Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Mining speculation => Topic started by: jjshabadoo on June 13, 2012, 04:59:46 AM



Title: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: jjshabadoo on June 13, 2012, 04:59:46 AM
It is unbelievable that a community of relatively intelligent people cannot see how ASIC will ruin mining profitability for everyone and only make the manufacturers rich.

There is no financial model that can make these work due to their incredibly low marginal operation cost and ridiculously high hashrate.

The ASIC manufacturers would have to control the rate at which these are sold to stand any chance of miners getting a return on their investment and no business is going to do this after spending such a huge initial investment. Especially since after they sell the first several units at high prices, making more is so cheap they can just start unloading them at rock bottom prices.

The early ASIC buyers will never turn them off due to their low operation cost even though they stand ZERO chance of recouping their investment.

This is just standard economics and common sense.

I hope the bitcoin DEVS change the protocol to make ASICS obsolete. It will save the irrational potential buyers from themselves and the rest of us along with it.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Garr255 on June 13, 2012, 05:04:43 AM
Subed. I'm interested in counteropinions.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Inspector 2211 on June 13, 2012, 05:23:22 AM
Exactly my thoughts.
Automobiles should never have been allowed, because their success caused the demise of livery stables, horse whip manufacturers and horse buggy manufacturers.
Or maybe automobiles should have be allowed after all, but the ordinance that a man with a warning bell walks in front of them should never have been rescinded.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Bitcoin Oz on June 13, 2012, 05:34:17 AM
The first ASIC company that brings them out will have a bit of a hardware monopoly for awhile simply because the cost to implement an ASIC is so high.

Thats why I hope its the open asic team that does so.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on June 13, 2012, 05:39:23 AM
The first ASIC company that brings them out will have a bit of a hardware monopoly for awhile simply because the cost to implement an ASIC is so high.

Thats why I hope its the open asic team that does so.

BFL is better capitalized and thus more likely to win the race.  Things might face some centralization in the beginning, but soon enough there will be 5-10 vendors.  SHA256(SHA256(X)) is not that complicated compared to many other hardware designs.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Vladimir on June 13, 2012, 05:41:38 AM
1. Devs will not change the algo in order to influence ASIC production because it would be a very stupid thing to do and devs are not stupid (well... mostly).

2. ASIC mining is not the end of decentralised mining, it is the beginning. It will make the mining ultimately much more decentralised than it is now, perhaps with exception of short transitional period.

3. ASIC mining proliferation will make Bitcoin much more resilient to 51% attacks and much more secure overall. A few years from now it likely that most governments will not be able to mount a successful computational attack on Bitcoin and before long even the most powerful nations will not have such capability either. Thanks to mass proliferation of various hardware incorporating Bitcoin mining ASIC's.

4. There will be 2 generations of ASIC hardware coming relatively quickly one after another (perhaps with 18-24 month pause), after that it is Moore's law (finally).

5. FPGA investors will regret buying FPGA's instead of just buying bitcoins. Particularly those who are just buying rigs now.

6. Whether initial  ASIC investors will recoup their investment or not is rather not clear.

7. BFL is not the favourite in the ASIC race.

8. Embrace the future.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on June 13, 2012, 05:46:30 AM
7. BFL is not the favourite in the ASIC race.

Of course their competitor would say this ;).


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Garr255 on June 13, 2012, 05:47:10 AM
3. ASIC mining proliferation will make Bitcoin much more resilient to 51% attacks and much more secure overall. A few years from now it likely that most governments will not be able to mount a successful computational attack on Bitcoin and before long even the most powerful nations will not have such capability either. Thanks to mass proliferation of various hardware incorporating Bitcoin mining ASIC's.

Government X can buy as many FPGAs and GPUs now in proportion to the network hashrate as they will be able to when everyone has ASICs, and for about the same price, no?

5. FPGA investors will regret buying FPGA's instead of just buying bitcoins. Particularly those who are just buying rigs now.

That's me :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 13, 2012, 05:48:55 AM
Absolutely 100% agree with Vladimir's thoughts. ASIC mining is good for Bitcoin.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: friedcat on June 13, 2012, 05:52:11 AM
3. ASIC mining proliferation will make Bitcoin much more resilient to 51% attacks and much more secure overall. A few years from now it likely that most governments will not be able to mount a successful computational attack on Bitcoin and before long even the most powerful nations will not have such capability either. Thanks to mass proliferation of various hardware incorporating Bitcoin mining ASIC's.

I agree with all your comments but this one. Now if the government wants to launch a 51% attack, they buy GPUs or FPGAs, and in the future they just buy ASICs. The difference lies between how much the government wants to spend and how much the rest of the miners want to. The technology is irrelevant.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Garr255 on June 13, 2012, 05:53:27 AM
The technology available is irrelevant.

That's what I was trying to say.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 05:55:49 AM
I disagree.  It will happen eventually.  As long as ASIC is not deployed it remains the "cheat card" for entities who can pay the upfront cost.

Want to 51% attack Bitcoin.  It would be stupid to buy 100,000 GPUs.  Spend a couple million building an ASIC processor and 51% attack it on the cheap.  Bitcoin will never be safe from deep pockets (govt, banks, other entrenched interests) as long as there is a "buy your way to victory" option.

Good miners having access to ASIC means the "bad miners" have no competitive advantage.  It comes back to a battle of sheer numbers.  It also has the advantage of killing off botnets and rogue system admins.  They simply can't compete.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Bitcoin Oz on June 13, 2012, 06:01:17 AM
It depends if one company has ASIC and just mines itself it would be dangerous as opposed to distributing the units around the community.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Vladimir on June 13, 2012, 06:05:34 AM
3. ASIC mining proliferation will make Bitcoin much more resilient to 51% attacks and much more secure overall. A few years from now it likely that most governments will not be able to mount a successful computational attack on Bitcoin and before long even the most powerful nations will not have such capability either. Thanks to mass proliferation of various hardware incorporating Bitcoin mining ASIC's.

I agree with all your comments but this one. Now if the government wants to launch a 51% attack, they buy GPUs or FPGAs, and in the future they just buy ASICs. The difference lies between how much the government wants to spend and how much the rest of the miners want to. The technology is irrelevant.
Thank You.

I, however, disagree with you on 3. Let me give you an example.

If, say, NSA would want to attack Bitcoin right now, they will not be buying GPUS's or FPGA's. NSA has it's own foundry and should they want it they can produce large amount of ASIC chips relatively quickly. This means that they have "generation" advantage. They can fight GPU's with ASIC's. This window of opportunity is closing up quickly with mass proliferation of ASIC mining hardware. Meaning they will have no "generation" advantage. This all of the sudden will be not GPU v ASIC fight but ASIC vs ASIC fight.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: friedcat on June 13, 2012, 06:13:21 AM
I disagree.  It will happen eventually.  As long as ASIC is not deployed it remains the "cheat card" for entities who can pay the upfront cost.

Want to 51% attack Bitcoin.  It would be stupid to buy 100,000 GPUs.  Spend a couple million building an ASIC processor and 51% attack it on the cheap.  Bitcoin will never be safe from deep pockets (govt, banks, other entrenched interests) as long as there is a "buy your way to victory" option.

Good miners having access to ASIC means the "bad miners" have no competitive advantage.  It comes back to a battle of sheer numbers.  It also has the advantage of killing off botnets and rogue system admins.  They simply can't compete.

If, say, NSA would want to attack Bitcoin right now, they will not be buying GPUS's or FPGA's. NSA has it's own foundry and should they want it they can produce large amount of ASIC ships relatively quickly. This means that they have "generation" advantage. They can fight GPU's with ASIC's. This window of opportunity is closing up quickly with mass proliferation of ASIC mining hardware. Meaning they will have no "generation" advantage. This all of the sudden will be not GPU v ASIC fight but ASIC vs ASIC fight.

Yes, I was wrong on my reply. I agree with both of you in this aspect.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Definit on June 13, 2012, 06:15:56 AM
rich get richer?


oh... ok.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: jjshabadoo on June 13, 2012, 06:17:58 AM
Good responses, but can someone actually frame a sound economic argument as to how ASIC will profitable for both vendors and miners who buy them?

It just doesn't work no matter how you slice it.

It is estimated that it takes approximately $1 million to develop ASIC technology for mining correct ? Yet the cost to produce the units after the development phase are extraordinarily cheap.

So let's say a company spends $1 million and develops 50 GH/s units. In order to be competitive with let's say, the mini rig at $15,000 for 25 Gh/s, they sell their ASIC units for $25,000.

Of course they want to recover their $1 million investment and some profit so they take pre-orders for 50 units. They receive $1.25 million in revenue and let's assume they deliver the 50 units within a 30 day period, once the units are ready to be shipped, to be fair to these customers. Now 2.5 TH has been added to the network within 30 days. Currently the network is approximately 12 TH so we have a 20% difficulty increase right away.

At the current difficulty you get about 900 coins per month with 50 GH at current prices this about $4,000 USD per month minus power costs which by all accounts are extremely small so they are practically irrelevant. This looks good for early adopters as they are thinking 6 months and its all gravy.

Well not so fast because within 30 days, 900 coins became 720 coins with 20% difficulty increase and profit becomes $3200 per month at current pricing. Never mind that hoarding becomes less desirable as people want to get their 25k back(very few people will hoard/save after they plop down 25K) so there is certainly some downward pressure on pricing.

Also ASIC's are unlikely to be deployed before the block reward halves, so 360 coins per month is more like it. For arguments sake lets assume it doesn't matter because coins are now $10 each. Then the ASIC developer sells another 50 units at $20,000 because demand is lower and well hell, they can produce these things for dirt cheap relative to their initial investment. So they pocket $1 million more and are smiling ear to ear.

Unfortunately, network hashrate is now 17 TH for a 30% difficulty increase from 12 TH and people are now getting 630 coins or 315 after the halving. So now at $10 a coin they are getting $3150 per month. Original buyers are approximately $19,000 in the hole and second gen buyers are $16,850 in the hole.

Okay so you say, " Well GPU people are exiting the game en masse " fair enough, but at 50 GH per unit it only takes 240 units to displace the original 12 TH assuming those were all GPU miners.

Bottom line is, demand will slow for the ASIC increasing downward pressure on pricing per unit as people become hesitant to put up 20K, yet the manufacturer has now made a substantial profit so why the hell wouldn't they start selling them for maybe 10k or 5k ?

It wouldn't be out of the question to think that 300 units could be sold in 6 months easily creating a 15 TH network assuming all GPU and FPGA miners leave. Which won't happen because FPGA people also have inconsequential power costs so they stick around hoping to get some return and some GPU people will stick around because they have super cheap electric or don't pay at all.

Once can see that the 25K people will never get their money back as the network would easily swell to 25 TH in 6-9 months.

If competition enters the market this accelerates the process.

Now you can argue that the ASIC people are benevolent bitcoin benefactors and they choose to roll out these rigs in a controlled manner at lets say only 5 per month... AND PIGS START FLYING.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: jjshabadoo on June 13, 2012, 06:26:50 AM
I don't disagree that ASIC will be good for securing the network, but how does it make rational economic sense as to how they are rolled out? This is the problem. Unless people here think folks will be willing to essentially "donate" their ASIC investment to the network without a hope of getting their money back.

This is absurd since I don't think anyone here can point to too many or anyone at all who has donated 25k to the bitcoin project to date.

The free market works fine if everyone in the market is rational, but miners are often not rational and the rush to become an "early adopter" seems to be an irresistible temptation.  As can be observed from the 6 month interest free loans that many gave to BFL for their singles.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Bitcoin Oz on June 13, 2012, 06:29:52 AM
I don't disagree that ASIC will be good for securing the network, but how does it make rational economic sense as to how they are rolled out? This is the problem. Unless people here think folks will be willing to essentially "donate" their ASIC investment to the network without a hope of getting their money back.

This is absurd since I don't think anyone here can point to too many or anyone at all who has donated 25k to the bitcoin project to date.

The free market works fine if everyone in the market is rational, but miners are often not rational and the rush to become an "early adopter" seems to be an irresistible temptation.  As can be observed from the 6 month interest free loans that many gave to BFL for their singles.
What if they dont sell hardware but simply mine themselves ?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Vladimir on June 13, 2012, 06:29:58 AM
jjshabadoo, how is any of this different from CPU, GPU and FPGA generations, except in magnitude?



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 13, 2012, 06:37:58 AM
jjshabadoo, you may be exactly right.

BUT, you're failing to consider that the market will take this into account.  The market knows the potential for future price drops (especially with all the anti-ASICs claiming the end of the world about it).  The market knows that it is a risky move to become an early adopter of ASIC technology.  Therefore, the market will only demand so much of ASIC technology from the start.

Sure, some early ASIC adopters might not ever make their profit back.  So what?  What is it to you?  If you don't think buying ASIC miners early on is a good idea, then don't do it.  Some people will try it, and others will not.  That's the way the free market is supposed to work - everyone weighing risk vs reward by their own criteria, and coming up with what they believe will be a smart decision regarding it.

I am not worried at all, and am not really sure why other people are worried.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: jjshabadoo on June 13, 2012, 06:38:41 AM
Because ASIC is a GIANT leap with almost NO marginal cost after initial purchase. CPU to GPU was a giant leap as well, but GPU's were still limited by availability and electrical costs/infrastructure. FPGA is really an incremental change from GPU because they are not cheap unless they are produced in HUGE quantity and their only advantage over GPU is power consumption.

ASIC is an exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost.

How many people built GPU farms over 10 GH ? not many because it typically required new home wiring, heat dissipation and a high monthly electrical cost in the face of an uncertain and volatile bitcoin value. plopping down 10k to build a big GPU farm took alot of thought, knowledge and risk among other things so it was inherently self limiting.

ASICs are basically plug and play so there is no technological limit for the potential miner. They have almost no electrical cost so no new electrical infrastructure is needed. They have almost zero operational cost once deployed so again, no limiting factor there.

The ONLY barrier to entry is the initial capital investment, but we ALL know the price for these will drop dramatically after the initial development, once again, how the hell do the early adopters ever get their money back?

Unless as someone suggested that the developers pay $1million and then mine until they get their money back and then start selling the ASICs for 1k or something.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 13, 2012, 06:40:16 AM
Once again, why does it matter who gets their money back?  If you don't believe it is a good idea to be an early ASIC adopter, then don't be one.  It's as simple as that.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 06:44:54 AM
Good responses, but can someone actually frame a sound economic argument as to how ASIC will profitable for both vendors and miners who buy them?

It just doesn't work no matter how you slice it.

I agree with you on this one.
Well, miners smart enough to convert their investment in mining bonds and sell them to the highest bidders may still profit. Plenty of suckers around, just look at current mining bond prices.

As for asics endangering or protecting the network from a 51% attack; Im not sure there is an impact either way. Since the variable cost of asics approaches zero, it will likely be similarly easy or hard to mount an attack with asics as it is today.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: jjshabadoo on June 13, 2012, 06:45:31 AM
Because I'm concerned about the sustainable development of bitcoin since stability will lead to widespread adoption. Uncertainty will place many miners on the sideline and it could lead to a network hash rate that stalls instead of grows steadily.

Free markets are not the end all be all of economics. They require rational decision making to reach a pareto optimal state. The point is, bitcoin could be crushed in the process if confidence wanes.

I didn't get into mining to make big money. I like hardware and wanted to support what I believe could be an incredibly democratizing force for everyone.

I guess I'm just a naive idealist.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Bitcoin Oz on June 13, 2012, 06:54:13 AM
I trust the free market to decide and no one is forcing you to buy an ASIC.

Im sure no one will plonk down 25 large knowing they will take a massive loss. If the bitcoin price keeps rising it wont take many btc to cover the initial investment then they can sell hardware cheaply afterwards which to me seems the most logical to avoid pissed off customers :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 06:55:09 AM
BUT, you're failing to consider that the market will take this into account.  The market knows the potential for future price drops (especially with all the anti-ASICs claiming the end of the world about it).  The market knows that it is a risky move to become an early adopter of ASIC technology.  Therefore, the market will only demand so much of ASIC technology from the start.

Ah, the infallible free market.
Not gonna happen, not when almost none of the requirements for perfect competition are met.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: pieppiep on June 13, 2012, 06:57:09 AM
Oh, some computer hippies make their own money with some cpu's everybody can buy and sell if it fails.

Oh, the same computer hippies now use gpu's to do the same thing. Some even place rack's full of computers with multiple videocard in each computer, starting to get more serious, but still something they can easyly resell if it fails.

Nice, multiple parties are building fpga cards and lots of people are buying them. Not all cards are easyly resellable so lots of people really invest in bitcoin and have confidence for it to succeed.

Woow! A company invested 1 million dollars to build even faster miner with an ASIC. This must be something lots of people want so it will succeed.

