sure a litecoin project interests me. With the latest developments, switching over sounds a good idea. You make some very good points as well.
Regards,
Brian
Topic: DESIGNING the next generation FAST CRYPTO CURRENCY MINING MACHINE - page 5. (Read 22989 times)
April 21, 2013, 01:53:10 PM
April 21, 2013, 12:46:46 PM
How then does the 'average Joe' at home get involved without needing to buy specialized hardware? doesn't forcing people to buy asics destroy the decentralization in favor of large farms? do you not expect these now burned early adopters to migrate to another algorithm and start spreading the word of a better/faster crypto currency?
And is my math right? we need a billion transistors and $50 million to build a terra hashing sha chip, right?
And is my math right? we need a billion transistors and $50 million to build a terra hashing sha chip, right?
April 21, 2013, 12:39:55 PM
I disagree with your for two related reasons:
1) Crypto-currencies that are most efficiently mined with ASICs are actually more secure because general purpose computing equipment can't be re-tasked to attack the currency. Once Bitcoin is mined with ASICs, retasking a botnet to attack Bitcoin will be hopeless.
2) Crypto-currencies that are most efficiently mined with ASICs can only be attacked by people who have a significant investment in equipment whose value is directly determined by the value of the currency. Those who can mine Bitcoins efficiently will be those who have invested heavily in Bitcoin itself and will have the most incentive to preserve its value.
There are a number of possible attacks on Bitcoin based on having lots of mining power, but the fact that it can be heavily accelerated by ASICs actually *increases* the resistance to them.
1) Crypto-currencies that are most efficiently mined with ASICs are actually more secure because general purpose computing equipment can't be re-tasked to attack the currency. Once Bitcoin is mined with ASICs, retasking a botnet to attack Bitcoin will be hopeless.
2) Crypto-currencies that are most efficiently mined with ASICs can only be attacked by people who have a significant investment in equipment whose value is directly determined by the value of the currency. Those who can mine Bitcoins efficiently will be those who have invested heavily in Bitcoin itself and will have the most incentive to preserve its value.
There are a number of possible attacks on Bitcoin based on having lots of mining power, but the fact that it can be heavily accelerated by ASICs actually *increases* the resistance to them.
April 21, 2013, 12:39:35 PM
While I actually support a project like this and I hope it (or something very much like it) succeeds, I find it somewhat funny that you claim to be "ASIC HOSTILE - Decentralized mining is the only workable solution" in your signature while also proposing building a mining ASIC along the same lines of Avalon and BFL. Cognitive Dissonance much?
April 20, 2013, 10:40:57 PM
Interested. Watching thread.
Would this be a ASICMINER-esque operation or a Hardware Sales operation (such as Avalon)?
Would this be a ASICMINER-esque operation or a Hardware Sales operation (such as Avalon)?
Whoa slow down there, camper, let's see what we're gonna design before we come up with a way to sell it. ;-)
April 20, 2013, 08:40:35 PM
Agreed 200%.
Thank you for that. I agree 200% as well. Another nice thing about litecoin is that the transaction takes 2 minutes to verify as I understand it... not 30+ so real merchants are more likely to adopt it (imagine waiting 1/2 hour to pay for gasoline!). Finally they offer more coins with 84 million total compared to the 21. (I think I would have chosen a much much higher number).
So if you guys are all in let's start figuring out what a scrypt miner looks like....
April 20, 2013, 05:49:56 PM
Come on Inaba, it's ON!
Well... that was fast... Glad I didn't "bet".
Here's the latest news: Coding In My Sleep Receives BFL on 420 2013
This is a significant event and, ironically, I think it spells the end of Bitcoin. What it will do is force the 'average user' to migrate to a currency like litecoin where the miners work based on scrypt instead of sha-256. Now the problem, and the opportunity, has realistically just shifted to scrypt mining. Your 'average joe' will no longer mine bitcoin and it will slowly fall out of favor.
Disagree? Opportunity?
Well... that was fast... Glad I didn't "bet".
