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Topic: Bitcoin network passed 4000 Petaflops - page 2. (Read 4596 times)

legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
August 13, 2013, 09:57:56 AM
#24
Ok who put red bull as fuel in that car?

I think it rather is Monster energy drink. Wink


But it is Red Bull wich gives you wings!
newbie
Activity: 49
Merit: 0
August 13, 2013, 09:52:01 AM
#23
But it is hard to make such comparison when ASICs are involved. You could do that comparison with GPU, by checking the FLOPS that the card made, so it was a bit like "if all the gpus were used for flops, then it would be like xyz". And it was a fail comparison because if you did the same with nvidia you would have totally different results despite both AMD and NVIDIA having similar FLOPS per cards.  But with ASIC? They can only do 1 thing.
I agree, FLOPS isn't a very good way to measure the power of the Bitcoin network, if we wanted to measure how fast the network was growing, hashes per second would be a better option. I suspect several websites use FLOPS because they want to compare Bitcoin's growth with other networks, and there aren't really many decent ways to make these comparisions (Bitcoin doesn't have any FLOPS, and the other networks don't perform any hashes), FLOPS is chosen as it's a little better than the other methods (such as electricity consumption).
sr. member
Activity: 672
Merit: 254
August 13, 2013, 09:49:41 AM
#22
TL;DR

Total FUD

/thread
hero member
Activity: 593
Merit: 505
Wherever I may roam
August 13, 2013, 09:47:27 AM
#21
But it is hard to make such comparison when ASICs are involved. You could do that comparison with GPU, by checking the FLOPS that the card made, so it was a bit like "if all the gpus were used for flops, then it would be like xyz". And it was a fail comparison because if you did the same with nvidia you would have totally different results despite both AMD and NVIDIA having similar FLOPS per cards.  But with ASIC? They can only do 1 thing.

You are absolutely right, that's why I explained the reason at the beginning of this post: I often need to explain bitcoins in a short time to people who, in  99.999999% of the cases have never heard of it and are usually not very knowledgeable about computers, too. Comparing the network and supercomputers lights their interest up and give them a vague idea of the magnitude of power I am talking about.  Whenever I found an audience of computer experts I wouldn't use this example, I agree wholeheartedly!  Wink
   
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 501
August 13, 2013, 09:36:09 AM
#20
Ok who put red bull as fuel in that car?

I think it rather is Monster energy drink. Wink

legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
August 13, 2013, 09:35:20 AM
#19
But it is hard to make such comparison when ASICs are involved. You could do that comparison with GPU, by checking the FLOPS that the card made, so it was a bit like "if all the gpus were used for flops, then it would be like xyz". And it was a fail comparison because if you did the same with nvidia you would have totally different results despite both AMD and NVIDIA having similar FLOPS per cards.  But with ASIC? They can only do 1 thing.
newbie
Activity: 49
Merit: 0
August 13, 2013, 09:30:32 AM
#18
Bitcoin network does exactly 0 FLOPS.
This is true, however, I think the FLOPS figures are mainly meant to give an idea as to the scale of the Bitcoin network compared to other networks, they are not meant to actually imply that the Bitcoin network does any FLOPS.
legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
August 13, 2013, 09:28:38 AM
#17
Ok who put red bull as fuel in that car?
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 501
August 13, 2013, 09:21:44 AM
#16
Bitcoin network does exactly 0 FLOPS. Comparing int and flops is pointless.

Measuring computing power in flops is like measuring how a car is good in altitude. Pointless, it is not a plane.

legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
August 13, 2013, 09:16:33 AM
#15
Bitcoin network does exactly 0 FLOPS. Comparing int and flops is pointless.

