre-configured however I would wait until there is more progress.  You're best bet is supporting the project through donations/whatever before ordering one and realizing it won't be ready for a bit then being mad about having to wait so long. (See BFL for example)

i second this.

Sounds like an interesting project.

Why do you ask for $10 when using PayPal or 3 BTC?
With PayPal after fees (3.5% + ~$0.60) you'll get a bit more then $9.
Whereas 3 BTC have currently a value of ~16.50.

Wouldn't it be better to reward BTC payers and not punishing them?

And how do you plan to verivy who as donated while only providing 1 Bitcoin address?