That's how I see it. ASIC gives more trust in bitcoin than the more 'simple' ways of mining.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 13, 2012, 07:07:53 AM
Because ASIC is a GIANT leap with almost NO marginal cost after initial purchase. CPU to GPU was a giant leap as well, but GPU's were still limited by availability and electrical costs/infrastructure. FPGA is really an incremental change from GPU because they are not cheap unless they are produced in HUGE quantity and their only advantage over GPU is power consumption.

You are delusional about the capability of ASICs :)

The efficiency increases from CPU, to GPU, to FPGAs, and to ASIC are all comparable. Roughly a 10x increase every time:
40nm CPUs do up to about 0.1 to 0.5 Mhash/Joule.
40nm GPUs about 1 to 2 Mhash/Joule.
40nm FPGAs about 20 Mhash/Joule.
40nm ASICs will do about 200 Mhash/Joule.

(All numbers above can vary with clock, voltage, etc, but roughly that's the baseline to have in mind.)

ASICs will only offer a 10x efficiency increase because a logic block like SHA-256 shrinks to about 1/10th the number of gates when ported from an FPGA to an ASIC. And the number of gates is the primary factor determining power consumption. As to the cost of ASICs, it won't be different from FPGAs. The Spartan-6 LX150 costs Xilinx maybe $10 to manufacture, but it sells for $100-150. Same thing for the future ASIC mining chips of the same die size, they will cost $10 and sell with a more or less similar markup. Bottom line, ASICs are not an "exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost".

If the Bitcoin mining industry (vendors and miners) survived all previous efficiency increases, there is no reason it will not survive the next one. And the reason it survives the jumps is because 10x isn't that big of a deal. The electricity costs vary by even more worldwide ($0.02 to $0.40 per kWh), so mining with an ASIC with high electricity costs will be about as profitable as mining with FPGAs in an area with low costs.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: phelix on June 13, 2012, 07:39:41 AM
1. Devs will not change the algo in order to influence ASIC production because it would be a very stupid thing to do
[...]
care to elaborate?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: pieppiep on June 13, 2012, 07:45:34 AM
There is no reason to change the algorithm because it is not broken.
If you choose any other algorithm it can also be implemented in asic.
If you change it because 'asic is to fast, it is not fair', the algo should have been replaced with scrypt (like litecoin used) the moment gpu miners became active.
In my opinion the algo won't have to be changed even when quantum computers will exist, they can reduce the cost of finding a collision from 2^256 to 2^128. Not sure if they are also good for mining though.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 13, 2012, 07:49:11 AM
1. Devs will not change the algo in order to influence ASIC production because it would be a very stupid thing to do
[...]
care to elaborate?

For one, devs don't care about all the mining business. I remember that Gavin, when questioned in an interview about Bitcoin last year, was unable to answer specifics about which GPU miner software to use, or even which GPUs to buy, because he was "uninterested and out of touch" with the GPU mining advancements.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 13, 2012, 07:52:25 AM
@P4man, time will tell whether you are right or the market is.  I'm putting my money on the market though.  ;)

Because I'm concerned about the sustainable development of bitcoin since stability will lead to widespread adoption. Uncertainty will place many miners on the sideline and it could lead to a network hash rate that stalls instead of grows steadily.

Free markets are not the end all be all of economics. They require rational decision making to reach a pareto optimal state. The point is, bitcoin could be crushed in the process if confidence wanes.

I didn't get into mining to make big money. I like hardware and wanted to support what I believe could be an incredibly democratizing force for everyone.

I guess I'm just a naive idealist.
A network hash rate that stalls?  Are you kidding?  I don't see any possible way that the network hashrate could stall with the release of ASIC miners.  It will increase very quickly...

Confidence in the profitability of mining may wane (but not to the point of stalling hash rate any time soon), but confidence in the technology itself will never be stronger.  As someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, it will mean that Bitcoins will be protected by ASICs - the best application-specific technology that money can buy.  After all, don't you WANT Bitcoin to be protected with the best?  That means that anyone malicious will have that much harder of a time trying to attack the network.  Essentially, that's the true goal at the heart of mining.  Anyone sitting on the sidelines should at least be applauding this upcoming innovation.

@phelix - the devs won't change the algo for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to:
- No one would trust Bitcoin if it can be so easily overcome by ASIC miners.  GPU's and FPGA's are moderate protection, but anyone with a large bank account could create their own ASIC.  Therefore, the sooner ASIC miners are also helping to protect the network, the better.
- No matter what the algorithm is changed to, an ASIC could be developed for it.  Therefore, Bitcoin needs to embrace ASICs, not run from them by changing the algo every 6 months.
- Changing the algo would show people that Bitcoin is wrong/weak/untrustable, and that core pieces of it can be changed at the whim of a handful people.
- Changing the algo would ultimately serve to waste the time, money, and effort of many valuable people in the Bitcoin community currently working on developing ASICs.  We'd likely lose most of them.

Basically, changing the algo would cripple or kill Bitcoin.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 13, 2012, 08:07:54 AM
Should be renamed: ASIC = The end if Botnet CPU mining


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Vladimir on June 13, 2012, 08:09:31 AM
as SgtSpike said, but

Basically, changing the algo would cripple or kill Bitcoin.

Changing algo, I bet, would simply split the network in two parts, one with old algo and asic's, secure and still viable, another with new algo which will act as a reservation for those who cannot adapt to progress and prefer to slowly or more likely quickly die out.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: zvs on June 13, 2012, 08:26:55 AM
Because ASIC is a GIANT leap with almost NO marginal cost after initial purchase. CPU to GPU was a giant leap as well, but GPU's were still limited by availability and electrical costs/infrastructure. FPGA is really an incremental change from GPU because they are not cheap unless they are produced in HUGE quantity and their only advantage over GPU is power consumption.

ASIC is an exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost.

How many people built GPU farms over 10 GH ? not many because it typically required new home wiring, heat dissipation and a high monthly electrical cost in the face of an uncertain and volatile bitcoin value. plopping down 10k to build a big GPU farm took alot of thought, knowledge and risk among other things so it was inherently self limiting.

ASICs are basically plug and play so there is no technological limit for the potential miner. They have almost no electrical cost so no new electrical infrastructure is needed. They have almost zero operational cost once deployed so again, no limiting factor there.

The ONLY barrier to entry is the initial capital investment, but we ALL know the price for these will drop dramatically after the initial development, once again, how the hell do the early adopters ever get their money back?

Unless as someone suggested that the developers pay $1million and then mine until they get their money back and then start selling the ASICs for 1k or something.
they don't get their money back.  just like the ppl buying 7970's exclusively for mining.

it makes no sense, as it'd require an extremely bullish stance on bitcoins.... and, then, you'd be better off just buying them with that cash.

but, the thing is, lots of people treat this as a hobby


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 08:32:23 AM
You are delusional about the capability of ASICs :)

The efficiency increases from CPU, to GPU, to FPGAs, and to ASIC are all comparable. Roughly a 10x increase every time:
40nm CPUs do up to about 0.1 to 0.5 Mhash/Joule.
40nm GPUs about 1 to 2 Mhash/Joule.
40nm FPGAs about 20 Mhash/Joule.
40nm ASICs will do about 200 Mhash/Joule.

I think you are vastly underestimating the potential of asics; a 130nm asic is ~40x as energy efficient as current 65nm fpgas for sha256 hashing according to papers ive seen and linked. A 40nm asic would therefore be closer to 100x more efficient than an FPGA.

But thats not the main point here. The main point is the variable cost per GH where the difference is even bigger. For FPGAs you are looking at ~$1 per MH. For an asic you would be looking at less than $1 per GH.

Quote
The Spartan-6 LX150 costs Xilinx maybe $10 to manufacture, but it sells for $100-150. Same thing for the future ASIC mining chips of the same die size, they will cost $10 and sell with a more or less similar markup. Bottom line, ASICs are not an "exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost".

A spartan 6 price is not affected by bitcoin difficulty. Just like with cpus and gpus, demand for such chips comes from non bitcoin applications, if bitcoin difficulty goes x100 tomorrow, spartan 6 prices will remain unaffected, as will gpu and cpu prices. Its market prices of these chips that largely determine bitcoin difficulty, not the other way around. If xilinx would start seling spartan 6s for $10 you would see a huge increase in bitcoin difficulty, but a huge increase in difficulty will have close to zero impact on xilinx prices.

But for a bitcoin asic, its market value is 100% determined by (future) bitcoin difficulty. If difficulty goes up x100, its market value will drop by ~100x, causing even higher difficulty. There is no such feedback effect for cpus, gpus, or fpgas.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: punin on June 13, 2012, 09:11:32 AM
jjshabadoo, how is any of this different from CPU, GPU and FPGA generations, except in magnitude?

I think P4man answered your question pretty well:


A spartan 6 price is not affected by bitcoin difficulty. Just like with cpus and gpus, demand for such chips comes from non bitcoin applications, if bitcoin difficulty goes x100 tomorrow, spartan 6 prices will remain unaffected, as will gpu and cpu prices. Its market prices of these chips that largely determine bitcoin difficulty, not the other way around. If xilinx would start seling spartan 6s for $10 you would see a huge increase in bitcoin difficulty, but a huge increase in difficulty will have close to zero impact on xilinx prices.

But for a bitcoin asic, its market value is 100% determined by (future) bitcoin difficulty. If difficulty goes up x100, its market value will drop by ~100x, causing even higher difficulty. There is no such feedback effect for cpus, gpus, or fpgas.


.. Although I would add this is not a catastrophe for anyone except the early adopters of ASIC, as they will unlikely get their investment back. I'd rather see a large rollout of ASIC, where thousands of ASIC units will be mass-produced and shipped to willing early adopters, who have deposited payments to an escrow service.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 09:29:06 AM
.. Although I would add this is not a catastrophe for anyone except the early adopters of ASIC, as they will unlikely get their investment back. I'd rather see a large rollout of ASIC, where thousands of ASIC units will be mass-produced and shipped to willing early adopters, who have deposited payments to an escrow service.

For those miners, thats potentially even worse, unless they are fully aware of how many of those units are ordered and will be sold in the next 6 or 12 months. Including those of a competitor, if any. What BFL should do if they want to maximize their profits is more what you suggested; accept preoders for a few months without shipping a thing and not saying how many orders they have; then unleash all their terrahashes and make its customers cry. Lower prices, rinse, repeat.

No matter how you slice it though. an ASIC provider playing its cards right can almost certainly earn more by selling its hardware than by mining itself. And that tells you that whoever is buying, isnt likely to make a profit.

Agreed that for bitcoin this is not a problem. I just hope someone sets something up that allows me to short mining companies investing in these asics.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BoardGameCoin on June 13, 2012, 09:33:22 AM
There's a relatively straightforward licensing model that will allow roll-out for an ASIC manufacturer that shares the risk/reward with the early adopters: have the initial release be analagous to an IPO, where you are buying both X number of ASICS and a small_percent * X royalty slice on all future ASIC purchases. This allows the manufacturer to rapidly recoup their cost, but also allows the early adopters to hedge against ASIC cost reduction.

-bgc


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Dexter770221 on June 13, 2012, 09:37:50 AM
It's only 2 days left when BFL will anounce specs for their wonder ASIC miner. Until then, don't panic ;) Propably they will use their HDL code that was used to implement miner in singles, that why they can made this ASIC so quickly. And that is not very optimal hasher. Efficiency will increase, that's for sure. But it will be somwhere around 10 to 20 times. 10W and 1,5GH/s (my first bet was 5GH/s). That is not a giant leap. Anyone make a bet yet? Let's make one, what efficiency of that miner would be? I say 200MH/W max...


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 10:13:04 AM
http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DSD11SHA3.pdf
Last page. They achieved 3.7mW for 1.5Gbps SHA256 (single pass) on a 130nm process.  Thats ~2.5mW per bitcoin MH. Or ~2.5W per GH.

Other comparison between 65nm FPGA and 130nm asic on SHA256:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/xuguo/homepage/publications/CESCA_Seminar_SHA3.pdf
Page 23.  The asic is about 35x as power efficient as the Virtex5 on sha256 hashing.

Its anyone's guess what process node BFL has chosen, but I assume it be 130nm or perhaps even better.

Still want to take that bet?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 10:20:56 AM
There's a relatively straightforward licensing model that will allow roll-out for an ASIC manufacturer that shares the risk/reward with the early adopters: have the initial release be analagous to an IPO, where you are buying both X number of ASICS and a small_percent * X royalty slice on all future ASIC purchases. This allows the manufacturer to rapidly recoup their cost, but also allows the early adopters to hedge against ASIC cost reduction.

Thats actually a good idea, but I dont see why BFL would do it. Moreover, it falls apart if you factor in a competitor.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: phelix on June 13, 2012, 10:36:15 AM
[...]
@phelix - the devs won't change the algo for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to:
- No one would trust Bitcoin if it can be so easily overcome by ASIC miners.  GPU's and FPGA's are moderate protection, but anyone with a large bank account could create their own ASIC.  Therefore, the sooner ASIC miners are also helping to protect the network, the better.
- No matter what the algorithm is changed to, an ASIC could be developed for it.  Therefore, Bitcoin needs to embrace ASICs, not run from them by changing the algo every 6 months.
- Changing the algo would show people that Bitcoin is wrong/weak/untrustable, and that core pieces of it can be changed at the whim of a handful people.
- Changing the algo would ultimately serve to waste the time, money, and effort of many valuable people in the Bitcoin community currently working on developing ASICs.  We'd likely lose most of them.

Basically, changing the algo would cripple or kill Bitcoin.

these are good arguments.

still, it is interesting to ponder about this... might be something for an alt-chain. systematically changing algorithm based on some random values from the block chain. could make a new cpu only alt-chain.

possibility with asics: banking conglomerates ---> mining conglomerates   :o


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BoardGameCoin on June 13, 2012, 10:42:58 AM
There's a relatively straightforward licensing model that will allow roll-out for an ASIC manufacturer that shares the risk/reward with the early adopters: have the initial release be analagous to an IPO, where you are buying both X number of ASICS and a small_percent * X royalty slice on all future ASIC purchases. This allows the manufacturer to rapidly recoup their cost, but also allows the early adopters to hedge against ASIC cost reduction.

Thats actually a good idea, but I dont see why BFL would do it. Moreover, it falls apart if you factor in a competitor.

I think there's more incentive for BFL or their competitors to do this in the face of competition. It offers a competitive advantage, kind of like how BFL's current trade-in-for-credit stance is a net competitive win for them even in the existing FPGA market. With no competitor, the seller can set the terms, but with a competitor its whoever can make the best terms. Obviously if the deal is structured poorly, a seller who has to pay royalties to past clients won't be able to compete with one who doesn't need to. But, if doing a deal like this makes it faster to get to the next round of production, a dealer who does this can maintain better cash-flow and keep their average cost-per-unit-produced lower than their competitors (larger volume earlier). As an aside, I imagine that many miners would take their royalty in product...


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 13, 2012, 11:05:44 AM
You are delusional about the capability of ASICs :)

The efficiency increases from CPU, to GPU, to FPGAs, and to ASIC are all comparable. Roughly a 10x increase every time:
40nm CPUs do up to about 0.1 to 0.5 Mhash/Joule.
40nm GPUs about 1 to 2 Mhash/Joule.
40nm FPGAs about 20 Mhash/Joule.
40nm ASICs will do about 200 Mhash/Joule.

I think you are vastly underestimating the potential of asics; a 130nm asic is ~40x as energy efficient as current 65nm fpgas for sha256 hashing according to papers ive seen and linked. A 40nm asic would therefore be closer to 100x more efficient than an FPGA.

From your link http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DSD11SHA3.pdf I compute 400 Mhash/J for a 130nm ASIC. So probably ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm. This is 50x better than a 45nm FPGA (Spartan6 = 20 Mhash/J). Edit: Actually 49 Mhash/J: 1000 (mJ) / 19.75 (mJ/Gbits) * 1e9 (bits/Gbits) / 1024 (bits per bitcoin hash) = 49.4 Mhash/J

But this still does not change my mind: the first mining ASICs will likely be manufactured on the 130nm node, so their 400 Mhash/J characteristic will make them a 20x efficiency increase over 45nm FPGAs. Not much different from past 10x technological leaps.

