Are there any new FPGA mining boards out now?

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WildGuruFull Member
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#1Feb 26, 2022, 05:44 AM
Just found out that ztex has a new board out that uses the Xilinx Artix 7 XC7A200T FPGA. You can check it out here: https://shop.ztex.de/product_info.php?products_id=102&language=en They’ve got an open source SDK too, but it’s more for general stuff and not a plug-and-play miner: https://www.ztex.de/firmware-kit/. Haven’t seen much talk about ztex’s series 2 here, just the older series 1 which had an open source miner back in the day, but that seems to have died around 2013. Also, I've noticed that bfgminer only supports the first series. I'm curious if anyone's actually using these new boards for mining or if anyone's using FPGAs for mining nowadays, like for low-key setups at home. Came across this open source FPGA bitcoin miner repo and it looks like there hasn’t been much action in almost ten years: https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner. Is all the mining scene just ASICs now? Even those USB miners are running ASICs. I wonder if there’s any FPGA device that’s still good for mining today, preferably open source. It probably won't beat the latest ASICs in efficiency, but FPGAs have some cool perks like being updatable and can be used for other tasks too.
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diamond_ledgerFull Member
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#2Feb 26, 2022, 11:07 AM
There is but the firmware your referring to though is called bitstreams ,nothing I've seen is open source these days, a lot of these newer FPGA's are owned by a few select individuals that own said bitstreams they generally wont share bitstreams until they sell the whole lot of FPGA's at end of life. I personally know people that own 60%+ of total supply of certain fpga's with very elaborate setups such as chip etching liquid cooling. Long story short they dont sell the bitstreams or the FPGA's, they might get the bitstream made for "free" for a hefty %10 dev fee on a major acquisition. There's alternatives though , you can lease your FPGA out on Vast.ai for top dollar(if you can even set it up in the firstplace) , its more rewarding then any mining prospect as these guys use your fpga to develop said bitstream before buying a few shelves full of clusters of limited makes. using a bitstream is "simple" according to this Bitstream Encryption wiki they provide. I must say I don't know how useful 256 MByte DDR3 SDRAM on this particular make is though for memory intensive mining. But I don't know a lot about them and decided to steer clear of the complexities behind them.
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diamond_ledgerFull Member
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#3Feb 26, 2022, 11:22 AM
I found this browsing around this evening TRM has a BS @ 4% TRM Github but only for eth on the following devices Xilinx Varium C1100 SQRL Forest Kitten 33 - performance limited by product design, see guide for details Xilinx/TUL/Osprey U50C/ECU50 Seems moot with 2.0 right around the corner.
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