Here's the latest news: Coding In My Sleep Receives BFL on 420 2013
This is a significant event and, ironically, I think it spells the end of Bitcoin. What it will do is force the 'average user' to migrate to a currency like litecoin where the miners work based on scrypt instead of sha-256. Now the problem, and the opportunity, has realistically just shifted to scrypt mining. Your 'average joe' will no longer mine bitcoin and it will slowly fall out of favor.
Disagree? Opportunity?
April 17, 2013, 01:03:16 PM
Last edited: June 9, 2013 (refresh to check for update)
Ready to DESIGN, NOW seeking advice on development boards for a litecoin mining FPGA.
Now Recruiting a DESIGN Team
It appears the ASIC race just ended and Avalon won. Avalon shipped completed 65GH/s mining units and has taken orders for at least an additional 50,000 of their 282 MH/s bitcoin mining chips. Butterfly labs has shipped their very first 5GH/s unit with more anticipated to follow. The difficulty curve is about to jump to 140,000,000 and soon thereafter rise to 700,000,000. At that rate my personal (theoretical) 3.6 GHz farm produces pennies a day and the cost of electricity is far more than I can generate in coin (assuming a $100 valuation for Bitcoin).
-- to keep the thread readable, please minimize your use of the quote function --
So, what's next?
I have come to the conclusion, as many others have, that the future of Bitcoin died with the shipping of the ASIC. Satoshi's original paper starts with a description of a peer-to-peer currency yet the ASIC mining solution destroys the peer-to-peer methodology and places all the power of printing Bitcoin into the hands of a tiny group of companies who have the capital to produce a massive farm. To compete against these farms you need even more capital.
Per the calculator, if one bitcoin is worth $100US then:
@140,000,000 a 1GH/s miner yeilds $0.34US per day before electricity
@700,000,000 a 1GH/s miner yeilds $0.07US per day before electricity
So what can be done? What if I can build a farm that operates at 1 tera hash per second?
One Avalon operates at 282MH/s so I need about 3500 chips at $20k+ (plus the multi-thousands dollar PCB design/production). Or I could buy 15 prebuilt units at for approximately $200k. So if I budget $250,000 to a tera hashing solution and plug it into the calculator I find:
@140,000,000 a 1TH/s miner yeilds $333US per day before electricity (~$500)
@700,000,000 a 1TH/s miner yeilds $72 US per day before electricity (~$500)
Gee, this isn't going well is it?
So what can be done? What if I can build a farm that operates at 1 peta hash per second?
We need a whole new animal to get to this level. We'll need about a billion transistors and our cost to develop will skyrocket to $50 million minimum... Intel spends BILLIONS developing chips like these. I don't think your average miner is going to get there.
And this is why Bitcoin will die.
What we need is a new crypto currency based upon the Bitcoin design which does two things:
1) the coin needs to work based on an algorithm other than sha256 since ASICs do the sha256 proof of work amazingly well.
2) the currency should show transactions more quickly than bitcoin. (Can you imagine paying for something at a store and needing to wait 30 minutes for the cash to end up in the register?)
I propose, because miners can no longer mine with their personal computer and miners are the heart of the currency that wise miners will migrate away from bitcoin to litecoin because it solves these problems. Further I think cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy with mass adoption still several years, if not decades, off. So where is the opportunity?
I believe in bitcoin for a variety of reasons and I am long term bullish on crypto currencies. But I also believe people will continue to migrate to scrypt based currencies because their fancy GPU mining hardware is now useless in solving the sha256 proof of work. So I would recommend to anyone they point their gear at litecoin (though that doesn't help me). Then we get into a theoretical question about scrypt. It is designed to be ASIC hostile to twart groups like Avalon from centralizing mining solutions.
So I'd like to begin a discussion about building a device that solves the scrypt proof of work. And so we need to start with a rudminetary understanding. Here it is in all it's wikipedia glory
"The scrypt function is specifically designed to hinder [brute force attacks] by raising the resource demands of the algorithm. Specifically, the algorithm is designed to use a large amount of memory compared to other password-based KDFs, making the size and the cost of a hardware implementation much more expensive, and therefore limiting the amount of paralleling an attacker can use (for a given amount of financial resources)".
So where is the opportunity?
Who wants to help me try to CENTRALIZE the scrypt mining process?