However I do agree that Mhash/dollar will be a more interesting metric to watch than Mhash/J. I wonder why you think ASIC will contribute a 1000x improvement in this area (going from $1 per Mh/s to $1 per Gh/s)?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 11:21:39 AM
I think there's more incentive for BFL or their competitors to do this in the face of competition. It offers a competitive advantage, kind of like how BFL's current trade-in-for-credit stance is a net competitive win for them even in the existing FPGA market. With no competitor, the seller can set the terms, but with a competitor its whoever can make the best terms. Obviously if the deal is structured poorly, a seller who has to pay royalties to past clients won't be able to compete with one who doesn't need to. But, if doing a deal like this makes it faster to get to the next round of production, a dealer who does this can maintain better cash-flow and keep their average cost-per-unit-produced lower than their competitors (larger volume earlier). As an aside, I imagine that many miners would take their royalty in product...

Without competition, BFL would simply be handing out a part of their future profits. That only makes sense if you think miners arent going to buy otherwise, but judging by the posts on this forum, I highly doubt that. Moreover, Im not convinced your scheme would change a lot of minds. If they set that percentage really low, as they probably should, it wont factor in most people's buying decision. ; but BFL cant set it very high either if you assume sold hashrate is going to increase by several orders of magnitude over the next years. It would only help for those people who truly understand the problem, and those arent the customers who are going to bid the highest prices.

When you factor in competition, I cant see it work at all. The protection would be moot for miners, because they wouldnt be protected from difficulty increase created by the competitor; nor can BFL provide safeguards against that, you can hardly expect them to pay old customers for sales their competitors achieve. It would be like giving a difficulty insurance; if you do that, I dont see the point of selling hardware, if you assume the major risk and give away the potential benefits,  you are better off mining yourself.



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 11:39:44 AM
From your link http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DSD11SHA3.pdf I compute 400 Mhash/J for a 130nm ASIC. So probably ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm. This is 50x better than a 45nm FPGA (Spartan6 = 20 Mhash/J).

Care to share your math? I suspect you forgot a bitcoin hash consists of two SHA256 hashes.

Quote
However I do agree that Mhash/dollar will be a more interesting metric to watch than Mhash/J. I wonder why you think ASIC will contribute a 1000x improvement in this area (going from $1 per Mh/s to $1 per Gh/s)?

I did the math. Using the above PDFs you can get an idea of density compared to FPGAs. To make that math work, you need to know the die size of those FPGAs, which I couldnt find, but I assumed they were between half and full reticle size (1/24th of a wafer). In reality they are almost certainly smaller. Still, even using that assumption, I ended up with well over 1 terrahash per wafer.  A processed 200mm 130nm wafer costs about $1000. Those are ballpark figures, but they give you an idea.

As for FPGAs, they may not cost nearly as much as what we pay, but there is no reason to assume FPGAs are going to drop dramatically in price, and their price certainly wont change with bitcoin difficulty. By contrast an ASIC vendor will eventually have to sell near marginal cost, or not sell anything at all. There will be a race to the bottom because no one is going to buy ASICs that can not generate more bitcoins than it costs.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: MXRider on June 13, 2012, 11:45:48 AM
Can anyone give me a link to a real and ready ASIC product that would back up all these claims about FPGAs becoming paperweights?

Oh shit, I forgot, there isn't ASIC available to miners at least in two months. No one really knows the hashingspeed, price, power consumption or even the lead time. So why does this thread have so many replies.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Bitcoin Oz on June 13, 2012, 11:51:03 AM
Can anyone give me a link to a real and ready ASIC product that would back up all these claims about FPGAs becoming paperweights?

Oh shit, I forgot, there isn't ASIC available to miners at least in two months. No one really knows the hashingspeed, price, power consumption or even the lead time. So why does this thread have so many replies.

ASIC is the elephant in the room.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: melco on June 13, 2012, 12:09:04 PM
As for me, the only people worried about ASIC are GPU/GPU farm owners. ASIC will kick them off from the business. ASIC itself will replace current CPU and GPU power. It will happen sooner or later.
I belive that  ASIC != The end of decentralized mining, it is the end of profitable GPU mining. There will be less miners but Bitcoin will be more protected overall.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 12:10:49 PM
It is unbelievable that a community of relatively intelligent people cannot see how ASIC will ruin mining profitability for everyone and only make the manufacturers rich.

There is no financial model that can make these work due to their incredibly low marginal operation cost and ridiculously high hashrate.

The ASIC manufacturers would have to control the rate at which these are sold to stand any chance of miners getting a return on their investment and no business is going to do this after spending such a huge initial investment. Especially since after they sell the first several units at high prices, making more is so cheap they can just start unloading them at rock bottom prices.

The early ASIC buyers will never turn them off due to their low operation cost even though they stand ZERO chance of recouping their investment.

This is just standard economics and common sense.

I hope the bitcoin DEVS change the protocol to make ASICS obsolete. It will save the irrational potential buyers from themselves and the rest of us along with it.

+1


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 12:16:15 PM
Can anyone give me a link to a real and ready ASIC product that would back up all these claims about FPGAs becoming paperweights?

I already did. Granted, its a research chip, but the numbers are there.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 13, 2012, 12:16:34 PM
LOL @ Cablepair guy, he is selling outdated and overpriced FPGA systems, ASIC will kick him out, ofcouse he is gonna hate it :) LMAO!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 12:54:19 PM
LOL @ Cablepair guy, he is selling outdated and overpriced FPGA systems, ASIC will kick him out, ofcouse he is gonna hate it :) LMAO!

laugh your ass off all you want

you obviously have no idea what your talking about


outdated? we use the same Spartan6LX150 FPGA chip that all the other manufacturers are , also our unit is the cheapest quad unit currently available and is twice as efficient as the BFL single

we are selling units every single day in big numbers

Oh and by the way just beacause you can't afford it, does not mean its over priced


so before you talk shit - do your research.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ebereon on June 13, 2012, 01:34:28 PM
LOL @ Cablepair guy, he is selling outdated and overpriced FPGA systems, ASIC will kick him out, ofcouse he is gonna hate it :) LMAO!

laugh your ass off all you want

you obviously have no idea what your talking about


outdated? we use the same Spartan6LX150 FPGA chip that all the other manufacturers are , also our unit is the cheapest quad unit currently available and is twice as efficient as the BFL single

we are selling units every single day in big numbers

Oh and by the way just beacause you can't afford it, does not mean its over priced


so before you talk shit - do your research.


+1


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bombo999 on June 13, 2012, 01:53:09 PM
LOL @ Cablepair guy, he is selling outdated and overpriced FPGA systems, ASIC will kick him out, ofcouse he is gonna hate it :) LMAO!

+1


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 01:56:29 PM
I think you are vastly underestimating the potential of asics; a 130nm asic is ~40x as energy efficient as current 65nm fpgas for sha256 hashing according to papers ive seen and linked. A 40nm asic would therefore be closer to 100x more efficient than an FPGA.

From your link http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DSD11SHA3.pdf I compute 400 Mhash/J for a 130nm ASIC. So probably ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm. This is 50x better than a 45nm FPGA (Spartan6 = 20 Mhash/J).

But this still does not change my mind: the first mining ASICs will likely be manufactured on the 130nm node, so their 400 Mhash/J characteristic will make them a 20x efficiency increase over 45nm FPGAs. Not much different from past 10x technological leaps.

The 400MH/J was based on the chip which was optimized to allow all SHA-3 algorithms perform at their optimal clock rate.  It shouldn't be considered the pinacle of SHA-256 performance as including SHA-256 wasn't the main purpose of the chip.  It should be taken as the bare minimum of what an underclocked and unoptimized design can acheive and as you point out that is already 20x.  

Take a look at figure 9.  Notice the line for SHA-256 is nearly vertical.  This means the clock could be ramped up significantly without increasing the transistor count.  The chip as evaluated ran @ 200 Mhz however you can see that 300 Mhz requires an insignificant increase in kGE.  Now 300Mhz is already 50% higher performance but that shouldn't be taken as a max.  The "sweet spot" is likely 600 Mhz or higher.  Maybe a 1Ghz.  So why didn't they test it at 1Ghz?  That wasn't the point of the chip.  The clock speed chosen was a compromise to neither hinder nor help any of the SHA-3 candidates.  

Then you have to consider the algorithm used was inefficient from Bitcoin's perspectives.  It is a streaming hash design where the output of one block is combined with input of a second block.   Bitcoin is a static single block operation which significantly cuts the resources required.   No communication lines back to the input have to be made because it is simply data -> data out.  then new data in -> new data out.  

20x is the performance for an unoptimized design running at an inefficient clock speed.   A bitcoin optimized single pass double hasher (with all the shortcuts) running at 1Ghz on 130nm process is probably more like 40x to 50x.  The move to smaller processes will be combined with increased experience and optimization so the jumps in performance beyond that are going to happen faster than Moore's law.  The end game of 100x FPGA (and 500x GPU) performance on MH/W is likely conservative when at same manufacturing process (i.e. 28nm GPU, FPGA, ASIC).  

Quote
However I do agree that Mhash/dollar will be a more interesting metric to watch than Mhash/J. I wonder why you think ASIC will contribute a 1000x improvement in this area (going from $1 per Mh/s to $1 per Gh/s)?

Basing on the square mm and a clock speed of 1 Ghz the raw manufacturing cost would be closer to $0.10 per GH/s.  Now granted you have the NRE, the capital cost, the profit magins, yield losses, salaries, etc but even with 1000% markup <$1 per GH/s would be possible.

One way to look at it is the SHA-256 hasher only took 20kGE.    Lets say scaling it to 1 Ghz required twice as many GE and you want to make it perform a double hash; so 80 kGE. Obviously you wouldn't make a chip that small.  But hashing is perfectly parallel.  Instead of 1 single hashing engine running 1Ghz you could lay down 20 parallel engines.  So that on each clock 20 nonces are calculated simultaneously (20 GH/s @ 1Ghz).  Even that would only be ~ 1.6M GE.  Tiny small by modern chip standards (which have transistor counts in the billions).   The $20 CPU in your smartphone likely has a higher transistor count.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Dexter770221 on June 13, 2012, 02:19:30 PM
1 gate != 1 transistor. Simplest NOT gate requires 2 transistor. AND XOR gates even more, not to mention adders that required at least 3 gates.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 02:22:32 PM
1 gate != 1 transistor. Simplest NOT gate requires 2 transistor. AND XOR gates even more, not to mention adders that required at least 3 gates.

I never said that it was.  Regardless 1.6M GE is downright tiny.  Lets assume every GE took 5 transistors. 

A 7970 GPU has 4.3 BILLION transistors. 


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 03:02:00 PM
Quote

+1 for haters


+1


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rjk on June 13, 2012, 03:04:59 PM
If no ASICs exist, that just means there is the ever-looming possibility that someone (governement, banks, etc) can still create one and fuck everyone over.

If they exist in the hands of the people, that makes the above scenario less likely or impossible.

What's so hard to understand about that?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 03:30:24 PM
If no ASICs exist, that just means there is the ever-looming possibility that someone (governement, banks, etc) can still create one and fuck everyone over.

If they exist in the hands of the people, that makes the above scenario less likely or impossible.

What's so hard to understand about that?

It is easy to understand but people have vested interests.  Hell i got 15GH/s of GPUs anyone think I want to see ASICs tomorrow?  It is inevitable.  Someone will build ASICs.  It will either be built and sold to miners to protect Bitcoin or it will be built an used covertly to destroy Bitcoin.  Either way it will be built.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Vladimir on June 13, 2012, 03:32:55 PM
It is easy to understand but people have vested interests.  Hell i got 15GH/s of GPUs anyone think I want to see ASICs tomorrow?  It is inevitable.  Someone will build ASICs.  It will either be built and sold to miners to protect Bitcoin or it will be built an used covertly to destroy Bitcoin.  Either way it will be built.

FPGA guys should indeed be scared. Should have headed my early warnings to be less scared now. The key mistake they made is hoping that as it was with CPU's and GPU's, FPGA generation would last about 18 month and they will have time to pay off capex. Surprise, surprise, ASIC's are coming online sooner than you think and surely sooner than 18 month from now.

GPU guys probably do not care anymore, they will just milk what they can from those old rusty gpu's.





Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: nedbert9 on June 13, 2012, 03:47:11 PM
Because ASIC is a GIANT leap with almost NO marginal cost after initial purchase. CPU to GPU was a giant leap as well, but GPU's were still limited by availability and electrical costs/infrastructure. FPGA is really an incremental change from GPU because they are not cheap unless they are produced in HUGE quantity and their only advantage over GPU is power consumption.

ASIC is an exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost.

How many people built GPU farms over 10 GH ? not many because it typically required new home wiring, heat dissipation and a high monthly electrical cost in the face of an uncertain and volatile bitcoin value. plopping down 10k to build a big GPU farm took alot of thought, knowledge and risk among other things so it was inherently self limiting.

ASICs are basically plug and play so there is no technological limit for the potential miner. They have almost no electrical cost so no new electrical infrastructure is needed. They have almost zero operational cost once deployed so again, no limiting factor there.

The ONLY barrier to entry is the initial capital investment, but we ALL know the price for these will drop dramatically after the initial development, once again, how the hell do the early adopters ever get their money back?

Unless as someone suggested that the developers pay $1million and then mine until they get their money back and then start selling the ASICs for 1k or something.

Ya know.  It will never happen, but this isn't too bad of an idea compared to infinite ROI.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BCMan on June 13, 2012, 03:52:03 PM
It is easy to understand but people have vested interests.  Hell i got 15GH/s of GPUs anyone think I want to see ASICs tomorrow?  It is inevitable.  Someone will build ASICs.  It will either be built and sold to miners to protect Bitcoin or it will be built an used covertly to destroy Bitcoin.  Either way it will be built.
GPU guys probably do not care anymore, they will just milk what they can from those old rusty gpu's.
Not those, who have free or almost free electricity.  ::) It's still the best choice, even with ASICs. And how effective will be next gpu generations?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lame.duck on June 13, 2012, 03:53:07 PM
If no ASICs exist, that just means there is the ever-looming possibility that someone (governement, banks, etc) can still create one and fuck everyone over.

If they exist in the hands of the people, that makes the above scenario less likely or impossible.

What's so hard to understand about that?

What do you think will happen after the mining is over? Will the miner keep their equipment  up and running just for the Network security (and a smallish tx-fee) or will the sell them to whoever willing to pay for it, e.g. Mr Bad Guy? Btw, even if 'someone' also will make ASICs  to attack the bitcoin, ASIC mining will not hinder this as after making the masks, producing 'more' chips is dirt cheap.





Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Vladimir on June 13, 2012, 03:54:46 PM
If no ASICs exist, that just means there is the ever-looming possibility that someone (governement, banks, etc) can still create one and fuck everyone over.

If they exist in the hands of the people, that makes the above scenario less likely or impossible.

What's so hard to understand about that?

What do you think will happen after the mining is over? Will the miner keep their equipment  up and running just for the Network security (and a smallish tx-fee) or will the sell them to whoever willing to pay for it, e.g. Mr Bad Guy? Btw, even if 'someone' also will make ASICs  to attack the bitcoin, ASIC mining will not hinder this as after making the masks, producing 'more' chips is dirt cheap.

Duck, this is lame. LOL, You assume "smallish tx-fee", what if it is "largish tx-fees"? The only constant is change.



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 03:58:03 PM
It is easy to understand but people have vested interests.  Hell i got 15GH/s of GPUs anyone think I want to see ASICs tomorrow?  It is inevitable.  Someone will build ASICs.  It will either be built and sold to miners to protect Bitcoin or it will be built an used covertly to destroy Bitcoin.  Either way it will be built.

FPGA guys should indeed be scared. Should have headed my early warnings to be less scared now. The key mistake they made is hoping that as it was with CPU's and GPU's, FPGA generation would last about 18 month and they will have time to pay off capex. Surprise, surprise, ASIC's are coming online sooner than you think and surely sooner than 18 month from now.

GPU guys probably do not care anymore, they will just milk what they can from those old rusty gpu's.





I have always respected you, but do you honestly think if you (or someone like you) uses your wealth to amass a large portion of network power with ASICS that the Bitcoin devs will not stop you with a change to the code?

You might have a scary name Vladmir but no one is scared, not one bit. The Bitcoin developers are not going to let ASICs centralize mining, and FPGA will remain on top for a long time to come.

The only reason for this post of yours is to spread propaganda and misinformation to support your own cause.

I will personally bet 100 Bitcoins that FPGAs miners will make up the majority of the Bitcoin network hashing power 1 year from now.

Take me up on that bet Vladimir?



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rjk on June 13, 2012, 04:03:02 PM
Why would you bet that? Do you have any idea how badly you will lose?

Also, how do you plan on quantifying it? You can't call all the miners up and say "yo, what are you mining with".



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 04:08:14 PM
Why would you bet that? Do you have any idea how badly you will lose?

Also, how do you plan on quantifying it? You can't call all the miners up and say "yo, what are you mining with".



It is my opinion that FPGA will be #1 and ASIC is not and I am willing to bet on it.

