we are trying to solve the power problems and heat dissipation by multiple ways, if they work, i guarantee will tell you( in private). because I admire you about your detailed introduction about your design, we are really doing the same thing, but i have no plan to share it (before).
Well, possibly we can meet and discuss it. Because it is unlikely that it would be EXACTLY the same, very unlikely. As the design I made - I know that it is not absolutely the best one that could be done, and there's room for improvement. However efforts required are not justified, especially with epic failure about powering that logics inside. Also all path of design evolution is even more interesting than design itself, as I have for example interesting approach for parallel design with W-expander around DSP48. I've aimed about 350-370 Mhz clock originally - so this IS DEFINITELY point of failure, and if I would relax clock and target it at about 300 Mhz - it _could_ be implemented more efficiently. Also there's interesting possibility to mix parallel computation and serial rolled computation in 1:3 etc. (that's of what I had before).
about the ASIC design, a 90nm ASIC can run a 32bit adder over 7GHz. but you need a "elite research group" instead of some " bad engineer group". but you see, in our design, a SHA-2 core is really small and simple, this architecture is relatively easy to do the optimize. the smaller, the better. i nearly for sure place 200+ 128-cycle hash cores is better than now 80+ of 64 cycle cores (maybe this is our next design).
one way here to resist 51% attack is to increase the total hash speed fast. now we need to find a way. i think a mass of small mining ASICs (in public' hands) is a good choice.
Yes, making BitCoin ASIC available from different suppliers is nice idea. But someone has to invest funds into it. And it seems that community has no interest to invest say 10% of owned BTC to finish this moment up... About "elite research group" - that's exactly what I mentioned about.... All you can get say for $500k to produce ASIC would be unlikely "elite"... I suppose that AMD, Nvidia, Intel, military consume resources of elite research groups at much higher rates, than single investor would afford. Then if when elite group would do ASIC at high costs concentrate efforts on backwards 90-nm ? It should be AT LEAST 45-nm then... As this would rock... And true ASIC of course, not things like structured asic or fpga hardcopies.
ABOUT ASIC - One interesting thing that I have researched - single-bit design. I.e. instead of carry chains you use D-flip flop for carry and D-flip flop for result. Then it would require 32 times less wires for W-expander. Allows constant-optimization. This would be smallest CORE, but with one IF - IF you are capable to design long digital delay lines (i.e. like SRL16 in spartan) within chip. I know that it is pretty doable. But nobody I contacted can work at that level, and basically it is unlikely what you will find in cell library from TSMC for example. This carefully designed thing can beat everything and rise calculations speed at silicon maximum. I doubt however that there's many _developers_ who would even understand what I wrote about here and zero who can do that not in theory but with more or less guaranteed result in hardware.
Keep in mind, you have to add 11 TH/s to get anywhere near a 51% attack, and at that point you would be mining ~3600 Bitcoin per day. If you are generating that much, it is actually in your best interest to *not* attack the network, and let someone else develop ASIC as the price increases because demand will remain the same but supply will slow down.
I know a number of people talk about what will happen when the reward halves, but what would happen if a large investor developed ASIC to control a significant stake of the Bitcoin network? Wouldn't it essentially be the same result if difficulty doubled as if the reward halved?
a better way is mining for them self at ordinary day, and do a accurate attack when some large transform processing.....
well. it is pretty doable (about 51% for bitcoins) following way (also point for FPGA at current period vs ASIC) -
I have request for video transcoding at large scale - people inquiry whether I can beat with cost of these chips installations of servers/gpus for that. Typical need - tranform video file from formats:
(S)VCD (Super Video CD);
DVD, including encrypted DVD;
MPEG-1/2 (ES/PS/PES/VOB);
AVI file format;
MOV/MP4 format; Ogg/OGM files; Matroska.
codecs:
MPEG-1 (VCD) and MPEG-2 (SVCD/DVD/DVB) video;
MPEG-4 ASP including DivX and Xvid;
MPEG-4 AVC aka H.264;
DV video;
MJPEG, AVID, VCR2, ASV2;
FLI/FLC.
into:
MP4 H264 AAC
at bitrates:
'1080p' 4M (720p < height <= 1080p)
'720p' 2M (480p < height <= 720p)
'480p' 1M (height = 480p)
'480p-' 512k (360p < height < 480p)
'360p' 512k (height = 360p)
'360p-' 256k (240p < height < 360p)
'240p' 164k (height <= 240p)
that's for flash tube web sites...
So if farm can do this work - and process multiple petabytes of videos more efficiently than on own server hardware or like purchased work on clouds - then they will be definitely willing to invest more, as this is not only bitcoin-targetted then, and when ASIC comes in play - this farm would still be useful for other computations.
The problem is - that supporting all of that codes is ton of work. And also designing more or less universal board for computations is tough part as well. But it would open more financing for FPGAs - say on demand it transcode videos, and then in idle calculates bitcoin. If later it could be possible to run rendering there - it would be even more beneficial, however that's yet higher ton of work, and it is quite difficult to estimate feasibility of FPGA vs GPU for rendering.
If this is doable - such farm could be nice step into ASIC development for bitcoin world, still investments into it would be secured well and much less risky.