Topic: Why ASIC BOOST is necessary. - page 2. (Read 2178 times)

Node counts are pointless.

No non-mining node "support segwit". Segwit doesn't need any node support at all, it's a softfork. Node counting websites just assume all recent versions of Core "support segwit".

You can change the useragent of your Core node to match Bitcoin Unlimited if you want it to be counted as a BU node.

I didn't mean "miner signalling".  I meant, in the "node count" that "support segwit" for unofficial "measurement of support by users".  I was of the opinion that if you had a sufficiently recent core version of the code (from 0.13.1 onward I think) you were automatically counted as a "segwit supporter user", or am I mistaken here ?  Is there an option somewhere to say, I run core software, but as a non-mining node, I don't support segwit ?

Core doesn't signal for segwit by default....

This is how I see BU too.  The problem is that if you run core software, you automatically vote for changes (at least, I think there's no option you can switch on or off for changes like segwit - I may be wrong on that), so you need to run "something else" if you don't want to signal for segwit.

I said it depends how you see it. Some sees BU not only as a modification on the protocol but a move to get power away from the current developers. Theres nothing wrong with it but it should be seen for what it really is.

What I highlighted in your post from back then is a fundamental observation on your part I think.  But it would normally also lead to sufficient distributed antagonism so that no important changes can ever happen to the protocol.   The fact that there is now this immense pressure for segwit and LN means that this got centralized, no ? (in other words, that a non-immutable colluding consensus over change has been found, and obviously under the "leadership" of one or a few colluding entities pushing for it).
 

I thought that was more or less established, so I took that for granted.  But as I said, my argument was not so much for asic boost by itself (I only looked at the theoretical calculation scheme without imagining that its hardware implementation would be seriously different from the standard way of doing so, as I said, i took that for granted), my argument was this:

"IF you consider asic boost such a phenomenal gain in efficiency that one could call it "an exploit" or "cheating" or whatever, THEN it is entirely wrong to stop miners from using it, because its mere existence lowers PoW security"

Note that the "if ... then ..." is also correct when applied to "if false, then false".

This thread was nothing else but a reaction to my argument being censored by people claiming that asic boost is an exploit and should not be used by miners, as it "lowered proof of work".  In as much as technically, asic boost is not doing anything, then it is not an exploit, and in as much as it does, then it should be used.  

As I said, I took for granted that the gain was of the order of 20%, because that's the amount of raw calculations that one has to do less. I didn't consider that there were technical problems in realizing this, but that doesn't alter the argument that or it is insignificant (and then there's no reason to accuse those trying to implement it to cheat or to exploit) OR it is significant (and then my argument is that it should be used by all means).


Your argument probably makes sense - as I said, I took the 20% gain for granted and established.


I initially thought that your argument was that for two different chip designs with *identical drop out*, as I considered the two designs of comparable difficulty (which, as you line out, may not be the case), it is not because their dropout percentages are higher than the difference in performance, that this difference in performance is negligible.   But this was apparently not the argument you were making, so my "rebuttal" was targetting a mis-understood point (I misunderstood your initial argument).

I didn't realize that the design of an asic boost circuit was more difficult than a design of the normal system, as people were shouting about accusations of a (established, in my mind) 20% increase in efficiency.

The point is that this entire technical hardware discussion doesn't matter for the point I was making: *in as much as* asic boost is any kind of significant boost, it should be used.  In as much as it isn't, it is also not "an exploit" "a cheat" or whatever other accusations it took.

Look, I'm not Shelby Moore. You've spent too much time trading simplistic arguments with him, I will not be easily bullshitted.

Firstly, don't repeat the propaganda number of "20+%" gain. This is a pure marketing bullshit. Tightly coupling 16 pipelines will greatly reduce the maximum possible clocking rate or lowest possible supply voltage. Additionally the yield of useable chips will be lower. From my general observation of modern semiconductor devices the optimum number of coupled pipelines would be 2,4 or 8, hard to tell. 16 would be past "diminishing returns" and into a "diminishing" territory. I've seen full simulation and analysis made for a different chip (not related to mining) and after doing some substitutions I arrive at the first guess of "-2%", i.e. small loss from synchronous 16-way hashing.

Secondly, by the very fact of using "standard deviation" in you argument you show the depth of your misunderstanding. It is hard for me to guess what you don't understand. My two best guesses are:

1) you may be thinking in terms of some unimodal distributions, where in reality they are always bimodal or multi-modal.

2) you continue to use simplistic textbook statistical models in your estimates. "In statistics, a trial is a single performance of well-defined experiment (Papoulis 1984, p. 25), such as the flipping of a coin,..." This maybe a good approximation of one hashing pipeline pass, where one trial block header is processed in microseconds at the cost of probably nano-dollars. Yet you seem to use it completely exchangeably with chip manufacturing workflow that takes months and costs kilo-dollars or mega-dollars.

Please upgrade your arguments to something more professional. Thanks in advance.

This is simply not true, ASICBOOSt stops us from creating ANYTHING which changes the header - USING Asicboost is a detriment to bitcoin. Get the facts right sir.

Your mistake here is repeating the thinking about "side"s or even "two sides" or adversaries like in a civil lawsuits.

I'm going to quote recent thread by chopstick quoting me from 2012:
I shouldn't have used the word "propaganda", I should've used "marketing" before value. It would not imply less of "taking sides", and more of general "selling".

I do not believe it either.  They are just making an exaggeration about that 20% boost.  But I wonder why they did not use a 0.01% or lower than that profit margin.  That would really give asicboost a 200,000% increase in profit.  