However you are right its impossible to quantify in those terms

can anyone think of a way we can quantify the bet?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 04:11:31 PM


It is my opinion that FPGA will be #1 and ASIC is not and I am willing to bet on it.

However you are right its impossible to quantify in those terms

can anyone think of a way we can quantify the bet?

Sure. If difficulty/price goes up by a factor 3 or so, its safe  to assume its due to ASICs. FPGAs arent going to plummet like that in price per MH.

edit: you should factor in reward halving too though.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: melco on June 13, 2012, 04:17:29 PM
It is easy to understand but people have vested interests.  Hell i got 15GH/s of GPUs anyone think I want to see ASICs tomorrow?  It is inevitable.  Someone will build ASICs.  It will either be built and sold to miners to protect Bitcoin or it will be built an used covertly to destroy Bitcoin.  Either way it will be built.

FPGA guys should indeed be scared. Should have headed my early warnings to be less scared now. The key mistake they made is hoping that as it was with CPU's and GPU's, FPGA generation would last about 18 month and they will have time to pay off capex. Surprise, surprise, ASIC's are coming online sooner than you think and surely sooner than 18 month from now.

GPU guys probably do not care anymore, they will just milk what they can from those old rusty gpu's.





I have always respected you, but do you honestly think if you (or someone like you) uses your wealth to amass a large portion of network power with ASICS that the Bitcoin devs will not stop you with a change to the code?

You might have a scary name Vladmir but no one is scared, not one bit. The Bitcoin developers are not going to let ASICs centralize mining, and FPGA will remain on top for a long time to come.

The only reason for this post of yours is to spread propaganda and misinformation to support your own cause.

I will personally bet 100 Bitcoins that FPGAs miners will make up the majority of the Bitcoin network hashing power 1 year from now.

Take me up on that bet Vladimir?



Damn... ASIC production != centralization, dude. It will happen, no matter you want it or not. And your business on FPGA miners will end right after ASIC miners will appear on the market. Sad but true. But anyway, don't get mad at me :) It's not me who developing/producing ASIC miners


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: crazyates on June 13, 2012, 04:20:37 PM
I think by "decentralization", the OP is talking about the technological progress limiting the potential userbase for miners. Take a look at the history of bitmining:

CPU days - Everyone could mine. Everyone has a cpu, right?
GPU days - Only those with ATI cards could mine. This starts the narrowing down of your average person getting into Bitcoin.
FPGA days - Only those with the funds and dedication to BTC are going to buy FPGAs. (luckily, at this point, GPUs are still feasible). (Also, this could change in the future).
Estimated ASIC - Only the hardcore mining will have ASICs.

At every step, a few things happen:
1) As the hardware as becomes LESS multi-purpose (or multi-market), Bitmining has a more profound impact on the price of said hardware.
2) As the initial cost (and now specialized hardware) increases, you scare off more and more newcomers into the community.

I think the OP is extrapolating, and assuming that this effect is only going to get worse.

It's assumed, I think, that those already heavily invested in Bitcoins (or those just now investing) will purchase ASICs. The problem is for the average joe. At each new level, it gets harder (and more expensive) to invest in mining, with smaller resale value if their investment should fail.

This is running from my own experiences. I started playing around with bitmining on my brother's 9800GTX. Then I bought my own 5830. Then I bought a 5850. Then I bought a 5870... Now lets fast forward 1 year. ASICs are common among the heavy miners. Difficulty is 5x what it is now. How is the average person wanting to get into Bitcoins supposed to do that? I'm sure mining on their 8990 will give some results, but it might not be worth the power draw. Buy used FPGAs? They won't earn the income an ASIC would, but buying an ASIC is an investment with a high cost, something that would probably scare away a lot of people.

One last thought: I'm totally for ASICs. I plan on buying them and mining for years. However, the person who will get screwed is the person just trying to get into mining without thousands of $ up front. Just my 2c.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 04:31:55 PM
Make all the predictions you want but the fact of the matter is ASIC is not coming any time soon.

if you want to mine and be profitable right now, buy FPGA.

The majority of miners see that fact and they are acting accordingly, myself and all the other FPGA manufacturers are shipping them out as fast as we can

buy into this fairy tale of ASIC all you want, I am sick of arguing about speculation. and thats ALL THERE IS SPECULATION.


FPGA Manufacturers and Miners are currently making money and we will continue to do so.

When an actual ASIC product comes to market come see me, otherwise leave me alone because I am real tired of band wagon jumpers talking about things they know nothing about just so they can feel like they look smart.


Heres a quantifiable BET! I bet that the next
Quote
involving me and this thread will be by someone who knows absolutely nothing about ASICS or FPGAS and will probably never even own one.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 13, 2012, 04:33:00 PM
LOL caplepair, the devs aren't going to change the algo no matter how much you wish it to be true.

Crazyates, BFL has already stated that they plan to release at least one ASIC product (and potentially 2) that are well under $5,000 and "affordable for the average person".  Not to mention, since 1 GH/s only costs $1 to produce, according to some folks in this thread, those prices should drop even further eventually.


When an actual ASIC product comes to market come see me, otherwise leave me alone because I am real tired of band wagon jumpers talking about things they know nothing about just so they can feel like they look smart.
No one asked you to post in this thread.  Just sayin'.  ;)

EDIT:  QFT
Heres a quantifiable BET! I bet that the next
Quote
involving me and this thread will be by someone who knows absolutely nothing about ASICS or FPGAS and will probably never even own one.
I own 4 FPGA's.  What did I win?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 04:36:25 PM
When the average person can buy a box which looks like a mac mini at walmart plug it into the wall and get coins each month it will be easy.

Actually mining is just part of the bitcoin community.  It always was going to become more specialized.  Lets say FPGA/ASICs didn't exist or were unviable.  Some parts of the world have power costs at <$0.03 per kWh.  Hell some parts of the world give large consumers FREE (yes FREE) power at night (when capacity exceeds demand) because it is cheaper than idling plants.

If FPGA/ASICs didn't exist it would only be a matter of time before someone built a 1 TH/s datacenter in a place with cheap power and mild summers possibly near a body of water so they could use air chillers.  The avg Joe simply couldn't compete.

I remember sometime back someone said they thought it would be cool when their Grandmother could mine w/ a BFL Single.  Then someone corrected it and said they thought it would be cool when their Grandmother DIDN'T mine and got coins by selling pies/cookies/etc.

Mining != Bitcoin.  Personally my mining days are done.  I will let my 15 GH/s GPU farm hash on until it dies (one card at a time) or can no longer produce coins at a profit.  I have no intentions on buying FPGA or ASICs and guess what ... I have never been as excited or bullish about Bitcoin!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: pusle on June 13, 2012, 04:38:00 PM

Basing on the square mm and a clock speed of 1 Ghz the raw manufacturing cost would be closer to $0.10 per GH/s.  Now granted you have the NRE, the capital cost, the profit magins, yield losses, salaries, etc but even with 1000% markup <$1 per GH/s would be possible.

One way to look at it is the SHA-256 hasher only took 20kGE.    Lets say scaling it to 1 Ghz required twice as many GE and you want to make it perform a double hash; so 80 kGE. Obviously you wouldn't make a chip that small.  But hashing is perfectly parallel.  Instead of 1 single hashing engine running 1Ghz you could lay down 20 parallel engines.  So that on each clock 20 nonces are calculated simultaneously (20 GH/s @ 1Ghz).  Even that would only be ~ 1.6M GE.  Tiny small by modern chip standards (which have transistor counts in the billions).   The $20 CPU in your smartphone likely has a higher transistor count.


Either this company is the most incompetent on the planet, or your estimates are way off.
http://www.cast-inc.com/ip-cores/encryption/sha-256/index.html

Using this IP core a 10x10mm die @130nm (200kgates/mm2) would give about 3Ghash/s.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 04:39:26 PM
LOL caplepair, the devs aren't going to change the algo no matter how much you wish it to be true.

This.  And nor should they.  I mean if we are going to change algorithms why not changing it back to something which is prohibitive on FPGA also. :)  Oh wait you wan't FPGA just not ASICs.

A change in the protocol as fundamental as the core hashing algorithm should only happen in the event of cryptographic failure.  Given that it is a breaking fork which can never be reconciled w/ unforked network anything less than a SUPER MAJORITY of all parties (developers, miners, merchants/exchanges, users, etc) would be a massive disaster.

It simply isn't going to happen.  Anyone hoping it will is just pissing up a rope.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 04:40:26 PM
LOL caplepair, the devs aren't going to change the algo no matter how much you wish it to be true.

Crazyates, BFL has already stated that they plan to release at least one ASIC product (and potentially 2) that are well under $5,000 and "affordable for the average person".  Not to mention, since 1 GH/s only costs $1 to produce, according to some folks in this thread, those prices should drop even further eventually.


When an actual ASIC product comes to market come see me, otherwise leave me alone because I am real tired of band wagon jumpers talking about things they know nothing about just so they can feel like they look smart.
No one asked you to post in this thread.  Just sayin'.  ;)

EDIT:  QFT
Heres a quantifiable BET! I bet that the next
Quote
involving me and this thread will be by someone who knows absolutely nothing about ASICS or FPGAS and will probably never even own one.
I own 4 FPGA's.  What did I win?

SPIKE:

Your telling me that if some rich asshole spends his trust fund to make a custom asic chip and has them mass produced to the tune of 51% of the network all for himself

you are telling me the Devs wont change the code to rule out ASIC? they will just let one person take over the whole network?

If you believe that, then you should quit Bitcoin right now.

THATS THE DANGER OF ASIC

The right person could have them MASSED PRODUCED for pennies on the dollar

and I know no one asked me to post in this thread I was referring to the constant quotes and challenges from people who dont know what the hell they are talking about

oh and your prize? Its a big sloppy kiss, pucker up butter cup  :D :D


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BoardGameCoin on June 13, 2012, 04:41:18 PM
I believe ASICs will cause an initial centralization, but later on a widening decentralization. My reasoning is that once volume gets high enough, the marginal cost of a chip will be < $20 USD (based on existing costs for 1 GHz ARM chips), and at that time probably < 1 BTC. If that ever happens, someone will eventually offer a mass-market, 8 chip personal miner for < $100 USD.

When the average person can buy a box which looks like a mac mini at walmart plug it into the wall and get coins each month it will be easy.

-bgc


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 13, 2012, 04:43:11 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 04:44:02 PM
LOL caplepair, the devs aren't going to change the algo no matter how much you wish it to be true.

This.  And nor should they.  I mean if we are going to change algorithms why not changing it back to something which is prohibitive on FPGA also. :)  Oh wait you wan't FPGA just not ASICs.


ASIC's cant adapt! Once you make that chip, you cant change it man!

One change the Bitcoin code and all current ASICs are useless and cannot be fixed, end of story

FPGA's and GPU's could easily adapt to the change with a software upgrade

do your homework before you come at me jack


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: melco on June 13, 2012, 04:45:02 PM
I think by "decentralization", the OP is talking about the technological progress limiting the potential userbase for miners. Take a look at the history of bitmining:

CPU days - Everyone could mine. Everyone has a cpu, right?
GPU days - Only those with ATI cards could mine. This starts the narrowing down of your average person getting into Bitcoin.
FPGA days - Only those with the funds and dedication to BTC are going to buy FPGAs. (luckily, at this point, GPUs are still feasible). (Also, this could change in the future).
Estimated ASIC - Only the hardcore mining will have ASICs.

At every step, a few things happen:
1) As the hardware as becomes LESS multi-purpose (or multi-market), Bitmining has a more profound impact on the price of said hardware.
2) As the initial cost (and now specialized hardware) increases, you scare off more and more newcomers into the community.

I think the OP is extrapolating, and assuming that this effect is only going to get worse.

It's assumed, I think, that those already heavily invested in Bitcoins (or those just now investing) will purchase ASICs. The problem is for the average joe. At each new level, it gets harder (and more expensive) to invest in mining, with smaller resale value if their investment should fail.

This is running from my own experiences. I started playing around with bitmining on my brother's 9800GTX. Then I bought my own 5830. Then I bought a 5850. Then I bought a 5870... Now lets fast forward 1 year. ASICs are common among the heavy miners. Difficulty is 5x what it is now. How is the average person wanting to get into Bitcoins supposed to do that? I'm sure mining on their 8990 will give some results, but it might not be worth the power draw. Buy used FPGAs? They won't earn the income an ASIC would, but buying an ASIC is an investment with a high cost, something that would probably scare away a lot of people.

One last thought: I'm totally for ASICs. I plan on buying them and mining for years. However, the person who will get screwed is the person just trying to get into mining without thousands of $ up front. Just my 2c.
For those who want to be part of "Bitcoin party" and don't want to invest in ASIC bitmining - just buy some bitcoins on money you want to invest in mining. And then forget about bitcoin for 4-5 years. If bitcoin is still alive - you are about to be rich, if not - you've spent those money 4-5 yeas ago. Just forget about that. It is much more easy and less risky than invest in ASIC and it will help bitcoin even more than investing in ASICs and mining.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 04:46:09 PM
Either this company is the most incompetent on the planet, or your estimates are way off.
http://www.cast-inc.com/ip-cores/encryption/sha-256/index.html

Using this IP core a 10x10mm die @130nm (200kgates/mm2) would give about 3Ghash/s.

Neither.  Outside of Bitcoin there is absolutely nothing which needs this level of performance.  Even a mere 1 GH/s is a staggering amount of hashing power.  Say you are building a board which will do PBKDF2 in hardware.  At 10,000 iterations of SHA-256 a 1 GH/s chip could handle 100,000 simultaneous logins.

Know any webservers which need 100K simultaneous logins?  If you are hashing anything other than a incrementing nonce the bandwidth requirements also become equally insane.  At 1 GH/s (2 billion hashes per second) your I/O is 512 bit in and 256 bit out so that under a Tbps.  To put it into perspective it is nearly 6x as much as PCIe 3.0 with full 16 lanes.

There simply is no reason to design a chip which can clock any higher.  Why?  How many entire libraries of congress per second do you need to hash? :)

Designing the chip to run at lower performance levels means lower power & cooling requirements, simpler deployment, and higher longevity/stability.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 04:47:17 PM
ASIC's cant adapt! Once you make that chip, you cant change it man!

Who said they could?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 04:48:01 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !


Your such a clown you have no idea what your talking about

ASICS arent even out yet.

no one can dispute FPGA is #1 right now, the debate is what will happen when ASICS DO come out.

Myself and the other FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousands, you really need to get a clue your just making yourself look foolish at this point.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 04:56:32 PM
To everyone else I respect your opinion a great deal, and to be honest I hope ASIC comes to the Bitcoin world in the spirit of helping the network and not hurting it, its when people like Vladimir come on giving warnings, thats when I get fired up.


Believe it or not I care first and foremost about the Bitcoin network and if you look at the things I have done for the Bitcoin world over the last year + you cannot die my love and passion for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community.

I am passionate about fighting for Bitcoin and if I offended anyone I am sorry, ASIC has the potential to be very good for Bitcoin but the potential is greater for it to be very very bad for Bitcoin

I have outlined these things in other threads so I am not going to beat a dead horse here, I just hope everyone really does a lot of research and looks at the motives of the people involved before they make a decision on where they stand and just please before you completely embrace this thing without caution take a look at the potential for abuse.

for me its back to work

Have a nice day Gentleman its been nice debating with you.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 13, 2012, 05:00:52 PM
SPIKE:

Your telling me that if some rich asshole spends his trust fund to make a custom asic chip and has them mass produced to the tune of 51% of the network all for himself

you are telling me the Devs wont change the code to rule out ASIC? they will just let one person take over the whole network?

If you believe that, then you should quit Bitcoin right now.

THATS THE DANGER OF ASIC

The right person could have them MASSED PRODUCED for pennies on the dollar

and I know no one asked me to post in this thread I was referring to the constant quotes and challenges from people who dont know what the hell they are talking about

oh and your prize? Its a big sloppy kiss, pucker up butter cup  :D :D
You've got it all wrong cablepair.  The fact that we DON'T currently have ASIC miners available to anyone who wants to buy them makes that risk of a rich guy spending his trust fund on a custom ASIC chip that much greater.  When we DO have ASIC miners available to the public, that risk will be mitigated.  By your own anecdote, you've aptly demonstrated exactly the reason why publicly sold ASICs are exactly what Bitcoin mining needs to continue keeping the network secure.

