Use CRIO to mine bitcoins?

[fb39ca4]

The CRIO has an FPGA, so could one theoretically program the FPGA to mine bitcoins during the offseason to make money for a team?

[dcarr]

Recycling the bottles and cans you consume during build season is virtually guaranteed to make you more money.

Unless you partake in pooled mining, it is almost certain that you will spend more money on electricity than you will make in bitcoins (if you make any at all).

[fb39ca4]

Originally Posted by dcarr

Unless you partake in pooled mining, it is almost certain that you will spend more money on electricity than you will make in bitcoins (if you make any at all).

FPGA mining from what I have heard is quite efficient, so the power draw should not be an issue. The CRIO would draw what, 10W max? What I am wondering is whether it would be possible to program the FPGA for mining.

[tzjin]

The cRIO does not stand a chance unless you get extremely lucky. Take a look at the article below.

http://gizmodo.com/5994446/digital-d...t-mine-bitcoin

[Adamc4]

I lol'ed even at the concept of this. Pretty clever idea though, although not ideal for mining haha

[fb39ca4]

Originally Posted by Adamc4

I lol'ed even at the concept of this. Pretty clever idea though, although not ideal for mining haha

This isn't a joke, apparently people have made FPGA miners using the same FPGA chips that are in cRIOs.

[Justin Shelley]

This sounds like a project to try! Though I know fully well that I could never convince my advisors to allow me to do this lol

[Adamc4]

I laughed because it was a unique idea, not that it was a bad one . I would say go for it, a couple btc in the offseason can't hurt

[fb39ca4]

So, does anybody know how to program the FPGA directly? There are already mining programs available for the family of FPGA chips being used, but they are meant for dev boards where you can upload the code directly.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Game Manual

[R96] Bitcoins mined in this way may only be used to lease time on 1625's WIN pump

[Greg McKaskle]

My neighbor works in the financial markets and was recently talking about FPGA based trading bots -- and how his firm doesn't do this despite the success of some firms. So when I read this, I thought you were wanting to put team money into pork belly futures and ...

The tools for programming the FPGA have been granted in the past to teams looking to do offseason projects. Your options are to program in LV or in VHDL. I would assume that IP for the hash is readily available and you'd replicate it to the brim to fill up the FPGA, wait out the compile, and then use LV or RIO drivers to load it into the FPGA on boot. You then write a small RT program to seed and harvest the FPGA registers you are interested in.

If you succeed, you can spend them on this ... sweet ride.


Greg McKaskle

[nicholsjj]

Originally Posted by Justin Shelley

This sounds like a project to try! Though I know fully well that I could never convince my advisors to allow me to do this lol

You're right. I agree with saving soda cans making more money. One of our school programs makes around $500 a month doing so. Probably more than Crio mining will get your team.

[Isaac501]

Bitcoin?? Didn't the bottom just fall out of this ridiculous scheme anyway?

Distributed computing has been around for a long time - RC5-64, SETI@home, F@H... Projects that are intellectual or beneficial to mankind.


Sell your scrap aluminum to a recycler. You'll make more money.

Find a fundraiser that's worthwhile, that your entire team can participate in.

[Adamc4]

Originally Posted by Isaac501

Bitcoin?? Didn't the bottom just fall out of this ridiculous scheme anyway?

Right now Bitcoin is still in a speculative mode. Like any other form of currency, it takes awhile to establish a more consistent exchange rate. Right now people are using it as a type of speculation, but since its only four years old you can't expect it to be 100% steady. All new currencies are volatile. I wouldn't consider a ~$120 equivalency rate as of today to be a ridiculous scheme either, especially if you have the hardware to mine

[ferret_guy]

It looks like using the crio II Spartan-6 fpga you get about 100 Mhash/s so if 2500 teams do 100 Mhash/s you would do 250 Ghash/s or ~$56,975.96 a month