Bitcoin Forum

Since a number of people were asking about mining performance on an ARM CPU used in the Raspberry Pi.

This is raw hashing speed on an rPI, This should be halved for bitcoin mining; no idea how it translates to litecoin.

Obviously this is not a test with mining code, and not tested with the performance optimizations that could be achieved through the likes of ARM native code instructions or other mining hashing tricks.

still trying to find whether it is an alpha or beta board that the test was run on.

URL - http://elinux.org/RPi_Performance



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Nice to see some data. Soo.. the bitcoin hash rate would be in between 64 and 128 some where?

Doesn't seem to be using Rapberry Pi's integrated GPU. Given the noise this little thing is making, I'd expect them to be popular enough to justify having a specific miner for them using all their hardware.

"The GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24 GFLOPs of general purpose compute and features a bunch of texture filtering and DMA infrastructure."

This looks like the chip they use.
 http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0301h/DDI0301H_arm1176jzfs_r0p7_trm.pdf

I'm guessing it does around 16 Mhash/s. =3

I would say closer to 2 MH/s.

5970 has 4640 GLOPs floating point performance and does 750 MH/s.  Now you can't compare them exactly but it does give you an idea of the size of the chips, speed, etc since the same SP used for floating point are also used for integer calculations.

IF the Pi was as efficient as AMD 5000 series architecture it would be ~1 MH per 6 GLOPs relative performance.  That would put it at ~4 MH/s.

However AMD architecture is very integer "strong".  NVidia 580 series for example only has a relative performance of ~1 MH/s per 10 GLOPs. 

For it to be in the ballpark of 16 MH/s it would need to be roughly 300% as efficient as AMD architecture in terms of int op per clock per transistor and nearly 700% as efficient as NVidia's architecture.

Bitcoin is a a 512 byte block which is double hashed.

That means ~3 million hashes per second or 1.5 MH/s (bitcoin double hashes).

Obviously that code is not optimized.  Maybe optimized code does 2x better say in 3 MH/s ballpark.  Mining with GPU & CPU combined is likely still under 5 MH/s.

Seems foolish to use it as a miner if it is controlling GH/s worth of FPGAs.  It locks up and GH/s of FPGA boards go idle?

Bitcoin is a 80 byte block.
4 bytes version
32 bytes previous hash
32 bytes transactions hash
4 bytes timestamp
4 bytes nounce
4 bytes difficulty
(last 3 times 4 bytes might be in different order, can't remember right now)
After padding the block is 128 bytes.
The first 64 bytes of the block is the same during a work unit so that part in only hashed once.
The second part of 64 bytes is hashed many times with each time a different nounce.
Each 32 bytes output is padded again to a 64 bytes block to be hashed again.
So the effective hashing rate would be around 1629.47k / 2 = 814.735k according to the OpenSSL test.

wow, that's not bad at all for something like raspberry.

Wow indeed. These numbers a low, but thats not bad for what it is. Even the 4550 cards got about 7mhs or so. I doubt someone will buy 500 units to get a ghs though.

W/Mhash does not work with Raspberry Pi at all (3.5W)
Any GPU is many times larger than Raspberry Pi, consumes atleast 10s of times more electricity. Not a comparison really.

For something which is made to be as cheap as ever possible, and achieving speeds of a Atom ... That's quite significant. You are not going to line this up with latest Intel 8core extreme series, so why would you line this up with a GPU?

I ordered two of them (two separate vendors), one is going to be a part of my 8 year old sons science project , and the second is going to become our new digital media player for our living room entertainment system :)

In terms of mining, I cant see the value in actually using it to mine - or how long the ARM processor would even last under 24/7 mining conditions but it would be a neat host for a set of BitFORCE singles :) :) :)

Indeed, wouldn't prob last that long, but it's nice to see that a "lowly ARM CPU" can pack even that much of a punch.