If you don't believe the Bitcoin protocol is correct, then just outright state it.  Create your own fork where ASICs are impossible, either by changing the algo every 3 months, or by some other method of your choosing.  But Bitcoin is SHA256 - it is defined by that very algorithm.  To change that would be to admit fault in the code Bitcoin code and idea itself.  Lots of other people have found "faults" in Bitcoin and "fixed" it through their own fork.  So far, none of them have been successful to any sort of similar degree as Bitcoin.  But if you believe Bitcoin is faulty, then please do take your FPGA's and start hashing on your own blockchain with your own idea of what the algorithm should look like.  See how many people follow you there.   ;)

ASIC's cant adapt! Once you make that chip, you cant change it man!

One change the Bitcoin code and all current ASICs are useless and cannot be fixed, end of story

FPGA's and GPU's could easily adapt to the change with a software upgrade

do your homework before you come at me jack
Your point?  Who cares if ASIC's can't adapt?  No one is changing the Bitcoin code...

Your such a clown you have no idea what your talking about

ASICS arent even out yet.

no one can dispute FPGA is #1 right now, the debate is what will happen when ASICS DO come out.

Myself and the other FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousands, you really need to get a clue your just making yourself look foolish at this point.
No one is disputing that FPGA's are #1 right now.  Pretty sure everyone agrees on that.  Your point?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 13, 2012, 05:02:53 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !


Your such a clown you have no idea what your talking about

ASICS arent even out yet.

no one can dispute FPGA is #1 right now, the debate is what will happen when ASICS DO come out.

Myself and the other FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousands, you really need to get a clue your just making yourself look foolish at this point.

Yes son,  many tens of thousands, we believe you  ;D


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 05:03:57 PM
To everyone else I respect your opinion a great deal, and to be honest I hope ASIC comes to the Bitcoin world in the spirit of helping the network and not hurting it, its when people like Vladimir come on giving warnings, thats when I get fired up.


Believe it or not I care first and foremost about the Bitcoin network and if you look at the things I have done for the Bitcoin world over the last year + you cannot die my love and passion for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community.

I am passionate about fighting for Bitcoin and if I offended anyone I am sorry, ASIC has the potential to be very good for Bitcoin but the potential is greater for it to be very very bad for Bitcoin

I have outlined these things in other threads so I am not going to beat a dead horse here, I just hope everyone really does a lot of research and looks at the motives of the people involved before they make a decision on where they stand and just please before you completely embrace this thing without caution take a look at the potential for abuse.

for me its back to work

Have a nice day Gentleman its been nice debating with you.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 05:09:16 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !


Your such a clown you have no idea what your talking about

ASICS arent even out yet.

no one can dispute FPGA is #1 right now, the debate is what will happen when ASICS DO come out.

Myself and the other FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousands, you really need to get a clue your just making yourself look foolish at this point.

Yes son,  many tens of thousands, we believe you  ;D


Not that I have to prove anything to you or that tens of thousands of dollars is really that much money (what are you 13 or something?)

To date we have sold almost 50 ModMiner Quads, I encourage you to please do the math.

if you dont believe me just ask around there are many people on this forum who have purchased 5 or 10 units in one shot.
im ignoring you now.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: crazyates on June 13, 2012, 05:09:56 PM
ASIC's cant adapt! Once you make that chip, you cant change it man!

Question: has this ever happened before? I know with GPU mining, there have been code cleanups, updates for compatibility/optimization for driver/SDK changes, and forks for newer hardware, but has the bitcoin code ever changed the way the SHA256 hashing works?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rjk on June 13, 2012, 05:15:57 PM
ASIC's cant adapt! Once you make that chip, you cant change it man!

Question: has this ever happened before? I know with GPU mining, there have been code cleanups, updates for compatibility/optimization for driver/SDK changes, and forks for newer hardware, but has the bitcoin code ever changed the way the SHA256 hashing works?
No, it has never previously been changed.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bombo999 on June 13, 2012, 05:17:48 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !

so true ... he sounds like a horse and buggy salesman after automobiles were developed ... he won't answer this, but ask him how many months it would take for an 'investment' in his product to break even, including his assumptions for difficulty increases and reward reductions ... makes your comments even more entertaining :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 13, 2012, 05:19:22 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !


Your such a clown you have no idea what your talking about

ASICS arent even out yet.

no one can dispute FPGA is #1 right now, the debate is what will happen when ASICS DO come out.

Myself and the other FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousands, you really need to get a clue your just making yourself look foolish at this point.

Yes son,  many tens of thousands, we believe you  ;D


Not that I have to prove anything to you or that tens of thousands of dollars is really that much money (what are you 13 or something?)

To date we have sold almost 50 ModMiner Quads, I encourage you to please do the math.

if you dont believe me just ask around there are many people on this forum who have purchased 5 or 10 units in one shot.
im ignoring you now.

Saying: FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousand
...is talking about unit quantity sales and not money, if you meant money then you need to learn to phrase your thoughts right.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: crazyates on June 13, 2012, 05:21:35 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !

so true ... he sounds like a horse and buggy salesman after automobiles were developed ... he won't answer this, but ask him how many months it would take for an 'investment' in his product to break even, including his assumptions for difficulty increases and reward reductions ... makes your comments even more entertaining :)

Have you run the numbers for breaking even on any investment, GPU or FPGA? Including electricity?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 13, 2012, 05:25:31 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !

so true ... he sounds like a horse and buggy salesman after automobiles were developed ... he won't answer this, but ask him how many months it would take for an 'investment' in his product to break even, including his assumptions for difficulty increases and reward reductions ... makes your comments even more entertaining :)

Have you run the numbers for breaking even on any investment, GPU or FPGA? Including electricity?

270days on BFL vs 440days on Cablepair guy's FPGA.

Difficulty increase and block reward halfing make it even worse, not to mention you get full trade in value with the BFL single :)

If you cool the Single right you get 900Mhash on the top firmware, with more firmware coming soon according to BFL, so maybe even 1Ghash. Wait time is now down to 50 days.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Turbor on June 13, 2012, 05:31:53 PM
When they come, I'll be ready
I hear their voices inside
The stars in the heavens are moving
Soon they will align

Gavin, god of Bitcoin
Let me die with a FPGA in my hand
Raise your hands, GPUs in the wind
Brothers of Bitcoin together again
With blood in our voices we ride
We'll fight till we win or we'll fight until we die  ;)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 13, 2012, 05:32:24 PM
From your link http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DSD11SHA3.pdf I compute 400 Mhash/J for a 130nm ASIC. So probably ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm. This is 50x better than a 45nm FPGA (Spartan6 = 20 Mhash/J).

Care to share your math? I suspect you forgot a bitcoin hash consists of two SHA256 hashes.

I took this into account:
1.51 Gbps / 8 (bits/bytes) / 64 (bytes/block) / 2 (SHA-256 blocks per Bitcoin hash) / 0.0037 (Watt) = 398.5 Mhash/Joule

Edit: actually this is wrong. 1.51Gbps was achieved at maximal clock (200 MHz), for which power consumption was not reported. the 0.0037 Watt was estimated with a clock running at 50 Mhz, not 200 Mhz. The actual performance number that can be used is the quoted 19.75 mJ/Gbits which correspond to 49.4 Mhash/J (see my edited post above).


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 05:39:47 PM
Using this IP core a 10x10mm die @130nm (200kgates/mm2) would give about 3Ghash/s.


Hmm.. not sure where you got the 130nm figures from. I only see 180 and 90nm if you click the asic button.
On 90nm, one core is 50,800um2 or 0.0508 mm2
One core is 7.75Mbps / MHz. On 90nm they project 500 Mhz, so thats 3.8 Gbps or ~7.5 bitcoin MH.
a 100mm2 chip would therefore yield 15 GH. A single 200mm wafer over 4 TH.

But as DnT pointed out, thats unlikely to be anywhere near optimal for bitcoin.

edit: revised math




Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 13, 2012, 05:41:47 PM
It is my opinion that FPGA will be #1 and ASIC is not and I am willing to bet on it.

However you are right its impossible to quantify in those terms

can anyone think of a way we can quantify the bet?

With eldentyrell's TML Spartan6 bitstream requesting mining jobs from centralized servers, he should be able to tell exactly how many Ghash/s of Spartan6 there are :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: spiccioli on June 13, 2012, 05:55:42 PM
Well,

there is at least one thing we're not considering right now: BFL could start selling ASICs which are underclocked so that while being better than the average FPGA they don't give out the maximum available hashing power.

Doing so they can, next year, sell their ASIC/2 board, with higher clock and same price just like GPU vendors do all the time.

I mean what makes you think that the first board will be 100x when a 10-20x underclocked or otherwise "crippled" board can be sold as well?

spiccioli.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 13, 2012, 05:56:41 PM
we use the same Spartan6LX150 FPGA chip that all the other manufacturers are , also our unit is the cheapest quad unit currently available

Ztex offers large discounts when buying their 1.15y boards in quantity, beating your unit price: 719 EUR (~$900) in qty 25-49.
Does it mean you would match their prices?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 06:02:58 PM
Well,

there is at least one thing we're not considering right now: BFL could start selling ASICs which are underclocked so that while being better than the average FPGA they don't give out the maximum available hashing power.

Doing so they can, next year, sell their ASIC/2 board, with higher clock and same price just like GPU vendors do all the time.

I mean what makes you think that the first board will be 100x when a 10-20x underclocked or otherwise "crippled" board can be sold as well?

spiccioli.

If BFL has a monopoly they likely will.  It maximizes their profit and allows them to pay down the NRE faster.  Anytime sales get slow they can just increase the MH/$ metric. 

If 2+ companies have ASIC based products then competition likely will drive prices down much faster and that will be disruptive in the short term.  The economics of ASICs (high fixed cost very very low per unit cost) almost guarantee a pricing war.  I mean if you can sell more units by cutting your price from a 1000% markup to "only" a 900% markup wouldn't you?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Dexter770221 on June 13, 2012, 06:14:16 PM
From your link http://rijndael.ece.vt.edu/sha3/publications/DSD11SHA3.pdf I compute 400 Mhash/J for a 130nm ASIC. So probably ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm. This is 50x better than a 45nm FPGA (Spartan6 = 20 Mhash/J).

Care to share your math? I suspect you forgot a bitcoin hash consists of two SHA256 hashes.

I took this into account:
1.51 Gbps / 8 (bits/bytes) / 64 (bytes/block) / 2 (SHA-256 blocks per Bitcoin hash) / 0.0037 (Watt) = 398.5 Mhash/Joule
Should be 68(bytes/block) its then 395 MH/Joule. But we need to consider that is a very good design maked by professionals. BFL design is only 450MH/35W=12.85MH/W. They can produce ASIC so quickly becuse they propably using HDL code used in Singles. Moving from FPGA to ASIC (with same design) should improve efficency no more than 10-20 times. Thats why I think 200MH/W we will see from that ASICs.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 13, 2012, 06:16:52 PM
Well,

there is at least one thing we're not considering right now: BFL could start selling ASICs which are underclocked so that while being better than the average FPGA they don't give out the maximum available hashing power.

Doing so they can, next year, sell their ASIC/2 board, with higher clock and same price just like GPU vendors do all the time.

I mean what makes you think that the first board will be 100x when a 10-20x underclocked or otherwise "crippled" board can be sold as well?

spiccioli.

They might, but then again, its no different as selling the same chip for $1000 initially and dropping prices to $100, $50 etc over time.  The net effect is the same; per GH price will likely start close to FPGA prices and eventually drop by somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude.

Crippling does have the potential benefit of being able to sell "upgrades". Flash the bios or something and double, quadruple or ten fold your hashing power.  


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 13, 2012, 06:17:33 PM
A SHA-256 block is always 64 bytes (512 bits).  Even if the block is partially empty it will be a zero padded 512 bit block.

Bit Thunderdome: 512 bits enter, 256 bits leave.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Syke on June 13, 2012, 06:18:07 PM
Look at how long it took BFL to release products based on regular FPGAs. There's no way they'll release a "full custom ASIC" before the block reward halves. ASICs like that are a long way off. There's plenty of time for FPGA profits.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: crazyates on June 13, 2012, 06:19:19 PM
when will bitcoin asic's be available for certain?
2016  ;)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Garr255 on June 13, 2012, 06:42:25 PM
when will bitcoin asic's be available for certain?
2016  ;)

+/- 4 years


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rjk on June 13, 2012, 06:43:02 PM
when will bitcoin asic's be available for certain?
If you believe BFL's words, Friday the 15th.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BR0KK on June 13, 2012, 07:57:11 PM
Didn't the same thing happened when gpus entered the bitcoin mining area ......

What about bitstream and Stream developers. They simply can improve their code. As for my understanding Asics are xxgh for their lifetime?



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lame.duck on June 13, 2012, 08:31:56 PM
Saying: FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousand
...is talking about unit quantity sales and not money, if you meant money then you need to learn to phrase your thoughts right.

There are Xilinx marketing paper about ASIC vs. FPGA comparisation that operate with per piece cost costumers get buying the FPGAs in 10 k quantities. Needless to say that Xilinx FPGAs win ;)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Transisto on June 13, 2012, 10:51:48 PM
...that operate with per piece cost costumers get buying the...
 ???

If BFL were to offer lifetime price protection it would greatly reduce risk to miners while also motivating enough initial funding.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: jjshabadoo on June 13, 2012, 11:02:38 PM
I also could have clarified some points and stated that I do not believe ASIC technology is BAD for bitcoin. Allowing something like ASIC to be rolled out under traditional free market principles is going to be bad for bitcoin in my opinion.

High Initial cost+low production cost+low marginal cost is not going to be good for the people who buy the first units.

I guess many here don't give a shet about those people, but I happen to believe its unfair and could have backlash.

In the long run ASIC will be great for bitcoin and bitcoin has to get there eventually. Maybe the only path is a painful one.

Maybe an OpenASIC involving a bunch of motivated bitcoin investors could spread the cost amongst those who want to put up money and they can have access for a period of time and then let the floodgates roar open.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 11:08:45 PM
When they come, I'll be ready
I hear their voices inside
The stars in the heavens are moving
Soon they will align

Gavin, god of Bitcoin
Let me die with a FPGA in my hand
Raise your hands, GPUs in the wind
Brothers of Bitcoin together again
With blood in our voices we ride
We'll fight till we win or we'll fight until we die  ;)




Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lemonz on June 13, 2012, 11:31:00 PM
when will bitcoin asic's be available for certain?
If you believe BFL's words, Friday the 15th.

Let's be fair rjk, BFL said:

Quote from: BFL link=http://www.butterflylabs.com/production-update/
Announcements regarding abbreviated shipping schedules and future product (BitForce SC) release will be made on June 15th.

Friday will be an announcement regarding the ASICs, not that they will be available.  Best case scenario that I'm hoping for is that they release performance information and start accepting pre-orders.



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BR0KK on June 13, 2012, 11:33:25 PM
bfl preorder more a prepaid sollution :D


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rjk on June 13, 2012, 11:34:11 PM
Friday will be an announcement regarding the ASICs, not that they will be available.  Best case scenario that I'm hoping for is that they release performance information and start accepting pre-orders.
Sure, this is the most likely scenario. Although I had a small glimmer of hope because they made various statements to the effect that SC production was entirely separate from Single/MR production, and wouldn't suffer from similar delays, and etc etc etc. Personally, I'm doubting it, but hey! maybe they can still turn over a new leaf.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: zvs on June 13, 2012, 11:39:40 PM
LMAO ;D watching Cablepair guy fight and cling for the last few days of his business is so entertaining. HAHA!

Your FPGA days are over son !


Your such a clown you have no idea what your talking about

ASICS arent even out yet.

no one can dispute FPGA is #1 right now, the debate is what will happen when ASICS DO come out.

Myself and the other FPGA manufacturers are enjoying sales in the many tens of thousands, you really need to get a clue your just making yourself look foolish at this point.
FPGA #1 for what?  

not for making profit

if my power costs were over 10-11c, i wouldnt be mining


and my one 5830  i have left is still worth the same as it was 16 months ago


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 11:46:35 PM
your seriously going to sit here and try and say that GPU mining is more profitable than FPGA

where have you been for the last six months? in a solar powered windmill with no internet access?

I cant waste my mental energy any longer on people who have no idea what they are talking about


please please someone correct this boy


dont worry guys I will give you another good reason to argue with me soon

but I need a break from this one....

this is getting ridiculous



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 13, 2012, 11:49:51 PM
your seriously going to sit here and try and say that GPU mining is more profitable than FPGA

where have you been for the last six months? in a solar powered windmill with no internet access?

I cant waste my mental energy any longer on people who have no idea what they are talking about


please please someone correct this boy


dont worry guys I will give you another good reason to argue with me soon

but I need a break from this one....

this is getting ridiculous


It is in some cases... particularly where the user has very inexpensive electricity.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 13, 2012, 11:53:45 PM
YES WHEN ELECTRICITY IS FREE

i understand that

i mean for 99% OF EVERYONE ELSE



you guys forget I mined with GPUs for over a year, I had a 10 ghash mining farm
ive bought sold traded and mined on every radeon hd gpu there is

want to see pics?

http://btcwebhost.com/images/rig/

WHY DO THEY LOVE TO ARGUE WITH ME SO MUCH???

