Bitcoin Stack Exchange
Bitcoin Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [fpga]

"Field Programmable Gate Array" - A digital integrated circuit designed to be configured after manufacture. Essentially allows one chip to be turned into a different chip. FPGAs are a highly power efficient method of mining Bitcoins, though they have a significantly higher initial cost than many alternatives.

Xilinx and Altera are the two main FPGA vendors.

30 questions
27
votes
5 answers

Is Butterfly Labs reputable / Should I preorder the SC Jalepeno?

I'm somewhat new to the mining scene but I'm a bit familiar with everything. I see that GPU mining will become much less cost effective over the next year or so, especially around December when the block reward size drops to 25 BTC. As an entry…
dv90
  • 271
  • 1
  • 3
  • 3
22
votes
1 answer

Current FPGA Competitiveness

I know CPUs and GPUs can't really compete with ASICs anymore but what about FPGAs? Are they still reasonable? Anyone have a ballpark idea of what kind of Gh/s (or Mh/s) has been done with something like a Spartan 6?
John Stanford
  • 323
  • 1
  • 2
  • 4
20
votes
2 answers

What's the difference between an ASIC and an FPGA? Which is better for mining?

I'm a software guy with only the most basic of hardware training/knowledge so while I understand the basic concepts of ASICs and FPGAs the details are beyond me. What are the primary differences and, more importantly to my purposes, how do those…
David Perry
  • 14,330
  • 5
  • 62
  • 99
10
votes
1 answer

Is there time-to-failure data available for any of the BFL products?

Butterfly Labs (BFL) is offering a few mining products which look to be based on some sort of FPGA or ASIC but I can't find any reliable data on what parts they're using or their manufacturing techniques. I'd like to factor device cost into the…
David Perry
  • 14,330
  • 5
  • 62
  • 99
10
votes
3 answers

What software/hardware is required to mine with an FPGA?

I have been looking for a device that would allow me to mine Bitcoins without too much noise and heat. Something relatively small that I could keep in a shelf without worrying too much about it. A rig with GPUs is too noisy so I looked into FPGAs,…
nmat
  • 11,479
  • 14
  • 50
  • 78
9
votes
2 answers

Can ASIC or FPGA boards be used to mine Litecoin?

I know that Litecoin was designed to be mined with a CPU but then someone figured out how to mine it with a GPU. Has anyone figure out how to mine Litecoin with an ASIC or FPGA boards, and if not is it conceivably possible? (and by that I mean…
Loourr
  • 3,050
  • 4
  • 17
  • 35
8
votes
1 answer

How do I mine with FPGAs?

I'm not entirely sure how FPGA's work... Do I simply buy a ZTEX and it mines, or do I need to plug it into a computer via USB? Can I chain them? I'm so confused.
Shamoon
  • 2,819
  • 3
  • 34
  • 52
6
votes
1 answer

how to start mining with FPGA

I found that in my university there are some FPGA's available to test and to play with. I am a software/web programmer and I have never been working with verilog or whatever is used to program FPGA. So is there a nice tutorial which explains how to…
Salvador Dali
  • 3,320
  • 7
  • 30
  • 49
6
votes
1 answer

Why does the BFL Single produce ~50% stales with P2Pool?

I've heard from users on bitcointalk forums that the BFL single doesn't work with P2Pool as it produces about 50% rejected shares, which is insanely high. Why is this? Is it possible that the hashing is not actually being done on the chip itself?…
Sean Chapman
  • 1,740
  • 1
  • 17
  • 30
6
votes
1 answer

How to get started with building an fpga mining device

I plan to make an fpga mining device for bitcoin mining just for the fun of it. I thought understanding bitcoin as whole would be the first step to take. However I realize that understanding the whole verification and transaction process in bitcoin…
Enthusiast
  • 433
  • 1
  • 9
  • 16
5
votes
2 answers

BFL Single averages 800 Mhps on BitMinter Client. Advertised rate is 832. What explains the difference?

I'm using a BFL single with the BitMinter client and I never see my Mhps exceed 825 and it often goes down to 780 Mhps. What could be an explanation for this difference? Are the specs on BFL theoretical speed? Is the closed source BitMinter client…
makerofthings7
  • 12,656
  • 11
  • 60
  • 129
4
votes
4 answers

When will FPGAs and ASICs 'replace' GPUs for mining?

Please explain in detail, or provide an an estimate, at least.
Marco Scannadinari
  • 41
  • 1
  • 2
4
votes
3 answers

What other purposes can I use my [obsolete] hashing hardware for?

It's pretty easy to reuse CPUs or Video cards that were previously used for Bitcoin hashing, but what can I do with FPGA hardware when the difficulty becomes too high for it to be worthwhile to mine? Are there competing networks I can mine for? Are…
makerofthings7
  • 12,656
  • 11
  • 60
  • 129
3
votes
1 answer

How to begin FPGA mining

Since I own two FPGA:s I want to get started mining. It doesn't matter which currency I am mining, only that it works. I would prefer to do mining of Bitcoin, Ether, Dash or LItecoin but anything that works with my FPGA will do. My FPGAs are Altera…
Niklas Rosencrantz
  • 196
  • 1
  • 2
  • 9
3
votes
1 answer

ASIC and FPGA feasibility as GPU

I've done a minor amount of research into the topic of bitcoin mining using ASICs and FPGAs, and I've started wondering: Could these be used as GPUs (possibly specialized to a subset of what modern GPUs are capable of)? If they're so much faster…
Ben Sandeen
  • 131
  • 2
1
2