Topic: Raspberry Coins - Cyclone V - 28nm based FPGA miner - page 3. (Read 8307 times)

22K for 22-28ghs?

How much are avalons selling for? (if ever shipped)
How muych $$ would BFL take off you for the hope of get a 30ghs single?
How much are block ejaculator blades selling for?

*IF* any asic supplier were actually shipping anything consistently you have to say the prices are too high.
That said I wouldn't order at that price to get in the first 150 chips, but could be interested in batch 2 if prices come down.

Also I'd really like to buy boards without the RPi and run from the computer hardware I already have, and that computer can support far more than 4 boards.

I'm interested in seeing why it costs so much as well. You really have to be competitive if you want to stand out.

How is it better than http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/EK-K7-KC705-G.htm
 running it @ 1GH/s or more. And it had potential to mine LTC as well.

By the way, why the price is so high? If you are building 300 boards and have inside connection at Altera, single FPGA would cost ~180$, raspberry pi is cheap, enclosure makes another 20$ from some cheap labor country. PCB+passives+power makes another 50$. So your profit is like 500$ from single unit :O Plus mining profits from testing the produced units couple weeks before delivery.  

  I love Raspberry Pi.

Reserved

I would order one just for supporting this company.
And why not?

We are giving Millions $ to some BFL that hates us and lie to us... and we are so greed that we cant pay for FPGA miner that can mine litecoins?
As i remember everyone was asked to Ltc Fpga Miner???

Just need to get some BTC more, dont want to use own money 

What about delivery to Finland?

Bitcoin gpu and fpga mining will be dead in two months - so forget it. But if you manage to tame the scrypt (LTC)...

Product dead on arrival. Who needs expensive fpga miner in the age of asics? Btw, nice job, cool design. I like the aesthetic side of this tiny rig.

In the same way that FPGA's have always competed with ASIC's - time to market + flexibiltiy

An ASIC can provide significantly cheaper cost of production for volume quantities than FPGA's.

However, ASIC technology requires significantly more resources and verification than FPGA's (where the underlying digital logic is already pre-verified (ie: DFT/DFM, scan chain insertion, etc.) ).  This brings time-to-market concerns for ASIC technology - and in the case of Bitcoin mining - time = money (or difficulty level).  If you are able to obtain an ASIC in quantity early and in sufficient quantities, then you could do quite well with an ASIC (as far as mining goes).  (ie: you've got the only ASIC miners, and everyone else is using slower technology).

If everyone has the same ASIC technology, then you need faster ASIC technology than anyone else out there to make any inroads - which again requires significant time and resources.

Everyone has compared 65 nm technology FPGA's vs 65 nm technology ASIC.  However, we plan to utilize 28 nm technology FPGA technology, and if we obtain any volume production, then we can get a price decrease, which means we drop our prices.

Altera has recently announced 20nm and 14nm technology products (for mid-range Aria and high-end Stratix lines).  The 28nm Cyclone V was announced in 2011.  Altera announced Cyclone IV in 2009.  Cyclone III was announced in 2007.  If they keep up with their schedule, then is Cyclone VI not far behind?  Will this be 22 or 20nm technology?  How fast and cost effective will this be compared to a 65 nm ASIC?  I don't know. 

I do know that FPGA has gone a lot further than anyone ever thought, and these products follow Moore's law quite well.

The second part of my reply is FLEXIBILITY.  These devices are NOT purpose built-ASIC's.  We are investigating utilizing the 12.4 Mb built-in memory (1,220 M10K blocks) per FPGA (24.8 Mb, 2,440 M10K blocks total) for use in Litecoin mining.  A purpose-built, Bitcoin mining ASIC can never be re-targeted for other uses.  These FPGA's on the other hand are MUCH more flexible.

I like the concept. The hash per dollar is painful, though.

those prices are a rip in the ass. good luck with your venture. Ever heard of a bank or credit? schmuck!

I hope this project has enough support. I'm pretty interested in these.

Yup - I'm Tony.

I discovered the Raspberry Pi at Wattminder Instruments.  The enclosure is similar (the mounting holes are in different locations, as this is a slightly bigger board).  I friend of mine called me up, about putting together a Bitcoin miner for him (he could not find miners at the time).  I mentioned it to Wattminder Instruments (several times), but management did not want to pursue Bitcoin related activities.  As a result, I and some other guys decided to do this separate from Wattminder Instruments.

You may have met me at a Stanford VLAB event and asked if I was at Wattminder Instruments or at Raspberry Coins.  I do both.  I'm VP Special Projects at Wattminder Instruments, and will continue to represent them in this role (as long as they want me to - I believe in the Wattminder Instruments goals).  I'm also CEO of Raspberry Coins.

Raspberry Coins is a company which is dedicated to making Bitcoin mining hardware, and exploring Litecoin mining as well.  I also believe that Bitcoin can do a great deal of good in the world - (ie: helping people in nations like Argentina escape from the ravages of runaway inflation, etc.), so as a result, I'm a supporter of Bitcoin, and Bitcoin related technologies.  (BTW: I'll be promoting a Stanford VLAB event in Silicon Valley coming up on June 18th (we'll try to have a little demo board there for display), once we get our VLAB marketing finalized - if you're in the Silicon Valley area, try to reserve the date - it should be interesting).

Long story short, we're two different companies - with two different goals.  The only thing similar is that we both use a Raspberry Pi, and a similar enclosure  (Since the enclosure is basically two acrylic sheets, and there are similar Raspberry Pi enclosures, there is nothing proprietary about the enclosure).

I believe (through personal connections) that I can get enough for 150 boards (300 FPGA's) in a production run, however my distributor and Altera cannot hold this amount for me for much longer without a PO.  As a result, we're doing this crowd funding proposition.  I should be able to get some more for a second production run a little later.

FYI : the standard lead time from all distributors will be "out of stock - 19 week lead time" (for the Cyclone V A9's).  (If you know of anyone who has a shorter lead time, let me know, and I'll immediately look into it).  It's only because I used to work at Altera a while back, and via various personal contacts that I'm able to find these chips a bit sooner.  (They have other customers trying to get these chips as well).

Tony

As an aside, when I went to distributors to describe what we were doing, there appeared to be a fair amount of personal interest in Bitcoin (mostly everyone there had not heard of it), and more than a few started to investigate this topic on their own.

What is your lead time if you can get them?

http://www.wattminderinstruments.com/enclosure

This site has a similar favicon and has the products pictured, is this your parent company?

Don't you think ~10 BTC for ~1 GH/s is a little steep?

Considering i can get 3 of those ASICMINER usb dongles for ~7 BTC which does ~1 GH/s and probably use a lot less power... < 10W including hubs and a pi to mine them with. And this i can get in ~3 days in my hands to mine with.

How do you intend to compete with asics on the market?

I'll be meeting with additional manufacturers tomorrow in Fremont, CA.  We have one or two lined up, and I'll be evaluating quality.  If you have any recommendations (ie: had good experience with) for manufacturers in the Silicon Valley area, I'm willing check them out.  (Keeping things local provides a number of advantages).

The 3-6 weeks is just in case we have a delay in FPGA's shipping, or anything else in the manufacturing run.  If everything works out right, it could be faster, but I want to "sandbag" a little so that I can exceed expectations.

His post count beats mine