Or just buy Bitcoins, at least we have the finish product and saved from all troubles of setting up and maintenance.

That's more or less it.  But it wasn't kept secret, it was published in 2016.  Now, what miners put in their devices, or what their manufacturers put in their devices is their affair, no ?  

That said, I have my doubts that mining is a 1% margin affair   It wouldn't be worth it.  Too few return on investment.  Better go to the stock market instead of buying mining equipment, no ?

So your stance is that 20% more or less efficiency doesn't matter in the electronics industry.  I have my doubts about that.  As I told you already, I think you are confusing the standard deviation on an individual chip, and the fact that the average over a lot of them, shifts.

I would agree with you that if the technique, used to gain 20% more efficiency, would INCREASE the dropout rate by 20% or more, then, yes, this is not a good idea.  But if you get the same per-wafer dropout (even if it is 20%), and your *average* efficiency increases by 20%, that's something that, in most competitive markets, wouldn't be neglected, I'm sure.  If all else equal, there's no reason NOT to profit from 20% more efficiency.

If this is distributed to all miners, it nullify the advantage of other miners.  I also believe asicboost is really necessary because it renders the one who own it cheaper electricity to run the miner.  But if all miners use this then the advantage is nullified since each will add another 20% of hashing power to meet the maximum capacity of their electricity.

The only thing here is that this was kept secret to all miners until someone discovered that it was beeing used covertly.

As far as I understood, it is the *calculation* that was patented, not an asic design.  A bit like the RSA calculation scheme had a patent on it for years.

It is just a somewhat smarter way of organizing the calculations for the "proof of work", by allowing to re-use of some results.  There's actually nothing special about it.  But the thing is that its discoverer, of Core, filed a patent for it (= the calculational scheme) and apparently, the main ASIC miner producer has incorporated it in his chips without asking for a licence, and can, or cannot, activate it with the right firmware.  
Now, people on the Core side accuse the miners using this, and the supplier of the ASICS, to organize, with these chips, an "outright attack on bitcoin" by "cheating" on the proof of work, and present one of the principal mining barons as a big cheater.


Well, the only potential problem is that a core guy has a pending patent on it.  

When I tried to explain technically that there was nothing special about ASIC boost to one of the core propagandists here accusing Ji I don't know of being an outright attacker on bitcoin, using an "exploit" that defied all competition, he censored me about that (it was a self-censored thread), meaning that he must have known that his argument didn't hold any water.    He got this thread as an effect.

The main argument was that asic boost was "an exploit" and "cheating" because it allowed to "show more work than one really did".  This is an argument that was also used on reddit, that asic boost was an "exploit" because it rendered the block chain insecure because people (miners) didn't really do the work they showed.  I simply argued that that reasoning didn't hold any water, and it is actually the opposite: it is not the effort by the block-adding miner that secures the chain, but the work NEEDED by the attacker that is the security of the chain.

Whether 20% or so more or less, makes a big difference, is an open question, but in as much as it is considered a terrible act of cheating by the Core defenders, it would also be a terrible loss in security by not using it.  And in as much as it doesn't matter much on one side, it doesn't matter much on the other side.

In other words, I just turned the Core defender logic upside down with the title of this thread: in as much as asic boost means something, by all means, it should be used for security reasons ; and in as much as it is no big deal, well, it is no big deal.

In general, patents on improved economical efficiency of hash calculations are a serious danger to the cryptographic security of bitcoin, because in as much as these patents don't allow all miners to profit from the improvement, they can secure the chain with less proof of work than an attacker (of course not caring about licenses) now has potential technology to overcome it.  

Whether 15-25% efficiency improvement is an actual issue, I leave in the middle.  

You do understand that the propaganda was coming from the side that claimed to be a victim, right ?
But I agree with you that such a scheme is hardly going to hold up in court, as I outlined: it is too close, in my opinion, to standard techniques of key schedule re-usage.

I haven't heard of ASIC Boost before (mostly since I've been gone for a long, long time) but I guess based off of your post it does appear to have some value as a security measure for the rest of the blockchain. My only question is whether or not it would actually be distributed to the miners in a fair way so that everyone had access to it and there wasn't any of this funny business like what's going on with Jihan or whatever his name is.
It's definitely a unique piece, and I'm not entirely sure how someone came up with this kind of idea, but I like it either way. It's a neat system and I'd like to see more talk about it in the future.

Look, all your arguments are true, but pointless. Ultimately, Bitcoin mining is about money, and if you reformulate all your argumentation is terms money-gained per money-spend-to-achieve-the-gain-in-the-numerator, you'll reach the same conclusion as I did.

What gmaxwell did with his covert-asic-boost post and BIP was a test balloon smeared with shit. The test was "how many flies can we catch with it" and on this measure it was a great success. It is greatly valuable in discovering who will write about it without having a foggiest understanding of electronic device manufacturing and operation.

I understand that you consider yourself more of a pure mathematician and scholar than a "in the trenches" operator. I'm sorry that I had to tell you that you've felt for the oldest trick in the electronic device manufacturing business. But you've fell so deeply for it that I felt sorry for watching you making a fool out of yourself. Please have some self-respect even if you don't respect me or anyone else here.

The technical value of this asicboost patent is exactly "chicken scratch". It is only valuable as a legal bargaining chip for cross-licensing and as a propaganda device. This is the same for many other patents in the electronic and computer engineering business.

I doubt that the patent will stand up against ALL "ASIC" based technology.... then many other technologies would never have existed. You can

patent the design, but not the whole technology. In many instances companies will still manufacture the ASIC's but they will have to pay some

kind of royalties to the patent owner.