Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Hardware => Topic started by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 09:48:36 AM



Title: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 09:48:36 AM
Now that Avalon is delivering a sweet ASIC miner, I'm wondering if there might be interest in developing a different kind of bitcoin mining ASIC. One that celebrates the development Avalon gave us in its small batch artisan high performance computing by making things still more artisan.

Here's what I'm imagining in this new celebratory ASIC:

  • A die size of 1 to five acres
  • Design based on http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DATE2012SHA3.pdf
  • We drive stakes into the ground for attaching nodes and guiding interconnects
  • Cheap speakerwire interconnects
  • USB interface
  • Controlled by Arduino or Raspberry Pi
  • Just maybe abuse some arduino boards to serve as nodes
  • Assembled over the course of one day, maybe an afternoon
  • Target speed of at least one valid mining hash in under fifteen minutes or less
  • Lots of beer and barbecue

Maybe this is the vodka talking and I came up with this just now or maybe I've secretly been planning this for months. This is the internet, I'm probably a dog and not even something adorable like a Corgi or Saluki. Maybe I'm a Caucasian shepherd.

Is this not though, at least a mediocre idea for a bitcoin meetup? We take over a park for a day and in large scale and coarse detail construct a massive tribute to the fact cryptography in a project beloved by nerds, geeks, anarchists, and libertarians has moved from software which has been democratic since the great Stallman the First to fabricating hardware using cutting if not bleeding edge technology.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: beekeeper on February 01, 2013, 10:00:51 AM
Funny, but not a bad idea..


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 10:04:05 AM
Funny, but not a bad idea..

I'm thinking somewhere in Southern Illinois or Central Missouri. It would be inconvenient for everyone and shit is cheap here.

I'm open to other locations though.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Unacceptable on February 01, 2013, 10:56:34 AM
Ah,one BIG ASIC................hhhmmmm.Everyone is looking to go smaller,so if you go bigger,it'll throw em fer sure  :o

Clever  8) ;D ;)


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: turboNOMAD on February 01, 2013, 10:57:05 AM
What is the projected date for the event? April 1st seems a good candidate.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: bonker on February 01, 2013, 11:05:48 AM
Now that Avalon is delivering a sweet ASIC miner, I'm wondering if there might be interest in developing a different kind of bitcoin mining ASIC. One that celebrates the development Avalon gave us in its small batch artisan high performance computing by making things still more artisan.

Here's what I'm imagining in this new celebratory ASIC:

  • A die size of 1 to five acres
  • Design based on http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DATE2012SHA3.pdf
  • We drive stakes into the ground for attaching nodes and guiding interconnects
  • Cheap speakerwire interconnects
  • USB interface
  • Controlled by Arduino or Raspberry Pi
  • Just maybe abuse some arduino boards to serve as nodes
  • Assembled over the course of one day, maybe an afternoon
  • Target speed of at least one valid mining hash in under fifteen minutes or less
  • Lots of beer and barbecue

Maybe this is the vodka talking and I came up with this just now or maybe I've secretly been planning this for months. This is the internet, I'm probably a dog and not even something adorable like a Corgi or Saluki. Maybe I'm a Caucasian shepherd.

Is this not though, at least a mediocre idea for a bitcoin meetup? We take over a park for a day and in large scale and coarse detail construct a massive tribute to the fact cryptography in a project beloved by nerds, geeks, anarchists, and libertarians has moved from software which has been democratic since the great Stallman the First to fabricating hardware using cutting if not bleeding edge technology.

I'm in


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 11:58:37 AM
What is the projected date for the event? April 1st seems a good candidate.

Well, I've been without a steady pay check for nine months and American so location would be more important to me than the exact date. April 1st sounds great though because hopefully shit will have warmed the fuck up. Too much sooner and we won't have time to map an ASIC design.

Now that Avalon is delivering a sweet ASIC miner, I'm wondering if there might be interest in developing a different kind of bitcoin mining ASIC. One that celebrates the development Avalon gave us in its small batch artisan high performance computing by making things still more artisan.

Here's what I'm imagining in this new celebratory ASIC:

  • A die size of 1 to five acres
  • Design based on http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DATE2012SHA3.pdf
  • We drive stakes into the ground for attaching nodes and guiding interconnects
  • Cheap speakerwire interconnects
  • USB interface
  • Controlled by Arduino or Raspberry Pi
  • Just maybe abuse some arduino boards to serve as nodes
  • Assembled over the course of one day, maybe an afternoon
  • Target speed of at least one valid mining hash in under fifteen minutes or less
  • Lots of beer and barbecue

Maybe this is the vodka talking and I came up with this just now or maybe I've secretly been planning this for months. This is the internet, I'm probably a dog and not even something adorable like a Corgi or Saluki. Maybe I'm a Caucasian shepherd.

Is this not though, at least a mediocre idea for a bitcoin meetup? We take over a park for a day and in large scale and coarse detail construct a massive tribute to the fact cryptography in a project beloved by nerds, geeks, anarchists, and libertarians has moved from software which has been democratic since the great Stallman the First to fabricating hardware using cutting if not bleeding edge technology.

I'm in

Awesome.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 02:19:05 PM
Funny, but not a bad idea..

