BTCMiner - Open Source Bitcoin Miner for ZTEX FPGA Boards

 The a short description and files for download be found at http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/. For compilation the ZTEX SDK (http://www.ztex.de/firmware-kit/) is required. All code is Open Source.

The software runs on Linux and Windows and supports USB-FPGA Modules 1.15 (see http://www.ztex.de/usb-fpga-1/usb-fpga-1.15.e.html) These FPGA Boards contain an USB interface which is used for data transfers and device programming. Thus, no additional hardware like JTAG adapters is required and low cost mining clusters can be build using standard USB hubs. BTCMiner also supports a cluster mode for such FPGA rigs.

BTCMiner supports dynamic overclocking based on error measurement, i.e. the software scales the frequency such that a maximum rate of valid hashes is generated.

The minimum hash rate denotes the hash rate without overclocking. The typical hash rate denotes the typical rate of valid hashes with overclocking. The power requirement was measured on a Experimental Board 1.3 (contains the voltage regulators, http://www.ztex.de/usb-fpga-1/exp-1.3.e.html) at 12V input voltage and default frequency).

The single unit price of a ready to use solution consisting in a USB-FPGA Module 1.15d with LX150 + Experimental Board 1.3 is 380 EUR (approx. 540 USD). The 25 unit price is 300 EUR (approx. 435 USD). Other volume prices are available on request. Here is a picture og that combination: 

Future plans
Software: There a still a few minor things which have to be added (long polling support, watchdog).  I will also try to find a fast implementation. But more than 5% improvement are not realistic. (Much faster designs would require longer pipelines. But these pipelines does not fit in the FPGA's.)

Hardware:The FPGA Boards presented above is not optimal since it contains features which are not required for bitcoin mining. A cost optimized single board version with on-bord voltage regulators, but without DDR2 SDRAM, configuration booster CPLD, microSD and GPIO pins is scheduled for second half of September. The expected single unit price is 330 EUR (471 USD), expected 25 unit price is 260 EUR (370 USD).

For amounts of 100 or larger a license production program can be offered which allow to build large clusters at competitive prices in comparison to GPUs.