I knew I should of helped that old lady cross the street today  - damnit karma



.....


with that I bid you a good day as I have a busy evening ahead of me processing fpga orders and fielding emails.
take care!



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 12:01:47 AM
When you make all-encompassing statements like "your seriously going to sit here and try and say that GPU mining is more profitable than FPGA," then I'll take it literally.  If you preface your statement with "Unless your electricity is free, blah blah blah," then I probably wouldn't bug you.

Also, have you done a recent analysis on how long it takes for an FPGA to out-profit a GPU setup at different electric rates?  I doubt it is just at $0.00/kwh where it would make more sense to buy GPU's instead of FPGA's...


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: cablepair on June 14, 2012, 12:15:27 AM
When you make all-encompassing statements like "your seriously going to sit here and try and say that GPU mining is more profitable than FPGA," then I'll take it literally.  If you preface your statement with "Unless your electricity is free, blah blah blah," then I probably wouldn't bug you.

Also, have you done a recent analysis on how long it takes for an FPGA to out-profit a GPU setup at different electric rates?  I doubt it is just at $0.00/kwh where it would make more sense to buy GPU's instead of FPGA's...


damn it I knew you were going to get me to answer one more time, I am really not interested in nit picking semantics but...

Your forgetting the fact that blocks will be halved to 25 BTC per block by the end of the year in that case free electricity WILL be the only way GPU mining would be profitable and you know as well as I do that most serious miners have either already moved past GPU or are in the process of doing so,

GPU mining had its run and I am very happy I was able to make some good money off of it, I started mining when coins were trading for 80 cents a piece and the difficulty was incredibly lower than it is today (I was getting 8 coins a day with a single 5870) but those days are over and never coming back ...

Ive been there and done that, I sold my GPU farm two months ago and haven't looked back - Ive got over 8ghash of FPGA and building and let me tell you what, when my wife opens the electric bill each month and sees $200.00 instead of $600.00 - its priceless :)

Now you gentleman have a good evening, it was nice chatting with you but Ive got to go - my wife has a nice Delmonico steak on the grill and a cold beer waiting for me in the fridge :)



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 12:21:28 AM
Certainly the block reward halving will be interesting...  I bet a lot of GPU miners will drop out.

I'd still say that those with free electricity won't be the only ones GPU mining though.  Some have very cheap electricity, $0.03/kwh or less.  Even with the block reward halving, they'd still be very profitable.

Honestly, to get those with some of the more efficient GPU setups out of the game who have $0.03/kwh electric rates, you'd have to see difficulty increase five fold without any increase in Bitcoin price AND including the coming block reward halving.  Of course, that's not a perfect metric, as it doesn't account for hardware failures outside of warranty, etc, but it still shows that there is a long way to go before GPU mining is completely unprofitable for everyone.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rjk on June 14, 2012, 12:22:35 AM
How much do you wanna bet he'll still be here in 15 minutes... ;D

Kidding man, don't take it literally.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rudrigorc2 on June 14, 2012, 12:23:59 AM
I dont think it is wise giving all the power to a single hardware company.

There is still room and time to everyone profit, but If we are letting ASIC in, at this point, then everyone will be smashed hard and that talk about bitcoins being the peoples currency its all suddenly crap. I guess it we can call people-with-lots-of-money-to-buy-ASIC currency.

I say we should prevent ASIC from mining until everyone has fair access to it.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 12:26:35 AM
I dont think it is wise giving all the power to a single hardware company.

There is still room and time to everyone profit, but If we are letting ASIC in, at this point, then everyone will be smashed hard and that talk about bitcoins being the peoples currency its all suddenly crap. I guess it we can call people-with-lots-of-money-to-buy-ASIC currency.

I say we should prevent ASIC from mining until everyone has fair access to it.
There is no way to prevent ASIC mining.  It is coming whether you like it or not.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Transisto on June 14, 2012, 12:30:54 AM
To everyone else I respect your opinion a great deal,...
for me its back to work

Have a nice day Gentleman its been nice debating with you.

Now, could you like STFU ?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rudrigorc2 on June 14, 2012, 12:38:34 AM
I dont think it is wise giving all the power to a single hardware company.

There is still room and time to everyone profit, but If we are letting ASIC in, at this point, then everyone will be smashed hard and that talk about bitcoins being the peoples currency its all suddenly crap. I guess it we can call people-with-lots-of-money-to-buy-ASIC currency.

I say we should prevent ASIC from mining until everyone has fair access to it.
There is no way to prevent ASIC mining.  It is coming whether you like it or not.

I love it, but its no good for btc at this point.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 12:43:49 AM
I dont think it is wise giving all the power to a single hardware company.

There is still room and time to everyone profit, but If we are letting ASIC in, at this point, then everyone will be smashed hard and that talk about bitcoins being the peoples currency its all suddenly crap. I guess it we can call people-with-lots-of-money-to-buy-ASIC currency.

I say we should prevent ASIC from mining until everyone has fair access to it.
There is no way to prevent ASIC mining.  It is coming whether you like it or not.

I love it, but its no good for btc at this point.
Why?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Transisto on June 14, 2012, 12:50:34 AM
Why?

Because I'm too cheap or to much of a pussy to get into the game.

GPU weren't risky at all compared to ASIC.   ASIC's are risky for both the buyer and the maker.
Ex : I sold used GPU for more than I had paid them 1 years back.

The risk being taken is to make the whole bitcoin network less risky.  Can't complain the fundamentals...


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lemonz on June 14, 2012, 12:51:42 AM
When you make all-encompassing statements like "your seriously going to sit here and try and say that GPU mining is more profitable than FPGA," then I'll take it literally.  If you preface your statement with "Unless your electricity is free, blah blah blah," then I probably wouldn't bug you.

Also, have you done a recent analysis on how long it takes for an FPGA to out-profit a GPU setup at different electric rates?  I doubt it is just at $0.00/kwh where it would make more sense to buy GPU's instead of FPGA's...


A quick analysis using the following figure on bitcoinx.com using default values and the following:

GPU: 7970
Watts: 208 624/3 [wall draw / 3 for a 3 card system]
$570 ((470 * 3)+300)/3 [((card cost * 3) + base cost of a rig) / 3]

FPGA: USB-FPGA Module 1.15y
Watts: 38
$950

$/kw/h - cost per kw/h
GPU - days to pay off
FPGA - days to pay off

$/kw/h   GPU   FPGA
 $-         398   447
 $0.01    414   449
 $0.02    430   451
 $0.03    448   453
 $0.04    467   456
 $0.05    489   458
 $0.06    512   460
...
 $0.12    732   473


The number appears to be between 3 and 4 cents.  These are all meaningless though, since difficulty / price will not stay where it is, but does give an indication as to currently where that sweet spot lies.



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 12:55:02 AM
Nice work lemonz - I would have done the calculations, but was feeling rather lazy about it.  ;)

It'll certainly be variable - I don't think anyone is arguing that it won't be.  But cablepair was trying to make the argument that, unless electricity was free, there is no way a GPU would be more profitable than an FPGA miner.

Now, I suppose that might be true down to the fractions of a cent for electricity if some level of difficulty increase was assumed, but assumptions are dangerous - difficulty is still in roughly the same spot as it was 10 months ago.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mc_lovin on June 14, 2012, 12:58:27 AM
I'm so glad FPGAs cost so much.  If they were cheap, all these Radeons would be useless!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lemonz on June 14, 2012, 01:04:24 AM
It'll certainly be variable - I don't think anyone is arguing that it won't be.  But cablepair was trying to make the argument that, unless electricity was free, there is no way a GPU would be more profitable than an FPGA miner.

Now, I suppose that might be true down to the fractions of a cent for electricity if some level of difficulty increase was assumed, but assumptions are dangerous - difficulty is still in roughly the same spot as it was 10 months ago.

I agree.  I would also add that once ASICs hit the market, I would expect there to be less development efforts being made on the FPGA front for Bitcoin mining given the cost / performance ratio of ASICs.  GPUs however will continue to evolve, drawing less power and putting out more performance.  So as GPUs continue to develop, I wouldn't be surprised to see GPU performance surpassing FPGA hardware, as it no longer is actively developed.  So GPUs could actually become more viable than FPGAs.

Just my thoughts though, and I'm sure someone will tell me why I'm wrong ;)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on June 14, 2012, 01:37:25 AM
It'll certainly be variable - I don't think anyone is arguing that it won't be.  But cablepair was trying to make the argument that, unless electricity was free, there is no way a GPU would be more profitable than an FPGA miner.

Now, I suppose that might be true down to the fractions of a cent for electricity if some level of difficulty increase was assumed, but assumptions are dangerous - difficulty is still in roughly the same spot as it was 10 months ago.

I agree.  I would also add that once ASICs hit the market, I would expect there to be less development efforts being made on the FPGA front for Bitcoin mining given the cost / performance ratio of ASICs.  GPUs however will continue to evolve, drawing less power and putting out more performance.  So as GPUs continue to develop, I wouldn't be surprised to see GPU performance surpassing FPGA hardware, as it no longer is actively developed.  So GPUs could actually become more viable than FPGAs.

Just my thoughts though, and I'm sure someone will tell me why I'm wrong ;)

FPGA hardware will advance at about the same rate as GPU hardware.  Even if they only put more cores per chip, they should see the same improvements as GPUs which are doing the same: more cores per chip.  The work you're referring to is all software, has already been done, and the situation is nearly identical to GPU mining software.  Both GPU programming and FPGA programming is somewhat specialized, but I know where I got my undergraduate degree we had to code for FPGAs as part of the degree program, but not GPUs.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lemonz on June 14, 2012, 03:01:56 AM
FPGA hardware will advance at about the same rate as GPU hardware.  Even if they only put more cores per chip, they should see the same improvements as GPUs which are doing the same: more cores per chip.  The work you're referring to is all software, has already been done, and the situation is nearly identical to GPU mining software.  Both GPU programming and FPGA programming is somewhat specialized, but I know where I got my undergraduate degree we had to code for FPGAs as part of the degree program, but not GPUs.

This is reasonable, and only time will tell.  I just can't help but feel that the GPU market (as a whole) will move faster than the FPGA market due to demand and market size.  Of course technology across the board will benefit from advancements, but I believe the larger and more profitable markets will see it first.

However, it is also possible that AMD will change their architecture and hashing won't be as feasible in future generations of hardware.  Given the nature of FPGA, we know that performance there will always rise.

Thanks for the insight notme!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on June 14, 2012, 03:45:17 AM
FPGA hardware will advance at about the same rate as GPU hardware.  Even if they only put more cores per chip, they should see the same improvements as GPUs which are doing the same: more cores per chip.  The work you're referring to is all software, has already been done, and the situation is nearly identical to GPU mining software.  Both GPU programming and FPGA programming is somewhat specialized, but I know where I got my undergraduate degree we had to code for FPGAs as part of the degree program, but not GPUs.

I just can't help but feel that the GPU market (as a whole) will move faster than the FPGA market due to demand and market size.

This will not be true as long as high frequency trading is allowed.  Investment banks provide a lot of demand in the FPGA market.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: dave3 on June 14, 2012, 04:21:58 AM
I think to a certain degree, ASIC mining will balance out.  The thing is, the market for ASIC mining devices is limited and the amount of money miners are willing to invest is limited.  While I'd expect ASIC prices to drop over time, I'm not convinced they'll drop so quickly as to make ASIC mining unprofitable.

But... with ASICs things do become more unsettled and uncertain.  While I may invest in some ASICs, it probably won't be as much as I would have put into FPGAs before BFL announced they were going to make an ASIC.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: aqrulesms on June 14, 2012, 05:36:38 AM
Personally I think people are hyping way too much over ASICs and the huge "leap" in profits they will gain, while in reality they wouldn't.

There will always be only 7200 BTC created per day (excluding block reward drops).  At the most you are simply benefiting short term.  In the long term you would make just about the same as a GPU miner due to difficulty increases from widespread adoption of ASICs and the high prices for ASICs.

Just look at how unrealistic it is for many FPGAs out there right now already due to their high cost.

The biggest increase you would see from ASICs would be power consumption, but expect hash rates to be around the same levels as the FPGAs and GPUs.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: dave3 on June 14, 2012, 06:22:42 AM
Yeah, I'm not expecting higher profits from ASICs.  It's just to keep up and stay in the mining game.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lemonz on June 14, 2012, 12:04:28 PM
There will always be only 7200 BTC created per day (excluding block reward drops).  At the most you are simply benefiting short term.  In the long term you would make just about the same as a GPU miner due to difficulty increases from widespread adoption of ASICs and the high prices for ASICs.

I don't think anyone is calculating long term returns with ASICs based on today's difficulty - that would just be silly.  But in the long term, sustainable GPU mining (if possible) will never be as profitable as mining with an ASIC.  The good news however, is that come the end of the year, half of the coins will have already been mined :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bulanula on June 14, 2012, 01:17:27 PM
I have no intentions on buying FPGA or ASICs

Same here. Don't have faith in this boat ... I think ASIC is the final push to sinking :D


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: dave3 on June 14, 2012, 03:50:38 PM
Right now bandwidth usage isn't a big deal, but with ASICs, it could become an issue.  Especially if you're on a DSL line or something with a limited uplink.  If 1GH is ~3.5kbps, I guess that would make 100GH ~350kbps.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 03:53:16 PM
Right now bandwidth usage isn't a big deal, but with ASICs, it could become an issue.  Especially if you're on a DSL line or something with a limited uplink.  If 1GH is ~3.5kbps, I guess that would make 100GH ~350kbps.

Pretty sure anyone with 100 GH/s isn't going to have a fit over having to pay for a better internet service than DSL.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: zvs on June 14, 2012, 05:06:27 PM
When you make all-encompassing statements like "your seriously going to sit here and try and say that GPU mining is more profitable than FPGA," then I'll take it literally.  If you preface your statement with "Unless your electricity is free, blah blah blah," then I probably wouldn't bug you.

Also, have you done a recent analysis on how long it takes for an FPGA to out-profit a GPU setup at different electric rates?  I doubt it is just at $0.00/kwh where it would make more sense to buy GPU's instead of FPGA's...


A quick analysis using the following figure on bitcoinx.com using default values and the following:

GPU: 7970
Watts: 208 624/3 [wall draw / 3 for a 3 card system]
$570 ((470 * 3)+300)/3 [((card cost * 3) + base cost of a rig) / 3]

FPGA: USB-FPGA Module 1.15y
Watts: 38
$950

$/kw/h - cost per kw/h
GPU - days to pay off
FPGA - days to pay off

$/kw/h   GPU   FPGA
 $-         398   447
 $0.01    414   449
 $0.02    430   451
 $0.03    448   453
 $0.04    467   456
 $0.05    489   458
 $0.06    512   460
...
 $0.12    732   473


The number appears to be between 3 and 4 cents.  These are all meaningless though, since difficulty / price will not stay where it is, but does give an indication as to currently where that sweet spot lies.



but also totally ignores equipment depreciation

(or appreciation, in the case of some ppl buying 5830's)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on June 14, 2012, 05:16:06 PM
All this BS about ASIC early adopters being screwed is assuming asics will only be available in massive sizes that cost thousands of dollars.  What's stopping someone from putting out a smaller device that only pulled a gigahash or so for $100?  That's what I would do if I were selling them, but then again I wouldn't be in it for the money.  I just like building shit.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 05:58:33 PM
All this BS about ASIC early adopters being screwed is assuming asics will only be available in massive sizes that cost thousands of dollars.  What's stopping someone from putting out a smaller device that only pulled a gigahash or so for $100?  That's what I would do if I were selling them, but then again I wouldn't be in it for the money.  I just like building shit.
I think that's exactly what BFL is planning to do - offer a smaller, affordable unit to those who don't have much to spend.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BR0KK on June 14, 2012, 06:10:21 PM
Then why do they take singles back for refund ?
I'll expect a basic ASIC somewhere between 900 to 1k € (1500$)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 06:22:17 PM
Then why do they take singles back for refund ?
I'll expect a basic ASIC somewhere between 900 to 1k € (1500$)
Whose to say that a single single couldn't buy 6 mini-ASICs?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 14, 2012, 07:41:33 PM
All this BS about ASIC early adopters being screwed is assuming asics will only be available in massive sizes that cost thousands of dollars.  What's stopping someone from putting out a smaller device that only pulled a gigahash or so for $100? 

Makes no difference, at those per GH prices they will sell boatloads and difficulty will just go up even faster and you will still have close to no chance to recover your investment. 

