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Topic: x11/x13 FPGA/ASICs? (Read 2050 times)

sr. member
Activity: 423
Merit: 250
August 02, 2014, 09:46:55 AM
#10
We aren't talking about you duct taping a GPU rig together. Large scale projects like this aren't one person ordering parts off eBay or even Newegg and strapping it all together, especially when it's deployed on an entirely different continent.

You order prebuilts and have them shipped to a data center ready made. Not build your wooden racks and slap some extenders on. Please read the entire post before you attempt to dissect it.

As to your last bit, that's 'neat', scrypt asics were expected to take a lot longer then they did as well. I'm not vouching for FPGAs existing, just looking at things like this popping up at a rate of 1-2 per week. Rigs of that size take a lot of time to build too, especially for one person, which is why they're also more then likely manufactured - prebuilt PCs or prebuilt asic/FPGAs


Ur face is a irresponsible conjecture... Seriously you can attach that to pretty much anything someone says.
sr. member
Activity: 340
Merit: 250
August 02, 2014, 04:33:18 AM
#9
They also seem extremely flaky regardless of them always having quality staff around. The hashrate graphs are usually all over. I have seen them on occasion operate at their advertised hashrate though.

It isn't one or the other. "High quality datacenter with quality GPUs" and "shitty fpgas" are NOT the only two options. It can simply be shitty gpus in a shitty warehouse with no cooling.

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It seems highly likely these are actual FPGAs or ASICs from a custom manufacturer that haven't hit the market yet. Maybe they figure they could make more simply be using them for 'private use' or selling them to one individual. Either way given the miner market it doesn't seem like miners would tolerate another scrypt in x11, perhaps they know that too and instead of selling them and having everyone abandon the algo, they're trying to milk it.

This is irresponsible conjecture at best.


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Each one of those miners would probably be around 120k in classic new GPUs, so it's not 'that' much' if you have a lot of money to burn and don't really care if it's not recoverable.

I can build x11 GPU farms at $40/mh with the right parts, 3x less than what you quoted. And i've done it, too.

Even though the burden of proof is not on me, look at the following thread and subsequent quotes:

https://darkcointalk.org/threads/darkcoin-fpga-mining-co-op.836/page-4

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It was determined that the sha3 candidates are too complicated for affordable fpgas. Even single hash pow functions using sha3 candidates can't be sufficiently unrolled to produce high enough hash rates. Implementing all 11 used in x11 would require a massive fpga, and the results would be poor. IIRC testing showed that skein running on a stratix board only managed to produce about 10% of the hashrate of a radeon 7950, so there really isn't any profit to be made unless you're already sitting on a large fpga farm of very expensive boards.

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Space is at a premium on fpgas. Unlike gpus, which process the same instruction on many cores at a time, each part of the fpga only operates on one thing at a time, essentially having a stream of data going through the code, so to get good performance, code has to be unrolled when possible, since otherwise it will hold up the next data while one part goes through the same section multiple times. The 11 algos would be seperate sections, and would run in parallel like you were told, the problem is fitting them unrolled enough to get decent performance. You end up having to make major performance/size tradeoffs, and the performance goes to shit. There might be high-end fpgas that could fit it, but they would be extremely costly.

I don't know very much about asic designs, but I'm guessing you have more flexibility regarding code size, and also your cost per chip would be much lower, and you'd draw less electricity, so those problems likely wouldn't affect asics as much.

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Space isn't just a problem for fitting all the algorithms on one board. Even fitting the individual algorithms(512 bit sha3 candidates) alone on boards get poor performance as they can't be unrolled enough and still fit on affordable boards.
sr. member
Activity: 423
Merit: 250
August 01, 2014, 10:39:28 PM
#8
Yeah offer proof of FPGAs or GTFO.

The thing to note here is one of the rigs is listed as US. The local seems to be in Euro or Asia, which would mean the possibility of deployment actually in the US. That could identify this as actual hardware in a data center. There aren't any companies that seem to offer high density mining rigs though (classic with GPUs). You'd largely be limited to 2 GPUs per server and that's a darn lot of rackspace for a datacenter (and would be really expensive). It wouldn't make it worth it. Possibly 4 GPUs with a premium motherboard, but not many companies offer a 3U with four graphics cards unless it's like render farms and those are super expensive, once again not making it worth it.

They also seem extremely flaky regardless of them always having quality staff around. The hashrate graphs are usually all over. I have seen them on occasion operate at their advertised hashrate though.

It seems highly likely these are actual FPGAs or ASICs from a custom manufacturer that haven't hit the market yet. Maybe they figure they could make more simply be using them for 'private use' or selling them to one individual. Either way given the miner market it doesn't seem like miners would tolerate another scrypt in x11, perhaps they know that too and instead of selling them and having everyone abandon the algo, they're trying to milk it.

Could also be some rich kids plaything. Each one of those miners would probably be around 120k in classic new GPUs, so it's not 'that' much' if you have a lot of money to burn and don't really care if it's not recoverable.
sr. member
Activity: 340
Merit: 250
August 01, 2014, 08:09:33 PM
#7
foolish non believers, the Chinese are all using hot rodded Saturn 6 Spartan boards
The actual cost is programming the damn things to hash 11 algos

If you want to prove something to us, show us the proof. Otherwise, just shut up.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
August 01, 2014, 07:30:07 PM
#6
foolish non believers, the Chinese are all using hot rodded Saturn 6 Spartan boards
The actual cost is programming the damn things to hash 11 algos
full member
Activity: 121
Merit: 100
August 01, 2014, 05:33:37 PM
#5
Where do I buy these FPGA's? Ready to order a few!
sr. member
Activity: 340
Merit: 250
August 01, 2014, 05:32:24 PM
#4
100m/h x11 fpga are $200.....seriously it is time you guys pulled you heads out of your asses and realised this

100mh of x11 at .0005 btc/mh (rental price) = 100*.0005 = .05 BTC ~= $29 USD

$200/$29 = 7 day ROI? Keep dreaming...
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
August 01, 2014, 04:23:49 PM
#3
100m/h x11 fpga are $200.....seriously it is time you guys pulled you heads out of your asses and realised this
sr. member
Activity: 340
Merit: 250
August 01, 2014, 01:43:23 PM
#2
Send him a message thru MRR and offer to rent hashrate per month at 20% above market. Ask him to send pictures of his farm to verify that he does indeed own it. Make something up, make it believable. When he gives you his pictures, post them here.
sr. member
Activity: 423
Merit: 250
August 01, 2014, 11:48:05 AM
#1
So, what are these?



I've been on MMR for quite some time and these are growing like the plague, there is 1-2 coming online each week. Either someone is throwing around some serious cash or there are ASICs a foot here. It's hard to imagine buying new hardware give the current market for mining and the quantity of eBay cards wouldn't be able to feed 1-2 of these coming online so fast. There is also one in x13 which is conveniently also '1.2G', which is a very round number for mining systems.
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