Bitcoin Forum

I was thinking about the following:

When the bitcoin will become economically stronger in the (near) future, it could spawn the next generation of personal computers. The processor would be designed from scratch and the specification would be completely open-source for anyone to review. The part of the architecture would be also small ASIC miner(s) presented in such a PC.

The OS will be Linux-derived or created from scratch, and the basic bitcoin software will be build in, so every computer will be also the bitcoin node by default, p2pool, wallet and other software will be also pre-installed. Also, all services requiring privacy will be provided by decentralized blockchain, like for example Bitmessage for communication, etc.

To sum it up, it will be something also Richard Stallman would use (free in the FSF sense), and I believe bitcoin could make this economically viable. I wonder what do you think about this idea.

Seems that my prediction is starting to materialize... ;-)

iBuyPower mints new CoinMine desktops for Bitcoin mining
http://www.zdnet.com/ibuypower-mints-new-coinmine-desktops-for-bitcoin-mining-7000025201/

I like the OP's idea, sounds like something for people to start working on. Completely open source from the hardware through to the OS? I'd contribute towards a project like that.

I like this idea. 

Before i saw the link, i thought "you mean like a computer with a GPU...".  The idea is a year to late. 

Open source CPUs are a pipe dream because of the massive cost required to develop and fab silicon.  It might be workable if you went back some generations and utilised some old ex-patent architecture.  iirc China has done something like this, basing homegrown processors based on MIPS.  You cant do DIY hardware in your garage/basement/shed/whatever like you can with software.

Not yet. What are the chances of 3D printing making this sort of thing a reality?

neato idea, BUT this doesnt change much.  The question is who has the MAJORITY hashing power, giving it to everyone doesn't prevent people from forming pools and profiting from nefarious activity of those pools.

-bm

If every new computer had a built in ASIC of the latest design, the majority would probably be the masses.

but there is nothing stopping them from teaming up to strategically disrupt for instance.  In the original whitepaper the assumption was that good behavior payed off better than bad behavior.  Im not really sure that this THEOREM is still intact.  I'll grant you that the *probability* of anti-social behavior is probably less if it depends on the choice of average, low information users, but this doesn't strictly prevent it from happening.

certainly smaller levels of hashing power could easily be used to disrupt the minor alt currencies.

PoW was invented for spam prevention, not really to run a digital currency.

Zero, at least for the foreseeable.  You'd be talking about 3D printing at a microscopic to atomic level.  Thats several generations (read decades) of 3D print technology away, there probably would be home photolithography before that.  Bear in mind today's semiconductor fabrication plants cost several billion to build, its not about to scale down for homebrew.

I'll take your word for it as its not my area of expertise, but sometimes technology moves quicker than expected (if there is a breakthrough in one particular field which then ripples through all of the others)