Asics for blake256?! This is news to me, where is there info on this? I know decred will have asics coming out in 6 months or so, but that is 14 round blake256. Will those support changing the number of rounds and be compatible with blakecoin block headers? If not, would you consider switching BLC to blake256r14 so we can take advantage of the decred asics?
no need to switch and no would not switch just for asics anyways, current released info on the miner shows that blake256r8 is half the power usage of blake256r14 still want to switch?
Decred also has other differences in headers(size) that make switching or merging very hard it would definitely create issues along with a hard fork *too risky imho
I have sent a direct message to the manufacture of the miner to confirm Blakecoin compatibility as its just the serialization of the merkle in work gen its all in software e.g cgminer/sgminer
the company has already released some miners for other algos x11/x10 which imho is better than others asic producers/designers that are trying to pre sale Blake asics
not going to public link to them until I have at least got a reply about compatibility
well cgminer is a good ref for stratum but with opengl hmm maybe not
Chiguireitor(UMO dev) did do some work on a webgl miner some time back and tbh that would be best place to start but I dont think he released the source (probably due to beta/alpha code) might be an idea to drop him a line here or via his twitter
@johnvillarz and see if he can help point you in right direction before you go too deep
on side note next year might start to see asic's for blake256r8 so not sure too much work on GPU/FPGA is best time spent unless its for learning or fun
I will address the second point first. I have heard rumors but I haven't seen anything that is solid yet. If you have better information then please share it if you can. I was under the impression that the blake256r8 ecosystem was not capitalized enough to justify the tapeout costs of an ASIC. I have been mining on eu3 and I never see more then 20 miners at a time. If an ASIC is made then I will be very disappointed since I really don't want/can't get involved in a arms race. Until the dark day arrives, then I am trying to spend up GPU and FPGA
Your first point is useful to me and thanks. WebGL is a JavaScript binding and probably not what I am looking for but it is interesting nonetheless. This is the post that I was referring to. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4618.40
yeah but some designers do use a modular approach to design thus supporting multiple algos makes sense when you think of x11 asics tbh
as far as arm race well its
gold rush crypto people gonna make money selling
spades/picks/shovels/wheelbarrows asics