Quote from: melpheos on May 04, 2018, 02:32:57 PM

Quote from: Sandal_Hat on May 04, 2018, 01:33:00 PM

Quote from: DigitalCruncher on May 04, 2018, 01:16:05 PM

Quote from: Sandal_Hat on May 04, 2018, 12:59:06 PM

Look, it doesnt make sense. It will cost too much more, have very little to mine and be at the whim of the antminer E3 pricing basically lol.

Most important question. WHY just WHY do u wanna make an FPGA when one asic already controls 64% of GPU mining? A few asics control most of the GPU mining already.

And this FPGA u are doing is just another GPU. Why? Because anyone can do it. U make a slightly stronger GPU known as FPGA. All u need is abit of dumb money going in there and u make no profits due to high difficulty.

In my opinion, interest to FPGA can be short-term, when you need to mine a certain number of coins before the release of ASIC. Like a Groestl, Nist5 and others.
But a more fundamental interest may be to offer a useful proof of work function which can also be ASIC-resistant.
By setting new standards for the usefulness of the POW function, we will strengthen mining on FPGA in the long term.
In the end, someone uses mega-FPGA cards in real life. For what? Amazon AWS earns with them, why not do the same?

Summary.

FPGA is not workable when one asic controls 64% of GPU mining market.
Lets say u use FPGAs and they now control 20% of remaining market via 8 algos.
One asic will appear and easily cut it to 15%. They will take the major coin away again...

Your FPGA is basically an antminer S7 and when new asic appears, it gets "downgraded" to be an S5. More FPGAs/GPUs will also join in the crowd as u earn less. U may not even be able to be profitable once it gets downgraded to S5. Do note that difficulty increase does not lower profit, it lowers REVENUE. So, u may go negative on mining once it "downgrades to an S5". I strongly doubt it will work because the asics are far cheaper and too much more efficient and majority of the market is centered around a few big algos.

This is not yet including the biggest problem which the E3 that can mine eth, which controls 64% of the GPU. It can keep pushing more GPU mining power to the coins u are mining.

No point I keep repeating. I find it conceptually just a horrible idea.

Hope to see transparency in numbers and figures to brave souls those who attempt this project. Good luck people

I think you don't get it.
FPGA are not here to compete with ASIC !!!
On ASIC controlled coin, only ASICs can rule.
FPGA are here to compete with GPU without the power consumption of the GPU and without the limitation of the ASIC.
My 24*1070Ti rig consumes around 3000w.
For the same price i can get 2FPGA that will consume 300w and have more than twice the performance. If the example on RVN stands, i would have 600Mh vs 288Mh for 1/10th of the power consumption.
At the current rate the revenue difference is 71$ vs 163$.
Over a year this is massive and you dont really have to convert your coin to fiat because the electricity cost can absolutely be paid ( 2600$ vs 262$)

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A simpler illustration.
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So, after a few weeks, it takes off, everyone buys a FPGA, just like how they buy a GPU. Difficulty rises. Breakeven is at around 11-15 months or so.
So,the FPGA mines 10 different non-asic coins.

Revenue - electricity cost = profits
255 - 104 = 151 USD profits (I am using current S9 numbers at 10cents electricity as rough example which are generous numbers considering recent btc price spike lol)

With this u calculate your break even at 13 months, for example. 13 months is generous here lol.

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But an asic appears to take over the biggest coin. The biggest coin was 25% of all mining revenue.
So now, u can mine 9 non-asic coins only.
Revenue is now 255 x 0.75 = 191 USD (Difficulty increases cause 25% of mining revenue to be gone)

191 - 104 = 87 dollars (This is your new profit)

See the problem? Your breakeven is now 26 months All FPGA in that coin that got taken over by asic moves to the other coins.
One more of this occur and u may go to negative profit.

The problem is the FPGA community gets revenue taken away from them when new asic comes in to dominate the coin.

So for asics, difficulty rises as more asics get bought.
For FPGAs, difficulty rises as more FPGAs gets bought AND when new asic STEALS a coin. It is conceptually flawed badly. U will also spend more money producing this FPGA picemean over an asic produced mass market. I believe I used very generous numbers here as it is.
This is wat i mean by u are actually competing with asics.