Where did you find them? I've been wanting to order one but can't find anywhere for sale :/

Lol: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/raspberry-pi.html
"When the cost of tablet displays comes down, which they will, I think we'll see sub $100 tablets. And I suspect that will happen in the next 3-5 years."
Well, i guess i dreamed up the 56$ tablet i got sitting on my living room table :P
It actually works quite well, has android on it. I played Angry Birds on it for a while and my dad used it for surfing :)

anyone knows when they will deliver again? still sold out AFAIK.

When I first heard about them I went to a couple sites I found on google and then registered "interest" about a week ago they emailed me and allowed me to place my order and pay for them

https://www.alliedelec.com
http://www.newark.com

its ideal for a digital media player
it has an hdmi port and the gpu specs are pretty sweet for something the size of a credit card

GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decodeGPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode

:)

edit: just checked on my order (newark), my order is scheduled to ship on 04/03 so about 3 more weeks

yeah i guess just gotta wait to get one :/

It may be profitable as a CPU miner on Litecoin especially if the LTC price rises a bit?

lol I think there's a better chance of Satoshi Nakamoto trying out for American Idol (and winning)

What if one uses the Raspberry Pi to connect a USB hub to it and use a dozen FPGA boards for hashing? Could it be done? Or will the unit crap up from so many boards?

It should last many years, even running at full load constantly. Pretty much all modern solid-state computer parts are designed to run at full load for years and should not suffer reduced lifespan so long as power and cooling is not sub-standard. It might throttle if it gets too hot though. That will affect its short-term performance but should not significantly affect its life.

If this is not the case of the RaspberryPi, it would only be due to almost inexcusable incompetence.

The only issue I can think of would be whether the RPi can supply enough power on its USB port. Using a powered hub should solve that problem. You could also use any cheap SoHo router (with a USB port, of course) that can run Tomato USB or DD-WRT.

All right. Any place where I can acquire one with BTC? :P

I just got an e-mail two or three days ago from Element14/Newark letting me know that instead of just registering interest you can order them now, and that is the order they will be shipped in.  No idea where I am in the queue, and they are asking for a limit of 1, but I jumped in there, I'll update when I find out some sort of ship date if anyone wants to know.

I'd be curious to see how much MHash/s I can get from a RaspberryPi? I would like to know how much power these things use for the MHash/s they give (with their onboard ARM/GPU is available)? If they prove to be efficient,I may get more from 3 RaspberryPi's than from my MBP?

Most laptops (and certainly all tablets) are pretty useless for BTC mining as this is GPU based whereas LTC is CPU based so the CPU of my MBP can still be useful (just). But that doesn't stop people like me from getting MHash/s out of everything I own lol.

Yeah but it may turn out as the most profitable LTC CPU miner for (kH/s)/W and if the price rises then it could become actually profitable?  Or if your just mining LTC for fun/speculation it maybe the cheapest and most efficient pieces of hardware for the job.  At £30 and 5W(I think) then it's a cheap hobby/speculation.

Is litecoin profitable somewhere in the world?
Yesterday I did some tests and calculations for my Q6600 (intel quad core@2400MHz), if my calculations are right I use 1 euro/day electricity and when I change the litecoin for bitcoin and sell them I get 0.01 euro/day back.
If the raspberry pi would get the same hash/sec (I doubt it) and work with 0.2Watt I would break even.

I should have said and meant the most efficient piece of hardware not most profitable. 

If the RaspberryPi is only 5W it would cost me less than £1 a week in electric to run it 24/7.  If it can nearly reach or beat 3kH/s I might buy one to mine LTC give it a few years and LTC will either be defunct or worth 0.1BTC each not sure yet.  At £30 to buy and a £1 a week to run I wouldn't be loosing much anyway on my hobby/speculation/gamble.

The Raspberry PI runs 5V@700mA, using a standard microUSB charger.

The memory is directly situated above the CPU, and so thermal management will play a significant role, else you really will have a dried (straw)berry.



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So it will cost me less than £1 a week to run 24/7  ;D  Do you have any idea of its LTC hash rate yet?

dead thread?

:(

Tried Rpi for this pupose.... It mighty je my linux skills(i have None) but neither Cgminer nor btcminer are stable for Mining ......

interesting  - i just picked up one of these to play with and use as a media player i might try it mining just for fun