-- to keep the thread readable, please minimize your use of the quote function --
note:
At this time this is a volunteer effort, nobody is getting paid for anything.
We are seeking engineers and mathematics, coders and builders.
We are not seeking investors, though we invite them to watch the process.
The original Scrypt whitepaper:
older notes that led to this conclusion:
Recovering Investment:
Analysis of Difficulty curve
You may be right, but until I have a delivery schedule and actual price in front of me I am betting there may be a market.
Costs & Cost Reduction:
I've sent off the Open Source FPGA Miner HDL to analyse it and determine a cost to produce it as an ASIC. I recognize that changes need to be made to convert it but I don't posess an ASIC RTL at the moment so this is the starting point.
Collaboration:
Happy to consider ANY technology that will deliver what BFL has not. If you have directions to build a quantum computer please send them my way
The Manufacturing Process:
About Viceroy:
I am a computer scientist educated at a University. I am not an electrical engineer and do not have the ability to develop this chip. I do, however, have decades of management experience with and around engineers. In terms of project management I have designed and managed an online database of Dept. of Education data through four revisions while operating as a strategic revenue sharing partner with several major universities and several non-university online publications.
Ready to DESIGN, NOW seeking advice on development boards for a litecoin mining FPGA.
Now Recruiting a DESIGN Team
It appears the ASIC race just ended and Avalon won. Avalon shipped completed 65GH/s mining units and has taken orders for at least an additional 50,000 of their 282 MH/s bitcoin mining chips. Butterfly labs has shipped their very first 5GH/s unit with more anticipated to follow. The difficulty curve is about to jump to 140,000,000 and soon thereafter rise to 700,000,000. At that rate my personal (theoretical) 3.6 GHz farm produces pennies a day and the cost of electricity is far more than I can generate in coin (assuming a $100 valuation for Bitcoin).
-- to keep the thread readable, please minimize your use of the quote function --
So, what's next?
I have come to the conclusion, as many others have, that the future of Bitcoin died with the shipping of the ASIC. Satoshi's original paper starts with a description of a peer-to-peer currency yet the ASIC mining solution destroys the peer-to-peer methodology and places all the power of printing Bitcoin into the hands of a tiny group of companies who have the capital to produce a massive farm. To compete against these farms you need even more capital.
Per the calculator, if one bitcoin is worth $100US then:
@140,000,000 a 1GH/s miner yeilds $0.34US per day before electricity
@700,000,000 a 1GH/s miner yeilds $0.07US per day before electricity
So what can be done? What if I can build a farm that operates at 1 tera hash per second?
One Avalon operates at 282MH/s so I need about 3500 chips at $20k+ (plus the multi-thousands dollar PCB design/production). Or I could buy 15 prebuilt units at for approximately $200k. So if I budget $250,000 to a tera hashing solution and plug it into the calculator I find:
@140,000,000 a 1TH/s miner yeilds $333US per day before electricity (~$500)
@700,000,000 a 1TH/s miner yeilds $72 US per day before electricity (~$500)
Gee, this isn't going well is it?
So what can be done? What if I can build a farm that operates at 1 peta hash per second?
We need a whole new animal to get to this level. We'll need about a billion transistors and our cost to develop will skyrocket to $50 million minimum... Intel spends BILLIONS developing chips like these. I don't think your average miner is going to get there.
And this is why Bitcoin will die.
What we need is a new crypto currency based upon the Bitcoin design which does two things:
1) the coin needs to work based on an algorithm other than sha256 since ASICs do the sha256 proof of work amazingly well.
2) the currency should show transactions more quickly than bitcoin. (Can you imagine paying for something at a store and needing to wait 30 minutes for the cash to end up in the register?)
I propose, because miners can no longer mine with their personal computer and miners are the heart of the currency that wise miners will migrate away from bitcoin to litecoin because it solves these problems. Further I think cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy with mass adoption still several years, if not decades, off. So where is the opportunity?
I believe in bitcoin for a variety of reasons and I am long term bullish on crypto currencies. But I also believe people will continue to migrate to scrypt based currencies because their fancy GPU mining hardware is now useless in solving the sha256 proof of work. So I would recommend to anyone they point their gear at litecoin (though that doesn't help me). Then we get into a theoretical question about scrypt. It is designed to be ASIC hostile to twart groups like Avalon from centralizing mining solutions.
