Bitcoin Forum

I wanted to open up discussion on this topic early on because it seems its taking a while for the Bitcoin ASICs to get produced.

What are your thoughts on Litecoin ASICs?

If there can exist Bitcoin ASICs there also can exist Litecoin ASICs.

Open thread... ;D

Please no Solidcoin bashing or Litecoin bashing. Let's keep this discussion professional.

Thanks

I believe what you meant to say was: "If there is a Litecoin GPU miner, then Litecoin FPGAs/ASICS are also possible"

Um no. Actually there is no prerequisite of having a GPU miner in order for ASICs to exist for Litecoin. The whole point of an ASIC is that it is APPLICATION SPECIFIC (not GPU specific). Having a GPU miner only makes the hashing faster (like 10 times or whatever). People can still hash on a cpu, they dont need a GPU.

Anyways did you have anything intelligent to say instead of attempting to correct my perfectly logical OP.

If so, I'd like to hear your thoughts, otherwise please dont post.

There is enough drama on this forum already, don't need anymore BS.

Thanks!  ;D

It would be possible, but the memory use could add to the price or speed bottleneck

My post's aim was not to critique your grammar or anything like that. I apologize if that was the impression I gave you.

that's not the impression you gave him.

you gave him the impression that ASICs are only possible if GPU mining is possible... but GPU mining has nothing to do with it.

Um not grammar but perhaps my view/thinking on the topic?

+1

I having BFL SHA256 single on order. Very nice if can work for litecoin  8)

Wasn't Litecoin supposed to be CPU exclusive? Whatever happened to that?

there's no reason why an application-specific integrated circuit couldn't be a type of central processing unit.

Well that's like saying a cryptocurrency is pegged to say the Dollar. But then someone makes an exchange to allow exchange for Euros which it isn't pegged to.

The intention is right. Keep in mind that GPU's are only 10x faster than CPU hashing unlike bitcoin where GPU mining is about 100x faster than CPU mining.

WHY ?......

Are you planning on dedicating the next 10 years of your life to the pursuit of recovering your hardware investment for exclusive Litecoin mining using a $600 appliance ?

Any talk of dedicated devices or speciality hardware for Litecoin mining further defeats the original intended purpose of Litecoin (or, 1 of them).
Wasn't the whole idea behind Litecoin essentially just another Alt-Coin to keep your CPU busy, rather than sitting idle, while mining BTC with your GPUs on the same rig ?

Frankly, anyone who is currently using a Bitcoin-Capable ATI GPU to mine LTC must not be very well versed in both Economics and Mathematics.
Bragging rights are great. 2,500 kh/s LTC mining speeds on multiple GPUs is impressive, but at the end of the day it's a waste.

It's really unfortunate that the GPU LTC Miner was released because now everyone's imaginations are running wild with 'What could be..IF...'

The Litecoin hashing algorithm needs to be updated/upgraded to something that is not only CPU friendly, but is in fact GPU HOSTILE so that things can get back to normal and the value of LTC can stabilize once and for all and quit the downward spiral that it seems to be on currently.

...just my 2 LTC's worth.
YMMV, as well as your opinion(s).
bitlane.

Um GPU mining is only 10 x as fast as cpu mining with LTC. And keep in mind it cost more to mine with a GPU than a CPU. Bitcoin that number is 100x. Not seeing your point.

Great. Thanks Captain Obvious....

...and again  ::)
Guess what ? THE SKY IS BLUE AND PLANET EARTH IS NOT FLAT.

Unless English is not your first language, I think my point as pretty clear, but I will summarize for the 'English-Impaired'.....

- Dedicated LTC Mining devices = FINANCIAL FAIL.
- Users mining LTC with GPUs currently are clueless in regards to the economic benefits (or lack there of).
- LTC needs a new algorithm that makes it an even further futile venture to consider GPU mining.

Clear enough ? or shall I summarize further ?

I'm sorry but what crystal ball are you looking into in which you can see the future so clearly? You definitely have a thick layer of sarcasm on you. Must be to compensate for the rather tiny portion you got in the length and girth departments.  :D

Isn't Litecoin anti-GPU anti-ASIC ?

Isn't memory the main reason CPUs are good at litecoin mining? Nothing except cost stops an ASIC or even FPGA from having/being connected to large amounts of SRAM...

You idiot ? I plan use BFL for BTC. I just talking out asshole how be intersting use BFL for litecoin. Yoy.

ASIC are specific processors, so of course a litecoin asic exist! Litecoin can be mined on a normal cpu, obviously they can be mined on something specifically made to mine them.

Will someone make an ASIC for litecoin? Remember that you need to spend some milions for the masks required to make ASICs. Since Litecoin market is VERY small, how many chances there are you will manage to sell enough asic/mine enough litecoin to repay millions of $ ?


@finway: why do you mix gpu and asic? Seriously, learn what asic is before posting.

I think your more likely to see an FPGA with extra blockram before an ASIC and probably only when the current price is like >x100.

The main objective for a litecoin ASIC would be to incorporate DRAM.

