❌ Xilinx FPGA Boards for Mining

3 min read

VCU1525 - Active Cooled

  • Status: Delayed Production
  • Additional production is delayed due to component shortages in manufacturing.

  • Currently the most popular board for FPGA mining. Has the most bitstreams available.

  • Current: 170A Max
  • Interconnects: 2x QSFP+
  • Volume: unknown
  • External memory: 4 DIMM slots 4x16GB ECC RDIMM DDR4

VCU1525 - Passively Cooled

  • Status: Available
  • Cannot reach maximum hashrate without additional cooling.

  • Currently the most popular board for FPGA mining. Has the most bitstreams available.

  • Current: 170A Max
  • Interconnects: 2x QSFP+
  • Volume: unknown
  • External memory: 4 DIMM slots 4x16GB ECC RDIMM DDR4

The Xilinx VCU 1525 is just a normal FPGA that's good for mining certain coins. Originally this is something a hardware or digital design company would purchase and use in their labs, so there aren't any consumer facing purchase channels setup. To buy one, you'd have to contact one of the many distributors, or try to buy one directly from someone else.

The VCU 1525 will be able to run most of the bitstreams released, but in order to achieve the maximum hashrates you need to make modifications to it. We'll be adding detailed guides on these modifications once we receive our board!

These mods range from easy to complex, and usually aim to manage component temperature. These chips run hot quickly, so the more heat you can dissapate, the faster you can drive the clock, and the higher your hashrates.

BCU1525

  • Status: Sold Out + Delayed
  • Delayed due to component shortages in manufacturing.

  • Compatible with all VCU1525 Bitstreams

  • Sold out in July 2018
  • No more units until 2019
  • Current: 180A Max
  • Interconnects: 2 x QSFP+
  • Volume: 5000
  • External memory: 4 DIMM slots, 4x4GB Non-ECC DDR4

The BCU 1525's are essentially a modified version of the Xilinx VCU 1525 offered by a few smaller private parties. GPUHoarder from SQRL Research is techncially the manufacturer and seller of the BCU units. They source VCU 1525's from Xilinx, work with a manufacturer to make the heat management mods, and then do some post-processing and programming to make them mining ready.

One of the benefits of buying the BCU is that it their devices have an encryption key burned into the device (known as an efuse key) which gives the owner the ability to use proprietary mining software offered by SQRL and mining software developers from all-mine.co.

These were originally offered on https://fpga.land/, but sortly after they moved the sale to https://mineority.io/.

KU040

To start mining with KU040, first run the TeraTerm 4.99 serial port utility, and connect to the CP210x port, set baud rate to 921600, parity to none, 8 data bits. Then, there will be appeared junk characters once per second on the display. At this point, close tera term then launch the FX-tokenminer software and the KU040 should start mining.

XBB1525

  • Unknown ?
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