Topic: What exactly is the point of everyone's hatred of ASIC's? - page 2. (Read 5319 times)

ok, i`ll give that one a read. seems very interesting..

and yes thats what i was talking about. in dutch it is called grafeen. i think it has big potential, especially in aplications nobody has thought of yet, at the moment they are just scratching the surface of its posiblitys i think.. if they manage to eventually find a way to produce it on a industrial scale it could change so many things.

Or maybe, just maybe, devs could change away from SHA256 and protect BTC from ANY sort of ASIC. They could have done it, but they didint as someone is making huge amount of btc/$$$ out of ASIC. Only 1 single change like that would turn away anyone from investing into ASIC hardware (private or goverment) as ASIC is useless piece of hardware once you change away from SHA.
BTC can be protected on software level much more effective and easyer than on hardware level.
If potentional invester into ASIC knew that devs will switch code as soon as there is problem, they would not even try to create it as it would be money thrown away.

if you haven't read it: Engines of Creation

And is this what you were referring to?

ASIC => centralization => big hit on head => ?!

Miners mine as long as it making money. And the community is full of their voice - not to change before earning enough. Security/efficiency call is all base on POW, there is always other ways to do it.

Look at the big picture, transaction fee will be kept lowering by competition of upcoming digital coins, and mining cost determines transaction fee ultimately. In the end, anybody can mine with redundant power of the devices he/she owns to barely make up the wasted capacity. Do not worry there is not enough idle power. I am now running some scientific computation programs for free, using 4 CPU cores out of my 8, and there are thousands of other people with me. 1000 stable online nodes could be enough to replace VISA.

I am not someone you can nail a "Missed Loser" mark on my head, or someone promoting something else. I got bitcoins and love it, and wish the community still have the leadership to move on, no matter what have achieved and what to cost for a bright future. Do the right thing, or be left in the cold - community's choice.

yeah i like that stuf to, but i don`t have enough background in those fields to really get into it. but its fascinating nonetheless

Been into nanotech since Engines of Creation hit the market. Now I'm just waiting for the final breakthrough for assemblers Yeah, I'll definitely check it out. Thanks!

it mostly depends on how much funding goes to these types of things. if a country like the USA or something finds a way to have a a big competitive advantage in some field by having that technology, things can move very quickly. but on the other side, it might never come at all. i don`t know enough about it to make any usefull predictions.
the only reason the atomic bomb was develloped in 5 years was because of war and endless funding. if it wasn`t for ww2 nuclair technology would probably have been 25 years behind and nuclair reactors where just now becoming the new cool thing.

grafeen is basicly a molecule thick cunductor when used in chips, but it has a wide range of uses. very versitile.. its actually just carbon i believe. its nano technology on steroids. i don`t know that much about it either. but if your into that kind of technology you schould check it out. crazy stuff but very very cool!

You may be right, but I actually think it'll still be in the neighborhood of 25 percent max, because the "obsolete" chips are still being disseminated, and 28nm chips from at least one manufacturer are already being put out in multiple configurations as well. I don't see 20nm die shrink as a big deal, honestly. I think it will at best give marginal gains over 28. Optimizing the design, even at higher process nodes, will give a better yield. I think that's where it will go. As already noted, the current bitcoin ASIC's are basically reduced size FPGA's, whereas they could be completely purpose designed. Doing so would make larger silicon real estate more valuable. The race to the bottom on process nodes is kind of a stunt, and definitely a shortcut over what CAN be done. If people start to shy away from the preorder bullshit, I think we'll start to see more "ground up" designs, and more efficiency because of it. There is a lot of redundancy to an FPGA, because it's NOT application specific. Fewer functions equal more real estate, less power consumption. I don't think 110nm was really finished out for potential. There's still room for a lot of improvement, and frankly most of it's design work.

Quantum's a long shot. I don't think it's going mainstream in a decade. I could be wrong, but I've been hearing how it's "right around the corner" for two decades. Instead we still have expensive and impressive toys in a few universities.

I am utterly unfamiliar with grafeen. Wazzat?

i think by the middle of this year when the neptunes, monacrhs and presperos hit the market we wil see 30% + jumps once more. but that will be the last time until asics as a concept become obsolete in the entire industry.
that will probably be caused by things like grafeen chips or quantum computing or something like that. and thats not consumer ready by a long shot, will take at least 5 years. but more like a decade if you ask me.

a few years from now we`re having a beer somewhere talking about those crazy years when bitcoin was comming to adulthood, and the way people went crazy. we`ll have a few laughs and have warm fuzy feelings when thinking about the way things used to be. and that it actually was a fun thing to be a part of.