LTC runs inside the CPU cache, but that is SRAM which is expensive to make. Since the time to rewrite taken to rewrite the cached hashes is sort of predictable the refreshing circuitry can be omitted or at least be very simple. That alone would make it 2 magnitudes more effective (ok I'll stfu now  :-X)

It's memory bandwidth that defines the hashing speed. The cpu cache has high bandwidth, but only one fifth of that of the amd gpus. Hence, making asics for litecoin will be somewhat of a nightmare because finding something cheap with higher memory bandwidth than a gpu (which use the fastest ram technologically available) is difficult.

Any news?  ???

At this point it would be way too pricey to create an ASIC for litecoin right now.

Maybe when each litecoin is like $2-$5?

Price will need to be much higher and network hash much greater.  Maybe at the 2 year LTC anniversary (or 3rd).  a couple high hashing units could easily bring down the system at this early phase in the life of this cryptocoin.

Yeah the network needs to mature a bit.

Yes, ASICS for LTC could easily be made, just like for BTC. 

With enough funding yes. Right now it is a multi million dollar endeavor. Please if it is so "easy" you should have no problem getting it done right?

It would be cheaper for a company to do the same with LTC, as, many have already done for BTC (the foundations have been setup/processing chains from BTC)

I am not an ASIC company, i'd expect any ASIC company that had made/is making one for BTC, would probably say it was technically very easy to make. 

Do you not think, if it became profitable for a company to make an ASIC for LTC, just like BTC, they wouldnt do it? It would be factors cheaper compared to the first ones for BTC, and significantly quicker to production/shelf.

So lets start pre-orders! We can finance development with pre-order money like bitcoiners do! :)

By the time people have bought a few million dolars worth of litecoins to pre-order with the price per coin should have risen too, so double win!

-MarkM-

I believe they would. Right now it's not worth the cost if LTC fails. LTC is still growing and it's price isn't anywhere near as attractive to an ASIC manufacturer to start production.

That would be cool but i dont see it happening for at least another year.

I do not believe they will anytime soon because they think it's too risky.  The LTC exchange rate has nothing to do with it, it's if or if not it's profitable. All the other other alt-chains that modified paramters of BTC go through cycles of large holders pumping/dumping - LTC Charts (http://www.ltc-charts.com/period-charts.php?period=3-months&resolution=day&pair=ltc-btc&market=btc-e) people get others to buy through various means. If the ASIC developers did not think it was risky, then, they'd develop them now, as mining LTC is profitable Coinotron (http://coinotron.com/coinotron/AccountServlet?action=home), it's even, if you ignore the inflated price ready for the next dump, more profitable than BTC.

All the more reason to pre-order.

By pre-ordering, in litecoin itself not some other currency, you help ensure the developers that there is in fact sufficient demand to justify developing the product.

Maybe even, the bigger the expense the better, since to manage to get ten million dollars (for instance) worth of litecoins escrowed ready to pay for ASIC development would likely involve litecoins being worth twice as much per coin than if one only escrowed five million dollars worth.

-MarkM-

Someone needs to actually bother testing the performance on FPGAs first, to see if it's worth scaling to ASICs.

See my post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79637.msg1237205#msg1237205

If an ASIC miner is made for LTC, I will fork litecoin and adjust the scrypt parameters manually to make it even more memory hard and forever fucked up the mining by FPGA/ASICs.

I sure hope you can afford those ASICS if they ever come out.

LOL by then many will have bought I would think. Unless you have secret funding from the Federal Reserve itself.  :D

I hope they never come, but at least it'll take a long time from here.

come on guys.. this is LTC land.. currently free of impending doom of ASIC and block halving..

(im kidding)

Maybe the timing of BTC/ASIC can be a reference:
  4 years after genesis block
  1/2 total coins mined
  Total market cap ~ 100m
  ~$10 per coin

In theory, LTC should reach there 4 times as fast  ;)
 

I rather have slow growth in price...even with bitcoin, which has been the case lately. Not too fast.

If anyone is currently in college or associated with a university, chip facilities often offer very, very cheap production runs for educational purposes. I seem to remember my professor in VLSI saying something about getting chips made for students for like 100 bucks. It's like the "student edition" of microsoft software, like the copies of Office and Visual Studio .NET that I bought from the university for $3 each.

Interesting...if true, then this should be underway in no time. ::)

I don't think there will be any LTC ASICs any time soon. I suppose its possible, but LTC FPGAs are a whole lot more likely. LTC FPGAs I'd be happy and fine with. ASICs, ehhh. They have caused too much controversy so far, so I'd rather that they stay away.

As a GPU miner.. i want SOMETHING to stay relevant :)

It feels like 2010 in the LTC world right now.

How about Larrabee? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(microarchitecture)
Intel Larrabee is x86 compatible GPGPU device. I thought, after some minor changes and recompilation, it could work with current miners.

I imagine any actual BTC FPGA could be used, firmware re-writed and mine LTC...   anyone know if someone working on it ?

the FPGA would need lots of on board memory.

You only need to connect the FPGA to memory and you're set. That said, when it's economically feasible, they will do it. Until then, gpus!

you can probably use an sp605 (http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/EK-S6-SP605-G.htm), which has 128mb of onboard ddr3 memory. no idea how fast it'd be, though.

Hmm interesting. Someone should try it. I'm not familiar with programming FPGA's to do this.

Neither do I. But .. since I can but a birthday present for myself, I'd have a sp605. One needs a hobby :)