So I'd like to begin a discussion about building a device that solves the scrypt proof of work. And so we need to start with a rudminetary understanding. Here it is in all it's wikipedia glory
"The scrypt function is specifically designed to hinder [brute force attacks] by raising the resource demands of the algorithm. Specifically, the algorithm is designed to use a large amount of memory compared to other password-based KDFs, making the size and the cost of a hardware implementation much more expensive, and therefore limiting the amount of paralleling an attacker can use (for a given amount of financial resources)".
So where is the opportunity?
Who wants to help me try to CENTRALIZE the scrypt mining process?
-- to keep the thread readable, please minimize your use of the quote function --
note:
At this time this is a volunteer effort, nobody is getting paid for anything.
We are seeking engineers and mathematics, coders and builders.
We are not seeking investors, though we invite them to watch the process.
The original Scrypt whitepaper:
Interesting thread. I had a brief look at the original Scrypt paper (which is quite old)
older notes that led to this conclusion:
Recovering Investment:
Analysis of Difficulty curve
Seems like getting back your sunk cost will be risky. BFLs vaporware is at $50/Ghash, avalon less if the DIY option materializes. $75+profit+board costs seems high in comparison for only 600 Mhash (assuming your estimates are accurate).
Other ASIC makers are getting to the point where they can produce large quantities and at that price you might not get much volume but I'd expect you'd get a fair amount of support from your local market if the mh/w is comparable.
Xilinx Spartan-6 price delivering ~230 MH/s at 25k Quantity is $50.....@5k quantity is $72.....6 weeks lead time...for 10 weeks lead time you get ~280 MH/s @~$9 - AVALON.... Everybody in this forum talks about ASICS and NRE of ~250k (where the ETA is ~ 4-5 months) and nobody buys 10k Avalon chips....it's a lot more easier and cheaper
You may be right, but until I have a delivery schedule and actual price in front of me I am betting there may be a market.
Costs & Cost Reduction:
I've sent off the Open Source FPGA Miner HDL to analyse it and determine a cost to produce it as an ASIC. I recognize that changes need to be made to convert it but I don't posess an ASIC RTL at the moment so this is the starting point.
You are looking at a cost close to 2M usd, at least. Keep in mind that the upfront cost of design/production increases with a super linear scale with finer process node. 110nm process node (avalon) was easier than 90nm. 28nm will be much much harder.
You mentioned the price depends on volume, how much volume needed for the USD 65 to 85 mark and how much to get them at half that price?
Collaboration:
Viceroy, what kind of throughput are you trying to develop?
Are you building ASIC or FPGA? ASIC does not have LUT (look-up table), it has gates.
Happy to consider ANY technology that will deliver what BFL has not. If you have directions to build a quantum computer please send them my way
The Manufacturing Process:
Typical ASIC production will involve:
1. HDL design from spec (100 - 200K)
2. Verification & physical synthesis/timing closure/power analysis of (1) (>200K)
3. Contract with fab and production (> 1M)
You can slice and dice above based on which components you get ready to use. Since you would be targeting a lower process node, likely other than (1), you will need to pay for other points, and expect the iteration between 2 and 1 very high (implying need to pay for 1 as well).
1. HDL design from spec (100 - 200K)
2. Verification & physical synthesis/timing closure/power analysis of (1) (>200K)
3. Contract with fab and production (> 1M)
You can slice and dice above based on which components you get ready to use. Since you would be targeting a lower process node, likely other than (1), you will need to pay for other points, and expect the iteration between 2 and 1 very high (implying need to pay for 1 as well).
About Viceroy:
Now out of curiosity, do you have experience in the field? Or is this just your first design?
I am a computer scientist educated at a University. I am not an electrical engineer and do not have the ability to develop this chip. I do, however, have decades of management experience with and around engineers. In terms of project management I have designed and managed an online database of Dept. of Education data through four revisions while operating as a strategic revenue sharing partner with several major universities and several non-university online publications.
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