Yeah, and those damn looms put hand tailors out of business and ruined our lives. Best go throw some wooden shoes in the works. That'll show 'em.

Be real. It was going to happen. You put geeks on a technical issue, they WILL make a better machine. Right now, it's the middle of an arms race. It'll settle down, prices will come down to meet reality, and there will be a place for scrypt as well.

As for ASICS enabling centralization, well shit me george, were there not pools taking up most of the network before Avalon? No? sure seemed that way to me. Face it: ASIC's are nothing new. They've been in watches and the like for decades. This is just a new application for an existing process. They do it more efficiently, thus they have taken over one type of cryptocurrency mining. Now there are beginning to be scrypt ASICS as well. Technology is in a constant state of flux. It always will be. Prior to the ASIC revolution, had Bitcoin actually gone mainstream and gotten the attention of the world's rulers, they would have soaked you via taxation to put a supercomputer or two on the job, and they would OWN that network. This has become much more difficult for them. It couldn't be done silently or cheaply at this time. BECAUSE of ASIC's.

Eventually, as others have pointed out, the improvement will become incremental rather than crazy. Already it has slowed somewhat. We're not seeing 40 percent jumps in difficulty anymore, and probably never will again unless somebody develops something even more efficient than the ASIC's. Evolution goes in fits and starts. The revolutionary part is an exclamation point, but it's not the end of the paragraph.

Where do you get this idea?
All of the asics that I have, never made ROI, some of them are close, but not there yet and I has been months! more than 8.
3 of 4 of my GPU farm, give me ROI in less than 5 months. (not counting that I can resell the GPUs that are all working perfectly, and recover 60% more!).
GPUs are FAR more profitable and a more sound business than buy ASICS, my numbers, and the cash I have in my pocket, is telling me that.

if the network still ran on cpu, a single asic machine develloped by an evil gouverment in secrety would kill btc overnight. asics are not special and defenatly not invented for btc. bitcoin adpted the concept. and if we as a comunity didn`t do it, it would be very easy for the ones who are evil to do just that.

to protect the network we have to make sure it is kept to the highest standard available.

Wow, touche!
I was thinking exactly about doge coin phenomena, you are correct!.

And as there would not be centralization if there was no ASIC.
So what your sain is that we have ASIC to fight centralization which was created by ASIC....wouldnt it be easyer not to have ASIC in first place?

Imagine how much more miners would BTC have than it has now. How much harder would it be to centralize it and shut it down if there was no ASIC around...
More miners, more BTC users, more users wider adoption, wider adoption better BTC price....ASICs just ruined initial idea of BTC.

I will agree in the past ASIC's have been built on legacy technology so it was fairly easy to develop a faster model. The reason this occurred was it was cheaper to manufacture 135nm versus 110nm versus 65nm versus 28nm versus 20nm. The cycle has been proven and has continued to 28nm and we are already seeing 20nm announcements from KNC and others but I do not believe as you state that "huge performance gains are a thing of the past" for several reasons.

1) We are not at the edge of Moores Law. I agree we are close but not their yet. The majority of ASICs are coming from 2 foundries TSMC and Global Foundries. Both companies have the ability to go to 16nm today. At 16nm they are now getting close to Moores Law but they are not there yet.  A couple of companies (Intel and IBM) can go beyond 16nm to 14nm but at that point the industry hits a wall until the next jump to 10nm (2015/2016) but it will take a couple more years until mass production can occur at the 10nm size. To develop at 14nm is expensive so I do not believe we will see products at this level until we have exhausted all other options.

2) Current ASIC's have essentially been a re-targeting of FPGA's without any significant improvements in design.  I believe there is a significant amount of research underway in this space and I am certain current developers are optimizing their designs. This level of optimization should allow a few more iterations to increase the hash to power ratio's. Look at Bitfury's design extremely efficient ASICs but still on 65nm tech and GHASH.IO have shown that with a great design and large quantities you can still be relevant against new technology. Companies like 21e6 (ex samsung) certainly know a lot about ASIC design.

So yes we are getting close to the edge of Moores Law and I agree when we get there we should see a good 2 year run where we can move from Niche players with limited access to next gen ASIC to a proliferation of low cost competitive ASIC's but we are not there yet.

2015 will be an interesting year.

asics are a an important step to making cheap efficient hardware available for everyone. ultimatly fighting centralisation.

ASIC's are a very important step towards mining centralization. That's it.

because they missed out on getting rich with zero or little investment.
Suckt it up, invest take risk and profit, dont be a cry baby.
The sun already gets up every day for free !