Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Mining software (miners) => Topic started by: deslok on July 20, 2011, 11:03:28 PM



Title: DSP miner?
Post by: deslok on July 20, 2011, 11:03:28 PM
I couldnt decide if this should go in hardware or software but since the software makes it tick i'm going to ask it here.
I read an odd comment about a DSP possibly being used for mining in another section is this even possible i know a signal processor does some nifty things but i can't think through in my head any way it would work for bitcoin mining if anyone here could enlighten me it'd be much appreciated.


Title: Re: DSP miner?
Post by: JoelKatz on July 20, 2011, 11:09:37 PM
I couldnt decide if this should go in hardware or software but since the software makes it tick i'm going to ask it here.
I read an odd comment about a DSP possibly being used for mining in another section is this even possible i know a signal processor does some nifty things but i can't think through in my head any way it would work for bitcoin mining if anyone here could enlighten me it'd be much appreciated.
It could do it, but it would likely be no faster than a CPU.


Title: Re: DSP miner?
Post by: cicada on July 27, 2011, 08:17:09 PM
It could do it, but it would likely be no faster than a CPU.

Care to elaborate?  DSPs in many smart-phones / tablets / etc are geared around highly efficient, low power video stream processing - several of TI's newer chips can do 1080p without breaking a sweat for example.  Seems like that kind of stream processing architecture would lend itself handily to mining.. 

I wouldn't expect to get double-digit MH/s out of them or anything, but my understanding was that they were usually glorified FPGAs.


Title: Re: DSP miner?
Post by: JoelKatz on July 27, 2011, 08:39:13 PM
Care to elaborate?  DSPs in many smart-phones / tablets / etc are geared around highly efficient, low power video stream processing - several of TI's newer chips can do 1080p without breaking a sweat for example.  Seems like that kind of stream processing architecture would lend itself handily to mining..
CPUs can handle 1080p video without a problem and they're not even optimized for it. DSPs generally don't outperform high-end CPUs, even on the kinds of tasks they're optimized for. They do, however, use much less power, so they're useful in smart phones and tablets. A high-end DSP might do signal processing functions (which mining would qualify as) as fast as a high-end CPU on 1/10th the power. That's still pretty impractical.

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I wouldn't expect to get double-digit MH/s out of them or anything, but my understanding was that they were usually glorified FPGAs.
Not really, they're more like glorified CPUs or low-end GPUs.


Title: Re: DSP miner?
Post by: film2240 on August 07, 2011, 05:36:32 PM
link me to the app for DSP miner as I want to use this to complement CPU and GPU mining combined on my 2 machines (squeeze out even more hashes from my systems without spending too much as I've already upgraded GPU on my PC)