I'm thinking somewhere in Southern Illinois or Central Missouri. It would be inconvenient for everyone and shit is cheap here.

I'm open to other locations though.

For pure inconvenience factor I'm thinking somewhere around Carlyle Lake State Park off of US 50 in Southern Illinois http://www.mvs.usace.army.mil/Carlyle/ (http://www.mvs.usace.army.mil/Carlyle/), but if a slight convenience is favored towards those people from Chicago Rend Lake might be acceptable.

Or you all could just blow me away by suggesting somewhere really weird.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: greyhawk on February 01, 2013, 02:41:02 PM
You had me at "beer and barbecue".


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Gabi on February 01, 2013, 02:52:27 PM
Excuse me but why are you basing it on sha3? Mining uses sha2...


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Akka on February 01, 2013, 03:05:42 PM
Excuse me but why are you basing it on sha3? Mining uses sha2...

Who cares, beer and barbecue.

Also building some giant apparatus involving Miles of Speaker wire somewhere in the wild sound like fun.

I propose that we also send the author of some tinfoilhat-magazine a anonymous letter, informing him that some libertarian-technocrats building some strange giant mind control chip.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Gyrsur on February 01, 2013, 03:07:11 PM
Excuse me but why are you basing it on sha3? Mining uses sha2...

<ironic>because Bitcoin will switch to SHA-3 very soon and all past ASIC hardware will become worthless!</ironic>

 ;D


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 03:08:29 PM
You had me at "beer and barbecue".

Thank you.

If we don't get anyone with macro scale chip fabrication experience I'd still like to organize a beer and barbecue, but I'd still like to fill out the paperwork for the picnic site with the event name being "Gigantic Cryptography Device."

Maybe we need a thread somewhere else. Maybe this just turns into a Southern Illinois bitcoin meetup and it's the middle of the summer with no one throwing in for food so we have to pull gar out of the spillway. I'd still like to do this, and gar are delicious when you fry them up like crab cakes. They aren't exactly filling like real meat. I'm hoping to get enough people together to the point we can either get a whole hog or a sweet as caterer who knows how to cook a whole hog for us. Bitcoin's probably big enough that if this becomes a thing we can hopefully get a cow, a pig, and a caterer.

There are zero reasons to worry about there being enough beer though, there will be plenty of that. I might throw in a bounty of a Coney keg of home brew for anyone who can get the standard bounty for killing asian carp in the state of Illinois to be paid out in bitcoins.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 03:10:46 PM
Excuse me but why are you basing it on sha3? Mining uses sha2...

<ironic>because Bitcoin will switch to SHA-3 very soon and all past ASIC hardware will become worthless!</ironic>

 ;D

Who said we're making a fork and switching to SHA-3 other than that paper I linked to... We can stay on SHA-2, they are just telling us all what to do in a very arcane language.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 01, 2013, 03:13:17 PM
Excuse me but why are you basing it on sha3? Mining uses sha2...

Who cares, beer and barbecue.

Also building some giant apparatus involving Miles of Speaker wire somewhere in the wild sound like fun.

I propose that we also send the author of some tinfoilhat-magazine a anonymous letter, informing him that some libertarian-technocrats building some strange giant mind control chip.

Sounds good to me. I have zero definite timeline in mind, but if we time it right we might be able to steal all of those cool drugs from the gathering of the juggalos if we go further south in Illinois than I planned on.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Gyrsur on February 01, 2013, 03:19:16 PM
Excuse me but why are you basing it on sha3? Mining uses sha2...

<ironic>because Bitcoin will switch to SHA-3 very soon and all past ASIC hardware will become worthless!</ironic>

 ;D

Who said we're making a fork...

you mean Bitcoin2.0  ???


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: marked on February 01, 2013, 03:28:40 PM
What about at the burningman festival?

Do it right and you'll have solar power, an OpenBTS mobile phone point.

mark


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Tamerz on February 01, 2013, 03:51:52 PM
SIUC alum here. Wouldn't mind a visit.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: greyhawk on February 01, 2013, 03:56:14 PM
Maybe we need a thread somewhere else. Maybe this just turns into a Southern Illinois bitcoin meetup and it's the middle of the summer with no one throwing in for food so we have to pull gar out of the spillway. I'd still like to do this, and gar are delicious when you fry them up like crab cakes. They aren't exactly filling like real meat. I'm hoping to get enough people together to the point we can either get a whole hog or a sweet as caterer who knows how to cook a whole hog for us. Bitcoin's probably big enough that if this becomes a thing we can hopefully get a cow, a pig, and a caterer.

I can get a hog and a guy with experience in preparing it.


Title: Re: A different kind of ASIC
Post by: Atruk on February 14, 2013, 02:58:12 PM
Update!

Right now I am thinking of a tentative date for the weekend of April 4-6th, 2014 for the "Different kind of ASIC Celebration of the Coin."

Like all ASIC endeavours anticipate a delay, 2014 was chosen largely for the purpose of incorporating a delay. The next few weeks I'm going to look into what kind of hardware it would take to actually do this. My first post in this thread was the result of just some drunken posting, but the idea has been growing on me. Especially the BBQ part.