Wiznet makers

Hi, Everyone.

It's Luca.

Let me introduce one person's says in Bitcoin forum.

Maybe I found a reason why W5500-EVB-PICO is a great product. 

I was ASIC designer before, so this project is very interesting to me.

Let's start !

The Bitcoin ASIC miner forum link is here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5400851.180

Related Git-hub links are here :

Embedded framework solution = https://github.com/newAM/ambientsensor-rs, 

Rust Embedded environment = https://github.com/newAM/w5500-rs

Open source Bitcoin miner hardware using BM1397 ASICs : https://github.com/skot/bitaxe

You need a basic firmware running on the ESP32 that will power up the ASIC

========================================================================

========================================================================

========================================================================

Rust FW for bitaxe is a big subject i am working on everyday. As I said in a previous post, it is better someone work on a standard C FW based on existing component (cgminer) instead of waiting for the Rust solution which will take longer time.

There not such "cgminer porting in Rust", cgminer is heavyly dependant on C. The best I can do, is to use cgminer driver for BM1397 based HW, to understand the low level (undocumented) protocol. Then code a (Rust) driver for BM13xx (based on Rust Embedded-Hal abstraction).

To update on my progress doing so, I received the broken T17 I brought on ebay (2 hashboard seems to be functional enough to be communicating) with stock FW, so I was able to log serial/i2c communication between ControlBoard and HashBoard using Saleae Logic2 (logic analyzer) and code a High Level Analyzer to parse the Serial Protocol (communication with BM13xx), it is available on https://github.com/GPTechinno/bm13xx-hla. Basic communication protocol is covered, I am into understanting the registers and their fields now. For this I do cross comparaison with S9k log (BM1393) with stock FW I also have on hand. I will also try different custom FW for the T17 (including BraiinsOS+) to learn how these differents flavor handle the same HW. I would be also very interested to have more log from other miner (S17...). So a lot of work need to be done in this direction...

For the ESP32-S3 selection, it is the most ESP32 capable chip, that's why I guess Skot selected it. Its exotic architecture (Xtensa) make it less compatible with existing project. Nevertheless, esp-rs, which is the Rust support for ESP32 family seems to have active community and good result. Basically, there is 2 flavors :
- one based on IDF (the framework supplied by Espressif, based on FreeRTOS, so a low level OS in C, that can handle all wifi/network layers) where Rust application can be run on top (so kind of a mixed C/Rust embedded). To my personal point of view, considering this approach, it is better to have a full IDF FW with existing cgminer C cross compiled to it, no need for Rust here, this is the "standard C FW" I was refering to earlier.
- one based on plain Rust, but no wifi/network is available yet.

IMHO wifi is not reliable enought for 24/7 mining device, copper wire (Ethernet) is much more prefered here. That's why I have close look also into W5500 SPI/Ethernet bridge from Wiznet (I used them a lot in many other project), that has a very good support in Rust Embedded enviroment (https://github.com/newAM/w5500-rs).

For the Rust embedded framework, there is mainly 2 solutions :

- RTIC : Real Time Interrupt-driven Concurrency which I am not yet fully documented. Community seems very active. Alex (from w5500-rs) has a project example with it (https://github.com/newAM/ambientsensor-rs).

- Embassy : EMBedded ASYnc, which I start to love more and more. It has great support for STM32 and RP2040 (RPi PICO chip) but no ESP32 yet. w5500-embassy is not finish yet, but Alex gave me access to its private repo where job is ongoing there. I will try to make progress on it.

 I think a great HW for this, is the W5500-EVB-PICO, basically a RP2040 with a W5500 on a stick (brought 2 of them). RP2040 is a dual core Cortex-M0+ at 133MHz. Having a dual core look promising to have one core for the Network (Ethernet/W5500/StratumV2), and the second one for the BM13xx serial handling. Embassy seems to be able to deal with these 2 differents contexts (not tried yet).
 

Finally, why I think Rust is way to go for a embedded miner, it is mainly because Stratum V2 Reference Implementation is done in Rust (https://github.com/stratum-mining/stratum), I recently joined their weekly dev meeting and they seems to be interesting into a first embedded implementation. It can be done on the ESP32-S3 on top of IDF without the need to have actual BM13xx I think.
 

========================================================================

========================================================================

========================================================================

If you are Korean, visit this Korean website describing W5500-embassy: https://inmile.tistory.com/m/63

Above says that w5500-embassy is not finish yet, but I FOUND some repository about that.

Let's see this repository.

I think https://github.com/embassy-rs/embassy/tree/main/embassy-net-w5500 is useful repo for Wiznet users. It's about embassy-net related to our product, w5500

======

Let's study about W5500!
 

WIZnet W5500은 연결 기능을 갖춘 내장 이더넷 컨트롤러입니다.
인터넷 또는 로컬 영역에 대한 단순화된 연결을 제공하는 TCP/IP
SPI(Serial Peripheral Interface)를 사용하는 임베디드 시스템용 네트워크.
W5500은 안정성이 필요한 경우에 가장 적합합니다.
단일 칩을 사용하여 인터넷 또는 로컬 네트워크에 연결 TCP/IP 스택, 10/100 이더넷 MAC 및 PHY를 구현합니다. TCP/IP 스택
TCP, UDP, IPv4, ICMP, ARP, IGMP 및 PPPoE 등을 지원합니다. 그것은
수년에 걸쳐 다양한 프로그램에서 입증되었습니다. W5500 사용
데이터 전송을 위한 메모리로 32KB의 내부 버퍼.
W5500을 사용하여 이더넷 응용 프로그램을 구현할 수 있으며,
작업하는 대신 간단한 소프트웨어 소켓 기술을 사용하여
복잡한 알고리즘을 작성해야 하는 복잡한 이더넷 컨트롤러.
8개의 독립적인 하드웨어 소켓을 동시에 사용할 수 있습니다.
SPI(Serial Peripheral Interface)는 외부와의 쉬운 통합을 제공합니다.
마이크로 컨트롤러. W5500 SPI는 최대 80의 데이터 속도를 지원합니다.
메가헤르츠 시스템 전력 소모를 줄여야 하는 경우 W5500
WOL(Wake on LAN) 및 전원 끄기 모드를 제공합니다.

PLL은 여러개의 클럭을 생성하여 모듈에 제공합니다.

To estimate the needed bps for running cgminer, I asked to Chat-GPT. 

the result is below.

Thank you a lot!