Compared to GPU and ASIC mining, FPGA is much more efficient. Will the FPGA take over other mining hardware or fail miserably? In this article, I will try to shed some light on the FPGA and its impact on crypto mining.
SummaryWhat mining hardware is available now?2. What is an FPGA?3. How is the FPGA better?4. If FPGA is so much better, why isn't it everywhere? Will FPGA take over the crypto mining market?I usually start similar articles with a definition of the topic I'm writing about, but now, before I get to FPGAs, I'd better briefly describe what other mining alternatives are currently available. The current choices will help to understand the pros and cons of the FPGA.
If you want to mine crypto, you basically have three options:CPU, GPU, and ASIC.
CPU mining, as in CPU mining, is the most accessible form of mining, but it is also the least profitable. A good CPU can deliver the hashrate of a low to mid-range GPU, but with CPU mining, your monthly earnings will most likely be in the single digits. This is why no serious miner will ever consider CPU mining as an option.
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) mining is much better than CPU mining. However, good GPUs cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and you need dozens of them to make a living as a crypto miner. They also consume a lot of electricity. The good thing about GPU mining is that you are not tied to mining a particular currency only.
For now, the main reason why the FPGA is not the dominant mining equipment is its high price. At around $4,000 per card, or $25-30,000 per rig, this isn't the gear most miners will buy. While it's true that FPGA boards pay back much faster than GPUs, that's still a huge amount of money for most miners, especially considering the volatility of the crypto market.
In addition to their high prices, FPGAs still lag behind ASICs in terms of power consumption. While this isn't a big deal for miners in areas where electricity is cheap, for many others it is.
Another reason why FPGA boards are not common is that they require extensive technical knowledge to configure. There have been many developments in the area of simplifying the use of FPGA boards, but it is still far from a simple plug-and-run situation. One of the most promising projects is this one, so if you are considering FPGA mining, keep an eye on this thread.
It's hard to say because many factors can come into play. For example, if the crypto market crashes, you can assume that no sane person will spend so much on equipment that may never pay for itself.
On the other hand, if FPGA board prices drop and there are more plug-and-play solutions, you can bet that FPGA will become more popular. If there were decent entry-level $300-$500 FPGA boards, many GPU miners would abandon their gear overnight.
In a way, it's a Catch-22. For prices to fall, there must be higher demand. For higher demand to exist, prices must fall.
Unless something better comes along, I think the share of FPGA miners will increase over the next two years. If a critical mass of miners move to FPGAs, it will dramatically increase the difficulty and make mining with GPUs very inefficient. Many GPU miners will need to switch to FPGA or quit mining. It's not in the immediate future, so for now don't lose any sleep over it.