Not that I see why would BFL charge just $100 for 1GH if people are willing to pay > $600 today.

As for the internet connection dave mentioned; thats of course a complete non issue. Having a 100GH mining rig will consume the exact same amount of bandwidth as 1 GH today,  once difficulty goes x100. Difficulty has gone x100000 in the past 24 months, but that hasnt affected bandwidth required for mining.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BR0KK on June 14, 2012, 07:56:10 PM
If i were bfl I wouldn't sell them to cheap .....

I'm expecting 1gh at double or triple € as per single.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 14, 2012, 08:01:54 PM
If i were bfl I wouldn't sell them to cheap .....

I'm expecting 1gh at double or triple € as per single.

I bet you'll be wrong about that one... want to bet on it?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BR0KK on June 14, 2012, 08:07:40 PM
Can't afford it because I invested to much into FPGS:( (I'm seriously out of money or BTC ATM ;().


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on June 14, 2012, 08:20:00 PM
Having a 100GH mining rig will consume the exact same amount of bandwidth as 1 GH today,  once difficulty goes x100.

This is not true if you mine at a pool that expects difficulty 1 shares, as most do.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 15, 2012, 11:11:02 AM
Lets wait for the announcement, due today :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 15, 2012, 01:12:26 PM
This is reasonable, and only time will tell.  I just can't help but feel that the GPU market (as a whole) will move faster than the FPGA market due to demand and market size.  Of course technology across the board will benefit from advancements, but I believe the larger and more profitable markets will see it first.

Very very very unlikely.  AMD just made a shift to 7000 series and performance (relative to 5000 series) was lackluster.   AMD won't be making a new generation for at least 18 months.   

Current 45nm FPGA compete well with GPU in all but the lowest cost areas.  28nm FPGA will eliminate any remaining advantage and ASICs will make GPU mining look as stupid as CPU mining is now.

GPU mining is dead.  Time will only worsen the relative comparison.

Note this comes from someone running a 15GH/s farm all GPU farm.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BFL-Engineer on June 15, 2012, 01:29:22 PM
This is reasonable, and only time will tell.  I just can't help but feel that the GPU market (as a whole) will move faster than the FPGA market due to demand and market size.  Of course technology across the board will benefit from advancements, but I believe the larger and more profitable markets will see it first.

Very very very unlikely.  AMD just made a shift to 7000 series and performance (relative to 5000 series) was lackluster.   AMD won't be making a new generation for at least 18 months.   

Current 45nm FPGA compete well with GPU in all but the lowest cost areas.  28nm FPGA will eliminate any remaining advantage and ASICs will make GPU mining look as stupid as CPU mining is now.

GPU mining is dead.  Time will only worsen the relative comparison.

Note this comes from someone running a 15GH/s farm all GPU farm.


GPU being dead indicates that bitcoin is growing fast, and evolution/advancement will be inevitable.
I must say of course that a lot of faith was put in AMD 7000 series, but it didn't do well to meet
the Bitcoins market expectation in terms of hash processing power.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bombo999 on June 15, 2012, 03:21:48 PM
Do you know what time today we can expect the BitForce SC announcement from BFL?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: ice_chill on June 15, 2012, 03:32:43 PM
Probably noon their time.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rjk on June 15, 2012, 03:50:24 PM
Probably noon their time.
In 4-6 weeks... sorry I had to.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BCMan on June 15, 2012, 04:01:29 PM
This is reasonable, and only time will tell.  I just can't help but feel that the GPU market (as a whole) will move faster than the FPGA market due to demand and market size.  Of course technology across the board will benefit from advancements, but I believe the larger and more profitable markets will see it first.

Very very very unlikely.  AMD just made a shift to 7000 series and performance (relative to 5000 series) was lackluster.   AMD won't be making a new generation for at least 18 months.  

Current 45nm FPGA compete well with GPU in all but the lowest cost areas.  28nm FPGA will eliminate any remaining advantage and ASICs will make GPU mining look as stupid as CPU mining is now.

GPU mining is dead.  Time will only worsen the relative comparison.

Note this comes from someone running a 15GH/s farm all GPU farm.


GPU being dead indicates that bitcoin is growing fast, and evolution/advancement will be inevitable.
I must say of course that a lot of faith was put in AMD 7000 series, but it didn't do well to meet
the Bitcoins market expectation in terms of hash processing power.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.
Then FPGA is dead as well. And bitcoin market isn't growing, it's the same level like year ago, maybe a bit bigger. ASICs will make this field only for big players, which is not good for Bitcoin at all.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: rudrigorc2 on June 15, 2012, 04:07:52 PM
Probably noon their time.
In 4-6 weeks... sorry I had to.

lol'd
 :D

This is reasonable, and only time will tell.  I just can't help but feel that the GPU market (as a whole) will move faster than the FPGA market due to demand and market size.  Of course technology across the board will benefit from advancements, but I believe the larger and more profitable markets will see it first.

Very very very unlikely.  AMD just made a shift to 7000 series and performance (relative to 5000 series) was lackluster.   AMD won't be making a new generation for at least 18 months.  

Current 45nm FPGA compete well with GPU in all but the lowest cost areas.  28nm FPGA will eliminate any remaining advantage and ASICs will make GPU mining look as stupid as CPU mining is now.

GPU mining is dead.  Time will only worsen the relative comparison.

Note this comes from someone running a 15GH/s farm all GPU farm.


GPU being dead indicates that bitcoin is growing fast, and evolution/advancement will be inevitable.
I must say of course that a lot of faith was put in AMD 7000 series, but it didn't do well to meet
the Bitcoins market expectation in terms of hash processing power.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.
Then FPGA is dead as well. And bitcoin market isn't growing, it's the same level like year ago, maybe a bit bigger. ASICs will make this field only for big players, which is not good for Bitcoin at all.

+1


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lemonz on June 15, 2012, 05:18:56 PM
Probably noon their time.
In 4-6 weeks... sorry I had to.

Haha... that was awesome rjk.

Meanwhile, patiently waiting an announcement...


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 16, 2012, 08:00:34 AM
You are delusional about the capability of ASICs :)
[..]
Bottom line, ASICs are not an "exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost".


Care to revise your opinion?
http://news.yahoo.com/butterfly-labs-announces-next-generation-asic-lineup-054626776.html

Mind you, those are initial prices. Expect them to tumble over time.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 16, 2012, 08:52:15 AM
P4man: my latest estimations ("probably ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87303.msg959693#msg959693)) are in line with BFL's press release claiming "3.5Ghash/s from a USB-power device (ie. 2.5W)" which would translate to 1400 Mhash/J... (What surprises me though is that it would mean they are going for 40nm instead of an older node like 90nm or 130nm.)

However, your price estimations were incorrect by a factor of 30x-40x: you said an ASIC would be "less than $1 per GH", but their press release announced $30-40 per Ghash/s.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Vladimir on June 16, 2012, 08:52:55 AM
You are delusional about the capability of ASICs :)
[..]
Bottom line, ASICs are not an "exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost".


Care to revise your opinion?
http://news.yahoo.com/butterfly-labs-announces-next-generation-asic-lineup-054626776.html

Mind you, those are initial prices. Expect them to tumble over time.


awesome!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Garr255 on June 16, 2012, 08:53:56 AM
However, your price estimations were incorrect by a factor of 30x-40x: you said an ASIC would be priced at "less than $1 per GH", but the pricing they announced is $30-40 per Ghash/s.

I can see ASICs being sold for that in the near future.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 16, 2012, 09:06:31 AM


Quote
However, your price estimations were incorrect by a factor of 30x-40x: you said an ASIC would be "less than $1 per GH", but their press release announced $30-40 per Ghash/s.

I said it would cost BFL far less than 1$ per GH (I actually calculated somewhere between $0.1 and $1 per GH on 130nm). Of course they are taking a fat margin on that, no one expected them to release these anywhere near marginal cost when they can charge 100x more. Over time however, their price will approach marginal cost.

P4man: my latest estimations ("probably ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87303.msg959693#msg959693)) are in line with BFL's press release claiming "3.5Ghash/s from a USB-power device (ie. 2.5W)" which would translate to 1400 Mhash/J...

Changing goalposts :). I responded to this:

"40nm ASICs will do about 200 Mhash/Joule."

And I have no reason to believe this asic is 40nm. 65nm would surprise me, 90 or 130nm seems much more likely.



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 16, 2012, 09:34:43 AM
Why reply to my old incorrect post? I already showed you how I computed a revised estimate of ~1000 Mhash/J at 40nm... Our difference of opinion is that you think they do it at 90nm/130nm, whereas I maintain this should only be possible at 40nm or better. Knowing BFL, they will never disclose this detail. We will not know until someone decap the chip.

About cost vs price: same thing, we will never know their true cost. But the fact they price the hashing speed "only" ~10x better than FPGAs (mini rig = 1.65 Mhash/s/$) is one of the reasons why I said ASICs won't be an exponential leap. (I was talking about price, you about cost.) ASICs manufacturers will initially price their product to be "better" than FPGAs, but not "exponentially better".


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 16, 2012, 09:46:14 AM
About cost vs price: same thing, we will never know their true cost. But the fact they price the hashing speed "only" ~10x better than FPGAs (mini rig = $1.65 Mhash/s/$) is one of the reasons why I said ASICs won't be an exponential leap.

Its rather the opposite. The fact they intend to launch at 10x better MH/$, while they could easily charge 5 or even 10x more considering the power efficiency gains, shows what kind of tectonic shift this really represents.  I expected something much close to FPGA prices initially. But these prices will only last until price/difficulty catches up, therefore asic sales would dry up, so BFL will slash them over and over until they are >100x lower than today and finally approach somewhere closer to marginal costs which is damn close to zero $ per GH.

That is the 'exponential' leap. Want to take bets that in 24 months, bitcoin difficulty wont be 100x higher than today?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Mageant on June 16, 2012, 09:51:38 AM
ASIC mining is a good thing IMHO.

There has often been the argument against Bitcoin that it "wastes" a lot of electricity.

With widespread ASCI (and FPGA) mining with their low electricity consumptions this takes away this argument against Bitcoin.

Also, it gives people who live in areas with high electricity costs the chance to take up mining profitably again.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 16, 2012, 10:27:52 AM
Its rather the opposite. The fact they intend to launch at 10x better MH/$, while they could easily charge 5 or even 10x more considering the power efficiency gains, shows what kind of tectonic shift this really represents.

You keep trying to make it sound like ASICs are different, but 10x better Mhash/s/$ has already been seen in the past: when we moved from CPU to GPU mining.

 I expected something much close to FPGA prices initially. But these prices will only last until price/difficulty catches up, therefore asic sales would dry up, so BFL will slash them over and over until they are >100x lower than today and finally approach somewhere closer to marginal costs which is damn close to zero $ per GH.
That is the 'exponential' leap. Want to take bets that in 24 months, bitcoin difficulty wont be 100x higher than today?

BFL will never be able to slash their prices by 100x because the other assembly/component costs would make up most of the cost. Think about it, if they did, the BitForce SC Single would sell for $12.99. But the case, PCB, fan, power adapter, etc alone cost at least $20-30.

Also, assuming that the capital invested in GPUs by miners (as of today) is fully reinvested in ASIC mining products, it would be sufficient to increase the difficulty by 10x-25x, because ASICs achieve 10x-25x more Mhash/s/$ than GPUs. And I think the invested capital is likely to double in the next 24 months, so difficulty could increase to about 50x. And that's without BFL having to slash their ASIC prices at all. (50x is too close to your 100x, so no I won't take the bet.)

However, I would be ready to bet on the fact that BFL will not slash their prices by more than, say, 30% before June 2014. For once, I expect them to take at least 1 year to develop and ship the first ASIC product.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on June 16, 2012, 11:56:06 AM
You keep trying to make it sound like ASICs are different, but 10x better Mhash/s/$ has already been seen in the past: when we moved from CPU to GPU mining.

You keep failing to see the massive difference. GPU or FPGA pricing is not dependent on bitcoin price/difficulty.  If xilinx or AMD would somehow double or 10 fold their price/performance, you would expect a tenfold decrease in P/D. The other way around, there is zero impact. P/D skyrocketing for whatever reason will do next to nothing to AMD or Xilinx prices. IOW, GPU or FPGA performance/$ is a given and relatively constant, and it results in a relatively predictable P/D, not the other way around.

ASIC performance/$ is completely dependent on bitcoin P/D AND will completely determine it. This feedback loop combined with the enormous potential for price drops is what makes it completely and utterly different. 10x better MH/$ today will become 100x better tomorrow. And as a result, your ROI time will increase 10x too.

BFL will never be able to slash their prices by 100x because the other assembly/component costs would make up most of the cost. Think about it, if they did, the BitForce SC Single would sell for $12.99. But the case, PCB, fan, power adapter, etc alone cost at least $20-30.

Im sure you can think of other ways to increase MH/$ than a $13 device.

Quote
However, I would be ready to bet on the fact that BFL will not slash their prices by more than, say, 30% before June 2014. For once, I expect them to take at least 1 year to develop and ship the first ASIC product.

Thats actually why I used a 24 month period, because Im also not expecting them to ship any asics this year. But 30%? Hey, cant let that pass by. Lets try this: 12 months after BFL shipped their first SC mini rig, the price/MH will be lowered by 50% or more per MH.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: kibblesnbits on June 16, 2012, 12:49:33 PM
You are delusional about the capability of ASICs :)
[..]
Bottom line, ASICs are not an "exponential leap in hash rate, power consumption AND eventually cost".


Care to revise your opinion?
http://news.yahoo.com/butterfly-labs-announces-next-generation-asic-lineup-054626776.html

Mind you, those are initial prices. Expect them to tumble over time.

No last names in the PR release? 


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on June 18, 2012, 12:25:10 AM
However I do agree that Mhash/dollar will be a more interesting metric to watch than Mhash/J. I wonder why you think ASIC will contribute a 1000x improvement in this area (going from $1 per Mh/s to $1 per Gh/s)?

Basing on the square mm and a clock speed of 1 Ghz the raw manufacturing cost would be closer to $0.10 per GH/s.  Now granted you have the NRE, the capital cost, the profit magins, yield losses, salaries, etc but even with 1000% markup <$1 per GH/s would be possible.

One way to look at it is the SHA-256 hasher only took 20kGE.    Lets say scaling it to 1 Ghz required twice as many GE and you want to make it perform a double hash; so 80 kGE. Obviously you wouldn't make a chip that small.  But hashing is perfectly parallel.  Instead of 1 single hashing engine running 1Ghz you could lay down 20 parallel engines.  So that on each clock 20 nonces are calculated simultaneously (20 GH/s @ 1Ghz).  Even that would only be ~ 1.6M GE.  Tiny small by modern chip standards (which have transistor counts in the billions).   The $20 CPU in your smartphone likely has a higher transistor count.

Your assumption that running at a higher frequency is better is wrong. It is better to have many tiny 20kGE SHA-256 units running at a slower clock, than fewer bigger ones, for energy efficiency. But this does not change the conclusion...

I changed my mind. I don't know why I did not run this math myself, but I now agree that a 100x better Mhash/s per dollar than BFL's ASIC announcement is achievable with current tech 40-60nm ASICs.

However, this would be doable only at sufficiently large production volumes. With thousands of wafers, so millions of chips. The question is: will Bitcoin mining chips ever be produced in the millions?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on June 18, 2012, 12:54:19 AM
However, this would be doable only at sufficiently large production volumes. With thousands of wafers, so millions of chips. The question is: will Bitcoin mining chips ever be produced in the millions?

Will Bitcoin ever be used by millions of users.  Maybe, maybe not.  But if it was I could see someday the network consisted of millions of low GH/s devices that are essentially plug and play. 

Imagine something as simple as small box with Ethernet port and power jack.  The back side of it has a QR code w/ private key for importing into a wallet and it just hashes 24/7 solo sending those rewards to its static address.  No drivers, no SDK just very high electrical efficiency and simplicity.   People who don't want the relatively small rewards could donate the private key to open source development, or a bitcoin non-profit. 


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: lemonz on June 18, 2012, 01:02:14 PM
However, this would be doable only at sufficiently large production volumes. With thousands of wafers, so millions of chips. The question is: will Bitcoin mining chips ever be produced in the millions?

Will Bitcoin ever be used by millions of users.  Maybe, maybe not.  But if it was I could see someday the network consisted of millions of low GH/s devices that are essentially plug and play. 

Imagine something as simple as small box with Ethernet port and power jack.  The back side of it has a QR code w/ private key for importing into a wallet and it just hashes 24/7 solo sending those rewards to its static address.  No drivers, no SDK just very high electrical efficiency and simplicity.   People who don't want the relatively small rewards could donate the private key to open source development, or a bitcoin non-profit. 

