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Topic: Raspberry Pi $25 PC - Could we run GPUs/FPGAs on this? (Read 15004 times)

legendary
Activity: 1022
Merit: 1000
Freelance videographer
I'd love to know how to setup an FPGA with the raspberry pi so I can finally get a really cheap and low energy PC for getwork tasks while delegating the actual mining to the FPGA.I'd like a clear walkthrough with pics if someone has managed as well as which OS they used on the Raspberry Pi.

legendary
Activity: 938
Merit: 1000
What's a GPU?
I have experience running large amounts of FPGAs on what might be called an underpowered machine. I wouldn't plan on hosting more than five boards with this, but that is a very rough estimate.
sr. member
Activity: 352
Merit: 250
If you don't want to wait to try it. I'm selling my freshly arrived pi here: https://bitmit.net/en/trade/i/2481-raspberry-pi-model-b/description
legendary
Activity: 1795
Merit: 1208
This is not OK.
So if we are looking for trouble why not use a OpenWRT supporting router with USB port to run the FPGAs? haha...


Done Smiley
hero member
Activity: 1330
Merit: 502
Vave.com - Crypto Casino
So if we are looking for trouble why not use a OpenWRT supporting router with USB port to run the FPGAs? haha...
sr. member
Activity: 350
Merit: 250
Ok, ima get one of these, but i dont have a fgpa to hook it upto for testing,  :/

That's OK, I do Smiley   By the time you get your Pi delivered you may as well (it'll be a little while yet).
member
Activity: 95
Merit: 10
Ok, ima get one of these, but i dont have a fgpa to hook it upto for testing,  :/
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1009
firstbits:1MinerQ
Where do you guys get 6970 gets 683 GFLOPS. 

6970 has 2.7 TFLOPS of floating point computational power and a 7970 is ~3.8 TFLOPS.
It's the double precision compute power

6970
2.7 TFLOPs Single Precision compute power
683 GFLOPs Double Precision compute power
It's my understanding that Bitcoin doesn't use floating point anyway - only integer. So unless the gpu architecture is the same any comparison is likely apples to oranges.
legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
Where do you guys get 6970 gets 683 GFLOPS. 

6970 has 2.7 TFLOPS of floating point computational power and a 7970 is ~3.8 TFLOPS.
It's the double precision compute power

6970
2.7 TFLOPs Single Precision compute power
683 GFLOPs Double Precision compute power
hero member
Activity: 1596
Merit: 502
Type B has 2 usb ports, type A only one.
The dubble usb port count is also worth something Smiley
hero member
Activity: 529
Merit: 500
Good point. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's probably not worth the hassle to save $6.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
I see you need the model B, $35 to get ethernet.

Not really. You can get a USB ethernet adapter for less than $4, or a USB wifi adapter for $8.

You got drivers to support that on the ARM platform?
hero member
Activity: 529
Merit: 500
I see you need the model B, $35 to get ethernet.

Not really. You can get a USB ethernet adapter for less than $4, or a USB wifi adapter for $8.
USB Ethernet $3.57
Wireless-N USB $7.96

Dropping the extra $10 to get it built in might give you higher quality components though.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Where do you guys get 6970 gets 683 GFLOPS. 

6970 has 2.7 TFLOPS of floating point computational power and a 7970 is ~3.8 TFLOPS.


WOW. Did not realize the difference between a 5870 and 7970 was that big.

Now that you look at the TFLOPS and MHash/s it really does look like the 7970 is almost 1.7 times faster than a 5870 due to the much better overclocking ability of 28nm GPUs.

Yeah AMD integer performance took a nose dive with the new architecture.  The 7970 simply puts up respectable numbers by brute force.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500
Where do you guys get 6970 gets 683 GFLOPS. 

6970 has 2.7 TFLOPS of floating point computational power and a 7970 is ~3.8 TFLOPS.

WOW. Did not realize the difference between a 5870 and 7970 was that big.

Now that you look at the TFLOPS and MHash/s it really does look like the 7970 is almost 1.7 times faster than a 5870 due to the much better overclocking ability of 28nm GPUs.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Where do you guys get 6970 gets 683 GFLOPS. 

6970 has 2.7 TFLOPS of floating point computational power and a 7970 is ~3.8 TFLOPS.
member
Activity: 81
Merit: 10
from a quick google it doesn't support opencl
newbie
Activity: 51
Merit: 0
interesting...

so assuming 14MH/s

to get anywhere near a 6970 in terms of raw MH/s power even at a conservative guestimate.... your probably looking at at least 25-50 of these units all hashing away at around 14MH/s to the same pool under a single account to get near say 600MH/s ( 42 rasberries )

Obviously really inefficient but would look really neat in a rack with loads of these things hooked up... sort of backwards retro
hero member
Activity: 1596
Merit: 502
Where it says GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure you'll have to excuse my ignorance here, FPGA stuff is like an alien world to me,  but isn't 24GFLOPs a rather large number..... can anyone compare this to say a 6970? GFLOPs for GFLOPs
AMD's GFLOPs # for 6970 is 683, or >28x greater.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
So the 6970 gets 397 MH/s with 683 GFLOPS, or 1.72 GFLOPS / MH/s
So the raspberry pi GPU gets 24 / 1.72 = little under 14 MH/s
14 MH/s for $25 (A type is cheaper but with the same GPU) is $0.56 / MH/s

Conclusion, the normal GPUs for a normal pc are 3 to 6 times more efficient.

Another point, (most? all?) GPU miners are probably written with the opencl library, I don't know if there exists a version of it for the raspberry pi.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1015
Where it says GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure you'll have to excuse my ignorance here, FPGA stuff is like an alien world to me,  but isn't 24GFLOPs a rather large number..... can anyone compare this to say a 6970? GFLOPs for GFLOPs
AMD's GFLOPs # for 6970 is 683, or >28x greater.
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