CGMINER - Remove CPU mining? - page 2.

DeathAndTaxes

donator

Activity: 1218

Merit: 1079

Gerald Davis

Quote from: RobertRibbeck on January 12, 2012, 09:02:12 AM

care to name those "other CPU miners"

Has support for SSE2. It is in active development and now includes CPU alt-chain support which should result in continued development (at least until alt-chain fad dies out).

http://ufasoft.com/open/bitcoin/

Quote

AND spouting "used by botnets operators, rogue system admins, and trojan developers"
is just ranting pie in the sky clueless nonsense

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Covert_.22mining.22

It is well founded. The inefficiency of CPU (MH/W) and the sheer number of them means the only "legit" operator is one who happens to own (or have legal access) to hundreds of CPU and also happens to have access to dozens of KW of "free" power.

Given that intersection of unlikely characteristics it isn't exactly a stretch to consider that most large scale CPU mining is being done illegally or at least covertly.

sharky112065

sr. member

Activity: 383

Merit: 250

Strip it out and get rid of it. People that need CPU mining have other miner software they can use.

To quote Spock...

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

Having CPU mining code is causing cgminer to be flagged by multiple AV software. Some unscrupulous people use cgminer to CPU mine against the hardware owners knowledge. When the hardware owner discovers this, they report it as malicious to the AV software companies and cgminer gets flagged.

I seriously doubt many donations (if any) are coming in from CPU miners.

If ckolivas is not receiving donations for CPU mining there should not even be a vote IMO. So I think ckolivas should just strip it out if he wants it gone.

kano

legendary

Activity: 4592

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: RobertRibbeck on January 12, 2012, 09:02:12 AM

...
care to name those "other CPU miners"

AND spouting "used by botnets operators, rogue system admins, and trojan developers"
is just ranting pie in the sky clueless nonsense

Um no.
Why do you think most windows A/V programs thinks it's a virus?

RobertRibbeck

full member

Activity: 221

Merit: 100

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on January 11, 2012, 11:57:02 PM

I say kill it. The feature list of cgminer has grown significantly over the last year. RPC adds a whole host of new capabilities but also new potential bugs and maintenance issues. CPU mining is useless for legit miners. Even miners who have "free electricity" (students living in dorm for example) don't have sufficient number of CPU to earn more than a couple bitcents a day.

Thus for CPU mining to be useful one needs huge numbers of CPU PLUS huge amounts of "free" electricity. Continuing to devote scarce resources to a tool that is used by botnets operators, rogue system admins, and trojan developers seems foolish.

There are other CPU miners available. The code can be branched off and if there is enough interest and financial support someone could make a streamlined, optimized CPU only version.

care to name those "other CPU miners"

AND spouting "used by botnets operators, rogue system admins, and trojan developers"
is just ranting pie in the sky clueless nonsense

gyverlb

hero member

Activity: 896

Merit: 1000

CPU mining is useful for me. I manage many servers that have quite a lot of spare CPU (even with VMs) and for which electricity is "free" (included in the rent). The ability to quickly deploy a feature-rich miner on these gives me between 100-200MH/s depending on the actual servers rented.

bulanula

hero member

Activity: 518

Merit: 500

Remove that junk ASAP.

CGminer is awesome !

notme

legendary

Activity: 1904

Merit: 1002

Create a branch for it, then clear it from master. If someone else wants to maintain it they can.

The00Dustin

hero member

Activity: 807

Merit: 500

I don't use CPU mining, but resist getting rid of legacy stuff because sometimes it can be of use. I can't maintain code either, so I can't offer real help. However, it seems to me that leaving it in as a compile-time option (that is unsupported unless someone else provides patches or maintains it) and not including that option in compilation of the official Windows release would solve the majority of your problems while still allowing cgminer to remain comprehensive in its abilities (it's not like it was ever the best cpuminer after it became primarily for graphics anyway).

ArtForz

sr. member

Activity: 406

Merit: 257

Seems like a waste of time to maintain it, if people really want to cpu mine they can just use one of the available dedicated cpu miners or deal with maintaining a fork of cg.

kano

legendary

Activity: 4592

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: Pontius on January 12, 2012, 03:14:35 AM

Hmm, I use the CPU miner as I don't have to care about electricity (I pay a flat fee to to my hoster) .
Why don't you just leave the code "as is", disable it by default and add a configure switch (e.g. "--enable-cpu")? I think this should cover most of your concerns.

Basically your suggestion means a lot of effort on the code to make it possible to be disabled.
Or, just remove it (easier and gone forever and no more maintaining it) and be done with it

From the point of view of CPU mining - anyone who does it is really wasting their time completely without doubt, or running a botnet.
How much BTC are you generating in a month?

