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Topic: Basic Knowledge: Why is the GPU important for mining? (Read 1646 times)

newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
Done, thx for the hint  Smiley
newbie
Activity: 7
Merit: 0
With just CPU power, your best bet is to join a pool. It's about the only way to get any kind of payout.
newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
OK, thank u guys!  Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1330
Merit: 1000
That wiki description is a very good explanation.
full member
Activity: 327
Merit: 124
Hey there!

I'm a total newbie here and I fundamentally wondered why it is important to have a powerful GPU for the hashing. I didn't totally get the hashing procedure as well but i can read the wiki for it. Since i didn't find any information on this basic level I would appreciate any hint to get a better understanding of the whole systematic procedure.

BTW: Do I have any chance to at least generate one bitcoin with my Apple MacBook Pro? I'm already getting a bit frustrated because there is no effect after hours Wink

Hashing generates a 256 bit pseudo-random integer from the contents of a block.  A part of the block, called a "nonce", can be varied each time this is done.  A legal block will have a hash which is less than a specified 256 bit integer, called the "target."  By making the target sufficiently small, the average CPU/GPU time required to generate a block can be made arbitrarily large.  The target is periodically reset, so that blocks, on the average, are generated approximately every 10 minutes.  The blocks are hashed into a chain, so that rewriting a block that is followed by other blocks would be computationally infeasible if there are more than a few blocks after it. 

GPUs are important, because they are specialized processors with lots of cores.  A GPU can execute many Tera-Ops, whereas a CISC CPU can only execute many Giga-Ops.  Because Bitcoin mining is dominated by GPU power, it would take years before you could generate coins on your MacBook Pro CPU.





newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
Hey there!

I'm a total newbie here and I fundamentally wondered why it is important to have a powerful GPU for the hashing. I didn't totally get the hashing procedure as well but i can read the wiki for it. Since i didn't find any information on this basic level I would appreciate any hint to get a better understanding of the whole systematic procedure.

BTW: Do I have any chance to at least generate one bitcoin with my Apple MacBook Pro? I'm already getting a bit frustrated because there is no effect after hours Wink
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