Topic: Ultra-Low-Cost DIY FPGA Miner - 175MH/s @ $1/MH - page 3. (Read 125898 times)

So I'm drooling on this totally modular idea, and come up with what I view as the ideal "shoebox" crammed with FPGAs.  I did go to school many years ago for electronics engineering, but have been out of the field since 2001 and went off driving a semi truck instead.

What I'm thinking is a motherboard with maybe 10 or so sockets for LX150 daughtercards, each with its own voltage regulator and heatsink&fan.  The motherboard would have some kind of ARM processor with an Ethernet interface and probably a MicroSD card slot to store a really stripped down OS with web configuration and the bitstream for the FPGAs.  Underneath this mess would be a big beast of a 12V power supply.  The idea being you can start off with the "shoebox" and one or two FPGAs and add more as you see fit.  The shoebox would be self-bootstrapping and, after its initial configuration, would be smart enough to just connect to its pool and start mining with no intervention following a power cut.

Couple stupid questions:  First, it seems everyone is communicating via JTAG.  Is there a better way to do this?  Can any of the system-on-chip solutions (leaning towards the LH7A404 at the moment) talk to ten JTAG devices?  I know, well, jack squat about this bus so you'll have to talk to me like a five year old on this one.  I'm kinda thinking there would be enough GPIO on the bottom of the SOC to handle it, but as far as brains go I dunno if this would be optimal or even doable.

Second, I went and drooled on the Virtex-7 series...after cleaning various sticky things off my monitor I proceeded to pass out when I saw the price tag.  $150,000 per chip?!!?!  But the number of gates and potential clock speed sounds to me like each chip could be pushing in excess of 2GH/S.  Would these possibly be a viable solution, how scalable would Ztex and other code for the LX150 be for this monster, and at what price point could it be made profitable?

To the OP: kudos on making the skillet work!  My first attempt at reflow soldering a QFP in a toaster oven ended up looking an awful lot like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLRnoYmzhn4

At least that's what pusle posted to the #bitcoin-fpga topic yesterday. Remember however that there's also other cost factors when building a board

Where can you get them for $115 in 100 qty?

Destroying a $40 part is about as high as I'd want to go. And if I destroyed the first one I may not try another.

[watching]

You can actually do about 200MH/s on the LX150-N3, and if you order bulk quantities of that one (100pcs) you'll get it for as low as $115. That's almost 2 MH/$, so almost on par with GPUs. But you'll have to consider the cost of the board, other components, assembly, and time spent on it as well.

But the power company can also shut off your clothes washer remotely, in the middle of a wash, during "peak" times. Is this why it's so cheap?
i.e. they spread the power consumption out evenly over 24-hr period.

Were you able to mine btc with the $40 part? Since I've never done anything like this I would rather try with the cheapest parts first.
If I could mine with the cheap parts (i.e. didn't destroy everything in process) then I might do a couple of the cheap ones before graduating my self to the $175 parts.

Are you also mining with the xl150 ($175 part)?

So I guess I missed the "Add to cart" link where I buy 36 of these... if you can just point me to it that would be great.
Thx.

Thanks for the info. In Ufa at the same conditions as you described for Moscow, it costs $0,0389. I was wondering how much are solar panels in Australia these days. If you hook up your FPGA cluster to an array of solar panels with batteries (to work 24/7) it will buy itself out, then electricity costs will be $0. I guess it will be feasible only if cheaper version of solar panels are used. Silicon based are quite expensive.

Ok...lets make a party...you'll bring the electricity, I'll bring the beer...

haha electricity cheap, everything else expensive. how does $15 for a beer sound?

That's it.  I'm moving to Sweden!! 

i pay zero here in sweden we have lots of 'community' areas where you have a standard monthly fee regardless on heat/electricity use. pretty nice

or just remote manage it with anubis,,,lol

he doesnt have to move there, just rent an office/servers room. and pay some guy to visit it once a day

It's an honest report of his basic rate. I went and looked into them just a bit more, fully expecting to see the electric providers there either heavily subsidized or just being really nasty sources of fuel. I was pleasantly surprised to read that they are utilizing primarily renewable sources (hydro electric) and make up for the cost difference by selling the massive surplus of power they output to other companies. It's a win win.
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2011/jun/01/cheapest-electricity-in-the-entire-country-but/

Take the amount of your last bill and divide it by the number of KWHs on the bill.

What is that number?

Ya, I am sure...and no you can't move here. Only room for one miner in this town....

http://www.douglaspud.org/Service/2011Rates.aspx

so what i need is to modify this great miner to fit Icarus.