Measuring computing power in flops is like measuring how a car is good in altitude. Pointless, it is not a plane.
newbie
Activity: 49
Merit: 0
August 13, 2013, 09:13:30 AM
#14
BTW it should be read as 4.32726 exaFLOPS. Is Bitcoin the first distributed network to reach exaFLOPS power?
I think so, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects seems to indicate that the next highest is the Folding@home network, with about 9 petaFLOPS.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 501
August 13, 2013, 08:39:54 AM
#13
BTW it should be read as 4.32726 exaFLOPS. Is Bitcoin the first distributed network to reach exaFLOPS power?
hero member
Activity: 490
Merit: 500
August 13, 2013, 07:51:14 AM
#12
it will reach way more than this.. i predict over 10x time more
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 501
hero member
Activity: 593
Merit: 505
Wherever I may roam
August 13, 2013, 07:40:04 AM
#10
Someone add this to this list on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Distributed_computing_records

Wiki edited. Thanks for the hint!
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 501
August 13, 2013, 06:26:07 AM
#9
Someone add this to this list on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Distributed_computing_records
full member
Activity: 122
Merit: 100
August 13, 2013, 03:21:35 AM
#8
This I was afraid. CPUs doing one independend FLOP operation per tact, and ASICs can do one hash per tact as well. Seems you overestimate Bitcoin computing ability by 12.7K  Shocked


An old topic (2011) which explains it better than I could do.. but raising concerns about the validity of the comparison. It's funny to read that post today, talking about Radeon Cards... and have a look at the difficulty!  Shocked

This is exactly how bitcoinwatch estimates FLOPS.  I am not saying it is an acurate way to do the estimate, all I am saying is this is how they do it for what it is worth and for comparison to your other methods.  Many here among us question the valididty of this estimation method.

The page simply uses the following assumptions/estimates:

    1 INTOP = 2 FLOP
    1 hash = 6.35K INTOP
    1 hash = 12.7K FLOP

So the hashrate in TeraFLOP/s is simply 12.7 times the hashrate in Gigahashes/s.

As an example:  11,558.55 Gigahashs/s * 12.7 TeraFLOP/Gigahash = 146,794 TeraFLOP/s = 146 PetaFLOP/s
hero member
Activity: 593
Merit: 505
Wherever I may roam
August 13, 2013, 03:08:09 AM
#7
An old topic (2011) which explains it better than I could do.. but raising concerns about the validity of the comparison. It's funny to read that post today, talking about Radeon Cards... and have a look at the difficulty!  Shocked

This is exactly how bitcoinwatch estimates FLOPS.  I am not saying it is an acurate way to do the estimate, all I am saying is this is how they do it for what it is worth and for comparison to your other methods.  Many here among us question the valididty of this estimation method.

The page simply uses the following assumptions/estimates:

    1 INTOP = 2 FLOP
    1 hash = 6.35K INTOP
    1 hash = 12.7K FLOP

So the hashrate in TeraFLOP/s is simply 12.7 times the hashrate in Gigahashes/s.

As an example:  11,558.55 Gigahashs/s * 12.7 TeraFLOP/Gigahash = 146,794 TeraFLOP/s = 146 PetaFLOP/s
full member
Activity: 122
Merit: 100
August 13, 2013, 02:55:30 AM
#6
Part of my job is training and Bitcoin, together with other payment methods, is one of the modules I teach. To explain how powerful the network is, I compare it with the most powerful supercomputer. The last time I updated that slide, 2-3 months ago, the Bitcoin network had a "calculating power" of 1700 Petaflops, while the fastest supercomputer (Tianhe-2) had (and still has) an average of..... 33 (http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/) !!
Tonight I checked it again (http://bitcoinwatch.com/) and found out it has grown to ... 4327 !! Yes, exactly 4327 to 33..  

How many Floating Point Operations you count per one hash?
hero member
Activity: 593
Merit: 505
Wherever I may roam
August 13, 2013, 02:41:38 AM
#5
Flops (Floating Point Operations Per Second) do not apply to Bitcoin, Especially not since the advert of ASICs.

If you want to do a comparison do it with the estimated power consumption.

That's not a good comparison either, because btc mining gets more efficient. Mining power has gone up by a order of magnitude, but I bet actual electricity usage isn't substantially higher than a year ago.

Exactly, electricity consumption doesn't give any idea about the size of the network, the development of more efficient mining equipment can suggest, on the contrary, that the network is shrinking!!

From my experience (three years now teaching about Bitcoin) I found out that, when you try to explain Bitcoin to someone who has no idea of the concept, even more accurate measures like hashrate don't help them that much.
But when you compare the network with supercomputer and point out the ratio of 100:1 (even if less accurate) they will immediately grasp the size.. it's something very simple but astonishing at the same time.
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