-ck

legendary

Activity: 4088

Merit: 1631

Ruu \o/

Quote from: ThiagoCMC on January 12, 2012, 02:49:49 AM

I know ckolivas don't like Litecoin but, change the CPU-mining to Scrypt and let me ask to pooler if he can port his assembly cpuminer and maintain that portion of cgminer.

I don't know exactly why but, I believe in CPU-coins too... It can bring much more people to CryptoCurrencies... Right?!

CGminer RULEZ!!! It is the best Bitcoin miner out there!!

Thank you ckolivas for your time and hard work!!

Best,
Thiago

Thanks for your support of cgminer

To be perfectly honest, I wish that CPU mining was the end of the discussion and that GPUs weren't better at mining bitcoin specifically. However, that is NOT the case, and I believe in bitcoin more. I have no love whatsoever for alternative currencies and even if someone offered to keep CPU mining code maintained for the sake of alternative currencies, I would not accept their input, sorry.

jake262144

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 100

Let's make cgminer lightweight and easy to maintain.
I say shoot CPU mining in the head and concentrate on relevant tasks.
The last thing we need is stagnation when Conman bogs down in all that ancient code with all its special cases, assembler optimizations and what not.

Pontius

full member

Activity: 225

Merit: 100

Hmm, I use the CPU miner as I don't have to care about electricity (I pay a flat fee to to my hoster) .
Why don't you just leave the code "as is", disable it by default and add a configure switch (e.g. "--enable-cpu")? I think this should cover most of your concerns.

ThiagoCMC

legendary

Activity: 1204

Merit: 1000

฿itcoin: Currency of Resistance!

I know ckolivas don't like Litecoin but, change the CPU-mining to Scrypt and let me ask to pooler if he can port his assembly cpuminer and maintain that portion of cgminer.

I don't know exactly why but, I believe in CPU-coins too... It can bring much more people to CryptoCurrencies... Right?!

CGminer RULEZ!!! It is the best Bitcoin miner out there!!

Thank you ckolivas for your time and hard work!!

Best,
Thiago

kano

legendary

Activity: 4592

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Heh, it also means that anyone wanting other CPU code added knows where they can go ...

I only use CPU mining for testing since I only have 1 PC with ATI cards in it - so although even I have a use for it (that I sort of need) I like the idea of it being gone also

I'll even take out the CPU code from api.c when you get to doing it

Luke-Jr

legendary

Activity: 2576

Merit: 1186

Quote from: BkkCoins on January 12, 2012, 12:26:07 AM

As long as there's an old version on Git that has the code I don't see why it needs to be in current versions any more. Anyone who wants it can just grab a version that had it. I look forward to FPGA support and hope it will be modular enough that hardware devs can easily add their specific device support whether it be USB, JTAG, serial or whatever.

The BitForce FPGA support is itself only about 250 lines of code. The refactor I wrote first replaced/touched nearly 900 lines, making it easy to add new mining devices.

BkkCoins

hero member

Activity: 784

Merit: 1009

firstbits:1MinerQ

As long as there's an old version on Git that has the code I don't see why it needs to be in current versions any more. Anyone who wants it can just grab a version that had it. I look forward to FPGA support and hope it will be modular enough that hardware devs can easily add their specific device support whether it be USB, JTAG, serial or whatever.

domainauctions

newbie

Activity: 6

Merit: 0

agree totally remove it - it's lame and pointless and wastes your resources as well as natural resources and hurts innocents as well.

Also all these viri and shit showing up will most likely be in the news eventually and it will most likely be used to badmouth/hurt bitcoins overall i.e. media when/if that happens

Epoch

legendary

Activity: 922

Merit: 1003

Remove cpu mining. I know what a pain it can be to maintain legacy code and what affect it can have on program stability and just ease of maintenance. Few are going to miss it. Time to move on.

DeathAndTaxes

donator

Activity: 1218

Merit: 1079

Gerald Davis

I say kill it. The feature list of cgminer has grown significantly over the last year. RPC adds a whole host of new capabilities but also new potential bugs and maintenance issues. CPU mining is useless for legit miners. Even miners who have "free electricity" (students living in dorm for example) don't have sufficient number of CPU to earn more than a couple bitcents a day.

Thus for CPU mining to be useful one needs huge numbers of CPU PLUS huge amounts of "free" electricity. Continuing to devote scarce resources to a tool that is used by botnets operators, rogue system admins, and trojan developers seems foolish.

There are other CPU miners available. The code can be branched off and if there is enough interest and financial support someone could make a streamlined, optimized CPU only version.

Topic: CGMINER - Remove CPU mining? - page 2. (Read 18631 times)