Re: Official Open Source FPGA Bitcoin Miner (Spartan-6 Now Tops Performance per $!)
Hi, Newbie here, just started playing with fpgaminer on a DE0-Nano.
I'm using the official code from https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner and I've got the DE2_70_Unoptimized_Pipelined branch working nicely (getting 7.5MH/s at 120MHz ... chip gets too hot if I try running any faster).
I've now started looking at the code in the DE2_115_makomk_mod branch, but I've hit a problem. The code compiles fine at CONFIG_LOOP_LOG2=2, 3 and 4 but its producing the wrong hashes (I'm just running at 40MHz for testing, not full blast) ... the mine.tcl script submits hashes to the pool, but they are all rejected! (The unoptimised code is fine, I've submitted 200 shares so far).
Now I've put together a test harness so I can mine offline (I don't want to offend the mining pool by submitting junk), and by manually checking the hashes (using a bit of python code that I know works ok), they are all garbage.
So, getting to the main point, has anyone got this code working on a DE0-Nano? I'm a little concerned as Quartus reports it is using ram as a substitute for some of the shifter logic (I haven't worked out how to disable this ... I'm new to Quartus and its quite a steep learning curve!) I've been reading through sha256_transform.v, and while I've got a rough idea of what its doing, its going to take me a while to work out whether its being implimented correctly in the device (I've got to get to grips with the simulator first, and add some probes to check the intermediate results). So can anyone help me out by confirming whether Makomk's mod works on a DE0-Nano? And any hints for debugging this would be most welcome.
As an aside, I'm quite looking forward to getting up and running with mining on FPGA's as GPU's are on their way out, and there is going to be a window of opportunity between now and when the ASIC's eventually come on stream. I've got some ideas which I'll share as I go along. Its going to be a blast!
I'm using the official code from https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner and I've got the DE2_70_Unoptimized_Pipelined branch working nicely (getting 7.5MH/s at 120MHz ... chip gets too hot if I try running any faster).
I've now started looking at the code in the DE2_115_makomk_mod branch, but I've hit a problem. The code compiles fine at CONFIG_LOOP_LOG2=2, 3 and 4 but its producing the wrong hashes (I'm just running at 40MHz for testing, not full blast) ... the mine.tcl script submits hashes to the pool, but they are all rejected! (The unoptimised code is fine, I've submitted 200 shares so far).
Now I've put together a test harness so I can mine offline (I don't want to offend the mining pool by submitting junk), and by manually checking the hashes (using a bit of python code that I know works ok), they are all garbage.
So, getting to the main point, has anyone got this code working on a DE0-Nano? I'm a little concerned as Quartus reports it is using ram as a substitute for some of the shifter logic (I haven't worked out how to disable this ... I'm new to Quartus and its quite a steep learning curve!) I've been reading through sha256_transform.v, and while I've got a rough idea of what its doing, its going to take me a while to work out whether its being implimented correctly in the device (I've got to get to grips with the simulator first, and add some probes to check the intermediate results). So can anyone help me out by confirming whether Makomk's mod works on a DE0-Nano? And any hints for debugging this would be most welcome.
As an aside, I'm quite looking forward to getting up and running with mining on FPGA's as GPU's are on their way out, and there is going to be a window of opportunity between now and when the ASIC's eventually come on stream. I've got some ideas which I'll share as I go along. Its going to be a blast!