Topic: Anyone w/ FPGAs should keep their eye on this (Read 9481 times)

The galaxy is not infinite. Neither is the universe. Worse still, assuming the big bang theory is true, everything (space/time/matter) came into existence from nothing.

So, suppose he does believe in Jesus. He could then account for everything that we normally assume is true (morals, logic, mind... and of course life, etc..). However, what's your belief on the origins of things such as morals, consciousness or logic? That fish crawled out of the water and gave rise to philosophers? ..ok..whatever... good luck being consistent.

||bit

Not to be picky, but you mean Universe.

We know the size of the Milky Way Galaxy

And out the 400 billion stars in our Galaxy it is arrogant to think we are so special to be alone, never mind the rest of the Universe.

So you honestly think humans on earth in an infinite galaxy are the only living life forms.. do you believe we came from the lord and savior jesus christ? lol

http://zidbits.com/2011/07/how-far-have-radio-signals-traveled-from-earth/

Good idea in general. Maybe something like the protein folding project would be worthwhile.

But I wouldn't waste the time & energy with SETI. Even if life existed in another star system, though astronomically unlikely, there are too many problems and too much space between here and even the closest star (about 4.5 light years). It's a binary star system with only one likely planet I have read about (w/ temps @ ~1500C). So, don't expect life there.

Other issues: What power would need to be transmitted? And how directional would it be? The more directional, the least likely we would be the star system receiving anything. The less directional, the least likely there will be enough power to transmit a detectable signal to earth. Even so, would you be listening at the correct location & time the alien life was at a stage of technology capable of transmitting anything? etc...

But the general idea for some other collaborative computational projects useful to humans here/now on earth still seems a worthwhile prospect.

||bit

OP here, didn't think there was going to much response to that post after I saw it fall down the page with no response. Anyhow, what you do with your FPGA is your choice. Continuing to mine for whatever you can get might make sense if BTC price continues to rise, but that's pure speculation.

Using it in a different distributed computing project is up to you. I only mentioned SETI@Home because it seems best suited for powerful FPGA processing and that website seems to be working on making it happen with that project first, then other, more complex ones later. Also, Folding@Home uses a lot of floating point processing which FPGAs aren't well suited for and adapting it to an FPGA has been put on the "won't do" list on their wiki somewhere.

It was just a suggestion and I'm glad to see some discussion over it. If you were to stop mining it would be a shame to see them collect dust. So, I proposed some info that could be just one of many solutions. Also, as far as power is concerned, however efficient they are, one could consider lending/renting them to a local institution for their own research or participation in a distributed project they want to help out. You could profit marginally with it that way as well.

Anyway, like I said, just trying to inform so you can make your own informed decision with said information.

Amen

Because when you make 0.05 BTC a month, it doesn't make it worth it no matter how little electricity it consumes.

um why wouldn't you just keep mining with a fpga  they don't consume much power
and if they have already paid for them selves just keep mining withem

people still mined with gpus even after the fpgas came out

I agree it makes sense, just not from the perspective of finances.  If you donate (which truly means giving money away without expecting anything equitable in return), then you are in a worse-off situation financially.  You exchange your donation for the feeling of doing some good in the world and for benefit given to other people.

It does make sense if you want a better world. I donate to a ton of charities that have a proven record and I like and write off the donations on my taxes. I live within my means and save a reasonable amount of money, too. I'd rather give the money to charity than the government, anyway.

Ok, fair enough..!

Yes, we both agree on both of those statements.

And for the right to say: I didn't say that it makes no sense for someone, I said it makes no sense to me to switch for the only reason that the current project doesn't make me profit anymore, especially because I think that the current project is the one that helps people now, while other projects might help someday, but maybe never will, outcome totally unknown.

Just my 2cents, nothing to worry about.
I'm totally fine if every FPGA-owner decides to switch to BOINC, I'll just let mine sit on Bitcoin, or shut them down completely if i can no longer afford the power. Donate them to BOINC? Not so much.

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what your point is.

So someone can donate electric costs worth of MH/s to the Bitcoin network by spending electric costs less small bitcents of revenues,

OR

someone can donate electric costs worth of computing power to other distributed computing projects.

Do we both agree on this?

Assuming so, a person would choose to donate towards the Bitcoin network or another distributed computing project based on what they believe and value.

Do we both agree on this?

Assuming so, what gives you the right to say that it makes no sense for someone to choose to donate their electric costs worth of computing power to distributed computing projects other than Bitcoin?

Life is out there, its just either too remote or too smart to get involved with us. (Probably both.)

As for bitcoin nodes, I'd run one just to support the network - because I believe in the change it can bring to the world.

It isn't less useful today, no matter how fast/big the network is now.
True, it's not profitable anymore.
True, it's pretty expensive compared to GPUs, or FPGAs.
But it's just as useful as GPUs, or FPGAs.
Every MH is as useful as another, no matter what hardware hashes it, or how many power is consumed by that hardware.

That's the nature of guesses, they can be wrong.
And i have no doubts that those dozens of other projects release results, the question is if there's anything useful in it.

Let's speak about CPU mining  Is it useful today?

Your guess is epic wrong btw. SETI isn't the only projects, there are dozens of other projects, biology, medic, physics etcetc and everyone of them released dozens of scientific papers with their results. No need to make "guess", facts speak.

Inelligent life ... That's a good one :d

No, it can of course be reused by the same person for a donation motive

Sure and one of those non-profit purposes might be the free payment network that Bitcoin is.

Says who?
What makes it useless on the bitcoin-network?
My guess is that even when ASICs are around the probability to solve a block on FPGAs is still higher than the probability to do anything useful on BOINC.