The Ethernet jack could even just be for initial configuration via a networked computer.  After which the device can operate on the network wirelessly (maybe even on battery power for a short while depending on efficiency, and have an indicator light when it needs to be plugged back into a power source).


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: punningclan on June 20, 2012, 06:46:53 AM
Once again, why does it matter who gets their money back?  If you don't believe it is a good idea to be an early ASIC adopter, then don't be one.  It's as simple as that.
I agree completely SgtSpike!

What about all the mug warmers jjshabadoo   ???

All my mugs will be warm for next to nothing, and my friends mugs too because they are so inexpensive,  and I can keep my GPUs on at a profit because they are always making more than if I heat by other means?

It's hard to get these arguments, GPUs are hot noisy sensitive monsters that draw down the world's juice and you're trying to say ASICs  are bad idea? It seems simpler to just scale up you're idea of what the difficulty should be. If I spend the same on ASICs as I did GPUs I'll get a ton more hashes but so will every one else. This can only make Bitcoin bigger better and faster. I'll probably still be using less electricity and getting more btcs a day with an easier, more secure, continual and standardized upgrade path in line with Moore.

BFL has to sell its units to recoup its investment and right there all conspiracies die even without further competition from others that are bound to show.

Isn't there a thread that predicted the same thing when GPUs started up?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bitcoinfrenzy on June 25, 2012, 07:02:40 PM
Sorry for my ignorance, but what is ASIC and why is it significant?  In idiot-layman terms, please.  Thanks!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SysRun on June 25, 2012, 07:07:38 PM
http://bit.ly/MTChaj

As some members have pointed out, GPUs are all ASIC... What people are really talking about when they say ASIC is "SHA256 Specialized ASIC"


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Dalkore on June 25, 2012, 07:49:02 PM
Exactly my thoughts.
Automobiles should never have been allowed, because their success caused the demise of livery stables, horse whip manufacturers and horse buggy manufacturers.
Or maybe automobiles should have be allowed after all, but the ordinance that a man with a warning bell walks in front of them should never have been rescinded.

I would say we should ask a different question that accurately describes what some of the ASIC detractor's more serious claims.

I would propose the question would be: "How many cars would be on the road and in service if to have Cars (read: ASIC) on the road meant we had to shoot 98% of the horses"  

I say it in this extreme manner because the effect of the ASIC technology is effectively doing that.   Sure, just like with the horses analogy, we still have horses around that are used for transportation.    But all in all, cars or some variant of them is used for ground transportation that doesn't involve walking.


I consider this the credible and serious question being asked of this transition.   This is a point that I believe we are not fully evaluating. I am not dismissive to this question.  


Thoughts?
Dalkore


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on June 25, 2012, 08:33:58 PM
Exactly my thoughts.
Automobiles should never have been allowed, because their success caused the demise of livery stables, horse whip manufacturers and horse buggy manufacturers.
Or maybe automobiles should have be allowed after all, but the ordinance that a man with a warning bell walks in front of them should never have been rescinded.

I would say we should ask a different question that accurately describes what some of the ASIC detractor's more serious claims.

I would propose the question would be: "How many cars would be on the road and in service if to have Cars (read: ASIC) on the road meant we had to shoot 98% of the horses"  

I say it in this extreme manner because the effect of the ASIC technology is effectively doing that.   Sure, just like with the horses analogy, we still have horses around that are used for transportation.    But all in all, cars or some variant of them is used for ground transportation that doesn't involve walking.


I consider this the credible and serious question being asked of this transition.   This is a point that I believe we are not fully evaluating. I am not dismissive to this question.  


Thoughts?
Dalkore
I still say, does it matter?

ASIC is happening.  No matter what you say in this thread, ASICs will still happen.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: crazyates on June 25, 2012, 08:36:53 PM
Exactly my thoughts.
Automobiles should never have been allowed, because their success caused the demise of livery stables, horse whip manufacturers and horse buggy manufacturers.
Or maybe automobiles should have be allowed after all, but the ordinance that a man with a warning bell walks in front of them should never have been rescinded.

I would say we should ask a different question that accurately describes what some of the ASIC detractor's more serious claims.

I would propose the question would be: "How many cars would be on the road and in service if to have Cars (read: ASIC) on the road meant we had to shoot 98% of the horses"  

I say it in this extreme manner because the effect of the ASIC technology is effectively doing that.   Sure, just like with the horses analogy, we still have horses around that are used for transportation.    But all in all, cars or some variant of them is used for ground transportation that doesn't involve walking.


I consider this the credible and serious question being asked of this transition.   This is a point that I believe we are not fully evaluating. I am not dismissive to this question.  


Thoughts?
Dalkore


When cars came out, horses were re-purposed for other activities, because they could still do things cars couldn't. Ride on the beach, ride up a mountain, etc. Nowadays, most people who ride horses do so for fun, not transportation.

Point: People didn't have to shoot the horses just to drive the cars.

People don't have to shoot their GPUs, just because (at some point) they will no longer be profitable for mining. GPUs will always have other purposes (anyone here ever play a game?!).


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on June 26, 2012, 03:49:00 AM
Exactly my thoughts.
Automobiles should never have been allowed, because their success caused the demise of livery stables, horse whip manufacturers and horse buggy manufacturers.
Or maybe automobiles should have be allowed after all, but the ordinance that a man with a warning bell walks in front of them should never have been rescinded.

I would say we should ask a different question that accurately describes what some of the ASIC detractor's more serious claims.

I would propose the question would be: "How many cars would be on the road and in service if to have Cars (read: ASIC) on the road meant we had to shoot 98% of the horses"  

I say it in this extreme manner because the effect of the ASIC technology is effectively doing that.   Sure, just like with the horses analogy, we still have horses around that are used for transportation.    But all in all, cars or some variant of them is used for ground transportation that doesn't involve walking.


I consider this the credible and serious question being asked of this transition.   This is a point that I believe we are not fully evaluating. I am not dismissive to this question.  


Thoughts?
Dalkore


When cars came out, horses were re-purposed for other activities, because they could still do things cars couldn't. Ride on the beach, ride up a mountain, etc. Nowadays, most people who ride horses do so for fun, not transportation.

Point: People didn't have to shoot the horses just to drive the cars.

People don't have to shoot their GPUs, just because (at some point) they will no longer be profitable for mining. GPUs will always have other purposes (anyone here ever play a game?!).

Wait, GPUs can do more than calculate SHA256 sums?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: smoothie on July 03, 2012, 09:06:51 PM
1. Devs will not change the algo in order to influence ASIC production because it would be a very stupid thing to do and devs are not stupid (well... mostly).

I wonder who you werent talking about when you said "well...mostly".

LOL  ;D ;D ;D ;D


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Xenland on July 03, 2012, 11:39:02 PM
So I'm not up on all the type of mining technologies but I'm guessing ASICs' will cost a lot?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: arklan on July 04, 2012, 12:45:48 AM
So I'm not up on all the type of mining technologies but I'm guessing ASICs' will cost a lot?

there is a high upfront cost to begin production, but once that's done, repeated production is dirt cheap on a chip by chip scale. hard to start up, but once going, easy to keep running.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Xenland on July 04, 2012, 12:53:34 AM
So I'm not up on all the type of mining technologies but I'm guessing ASICs' will cost a lot?

there is a high upfront cost to begin production, but once that's done, repeated production is dirt cheap on a chip by chip scale. hard to start up, but once going, easy to keep running.
So basically the debate is "Scince only rich can start producing low cost ASICs' hardware that must mean that they are centralizing the hashing power favor to them and in turn somehow are going to influence how Bitcoin works?"

or am I just not understanding how ASIC is the end of decentralized mining?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Bitcoin Oz on July 04, 2012, 12:56:35 AM
ASIC would only be centralized if bfl mined themselves and didnt release the hardware into the wild.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on July 04, 2012, 06:30:27 AM
So basically the debate is "Scince only rich can start producing low cost ASICs' hardware that must mean that they are centralizing the hashing power favor to them and in turn somehow are going to influence how Bitcoin works?"

or am I just not understanding how ASIC is the end of decentralized mining?

The problem is not about being rich. Its about almost infinite pricing flexibility allowing the first vendor to market to price their chips somewhere near GPU/FPGAs prices per GH upon launch, while being able to drop prices per GH by one or two orders of magnitude before reaching variable costs.

Not only is there this possibility, but because market price of a bitcoin ASIC is directly linked with past sales (more sales -> higher difficulty -> lower ROI for miners) ,  the ASIC vendor is effectively competing with its past customers, forcing them to drop prices even absent any competing asic vendor. ASICs represent an enormous leap in performance/$ of 100 or 1000x where it is today; its this leap that allows the vendor to get a return on his very large investment. But this is a one time deal, another asic might be better, but not 100x better. So once difficulty catches up, and market prices for asics will have dropped to something much closer to variable cost, because the market is inherently limited, it will make no financial sense to invest another x million dollar for a slightly better ASIC, let alone an equally good one.

In a nutshell, if BFL chooses to play their cards right, they can end up being the sole beneficiary of bitcoin mining for the next few years at least. Its future competitors as well as its customers could easily be forced in to losses.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Dargo on July 04, 2012, 08:58:31 AM
In a nutshell, if BFL chooses to play their cards right, they can end up being the sole beneficiary of bitcoin mining for the next few years at least. Its future competitors as well as its customers could easily be forced in to losses.

But how does the end of decentralized mining follow from this? AMD was the sole beneficiary of bitcoin mining during the GPU era, yet we had decentralized mining because AMD had no interest in mining themselves, or in selling GPUs to a select few. We have no good reason to think that BFL is interested in mining themselves, or in selling ASICs to a select few. Complete hegemony by a single manufacturer is perfectly consistent with decentralized mining. This point has been made before of course. 


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: P4man on July 04, 2012, 10:29:12 AM
But how does the end of decentralized mining follow from this? AMD was the sole beneficiary of bitcoin mining during the GPU era,

No they weren't. Most miners actually made profits, a lot of them still do. As do BFL and I assume other FPGA vendors.

Quote
We have no good reason to think that BFL is interested in mining themselves, or in selling ASICs to a select few. Complete hegemony by a single manufacturer is perfectly consistent with decentralized mining. This point has been made before of course. 

I dont disagree.
Although if BFL had plans to mine themselves, you would expect them not to say so while they are taking (pre)orders :). The comparison with AMD is flawed in that respect; there is no point for AMD to mine bitcoins, its peanuts to them and they make more selling the hardware, if not for bitcoin mining then to gamers.

But ASICs have no other purpose, and more over, electricity cost is pretty much a non issue, so if/when sales dry up, BFL might decide to go for it themselves. Not saying they will, but there is nothing to prevent them from doing so either, other than a financial incentive from miners overpaying for their equipment.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Dargo on July 04, 2012, 02:49:02 PM
But how does the end of decentralized mining follow from this? AMD was the sole beneficiary of bitcoin mining during the GPU era,

No they weren't. Most miners actually made profits, a lot of them still do. As do BFL and I assume other FPGA vendors.

Quote
We have no good reason to think that BFL is interested in mining themselves, or in selling ASICs to a select few. Complete hegemony by a single manufacturer is perfectly consistent with decentralized mining. This point has been made before of course. 

I dont disagree.
Although if BFL had plans to mine themselves, you would expect them not to say so while they are taking (pre)orders :). The comparison with AMD is flawed in that respect; there is no point for AMD to mine bitcoins, its peanuts to them and they make more selling the hardware, if not for bitcoin mining then to gamers.

But ASICs have no other purpose, and more over, electricity cost is pretty much a non issue, so if/when sales dry up, BFL might decide to go for it themselves. Not saying they will, but there is nothing to prevent them from doing so either, other than a financial incentive from miners overpaying for their equipment.

Lol, well this is a possible scenario, but so unlikely as to not be worth worrying about IMO. But carry on - this is after all the subforum for speculation about mining.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: johnyj on July 13, 2012, 11:33:47 AM
True, unless there are several ASIC builders there, but decentralize is not very important, since the coin generation speed is the same, from time point of view, the distribution of BTC has always been decentralized


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: RandomQ on July 17, 2012, 03:54:51 PM
ASIC are like Buying a Car that can only turn Right.(SHA-256 ASIC)

What happens if someone finds a pot hole in the road? (SHA-256 Weakness)
Scrap all the Cars?

My concerns are switching to Hardware that can Only do SHA-256 or SHA-512.
Also having one provider of that Hardware.
It reduces the ability of the network to adapt to a new encryption algorithm.

Its only a matter of time with Moore's law, SHA-256 is already 10 years old.





Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: mrb on July 17, 2012, 05:47:25 PM
ASIC are like Buying a Car that can only turn Right.(SHA-256 ASIC)

What happens if someone finds a pot hole in the road? (SHA-256 Weakness)

Turn left by turning right 3 times successively?
Metaphor fails  :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: crazyates on July 17, 2012, 06:07:16 PM
ASIC are like Buying a Car that can only turn Right.(SHA-256 ASIC)

What happens if someone finds a pot hole in the road? (SHA-256 Weakness)

Turn left 3 times successively?
Metaphor fails  :)

We're talking about Bitcoins, not Nascar!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: notme on July 17, 2012, 07:44:41 PM
ASIC are like Buying a Car that can only turn Right.(SHA-256 ASIC)

What happens if someone finds a pot hole in the road? (SHA-256 Weakness)

Turn left 3 times successively?
Metaphor fails  :)

We're talking about Bitcoins, not Nascar!

ASIC is like buying a chip that can only do one thing that is not very useful outside bitcoin mining.

Okay, that's not really a metaphor, but I think it makes the point clear enough.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: nedbert9 on July 18, 2012, 12:37:02 AM
ASIC are like Buying a Car that can only turn Right.(SHA-256 ASIC)

What happens if someone finds a pot hole in the road? (SHA-256 Weakness)

Turn left 3 times successively?
Metaphor fails succeeds  :)

We're talking about Bitcoins, not Nascar!

ASIC is like buying a chip that can only do one thing that is not very useful outside bitcoin mining.

Okay, that's not really a metaphor, but I think it makes the point clear enough.


ASIC is like Raisin Bran without the bran.   And we all know that bran is the catalyst of decentralization.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: runeks on July 18, 2012, 11:56:44 AM
Aren't we getting our figures a bit mixed together in this thread? I mean, it's obvious that the $/GH figure will go way down, that one's obvious. But I think a previous poster was right when he claimed that efficiency wouldn't increase more than around 10x.
The efficiency increases from CPU, to GPU, to FPGAs, and to ASIC are all comparable. Roughly a 10x increase every time:
40nm CPUs do up to about 0.1 to 0.5 Mhash/Joule.
40nm GPUs about 1 to 2 Mhash/Joule.
40nm FPGAs about 20 Mhash/Joule.
40nm ASICs will do about 200 Mhash/Joule.

We've always been using ASICs. A CPU is an ASIC, a GPU is and an FPGA is. The reason the great leap (much more than 10x) with regards to cost per hash takes place is because instead of us buying pre-manufactures ASICs (CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs) from someone else, we'll be making them ourselves. That's like the difference between buying apples in a store and planting your own tree in your garden, the costs are several order of magnitudes less in the latter case.

The efficiency of the previously mentioned SHA-3 (and SHA256) chip is about 14.1 W/GH as far as I can calculate. See here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92268.msg1037717#msg1037717) and here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92268.msg1037974#msg1037974). That's around 71 MH/J for the unoptimized tiny SHA256 core running at 50 MHz. There would probably be a lot to gain from optimizing the design, but this figure would also need to increase a lot to surpass 10x as this is only ~3x the efficiency of this FPGA: http://fpgamining.com/documentation/hardware/power-measurements

With that being said, it's obvious that the efficiency figure will become increasingly unimportant as we reach these levels. No one is going to be spending a fraction of their investment on power with custom SHA256 ASICs, practically all the cost will be from the hardware.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: siggy on July 18, 2012, 07:07:06 PM
First you say....

We've always been using ASICs. A CPU is an ASIC, a GPU is and an FPGA is. The reason the great leap (much more than 10x) with regards to cost per hash takes place is because instead of us buying pre-manufactures ASICs (CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs) from someone else, we'll be making them ourselves. That's like the difference between buying apples in a store and planting your own tree in your garden, the costs are several order of magnitudes less in the latter case.

Then you say....

With that being said, it's obvious that the efficiency figure will become increasingly unimportant as we reach these levels. No one is going to be spending a fraction of their investment on power with custom SHA256 ASICs, practically all the cost will be from the hardware.

Or to re-iterate..
your point one:  ASIC hardware is going to be dirt cheap. 
your point two:  ASIC hardware is going to be the majority of ROI when compared to electricity...

Does anyone except me see the disconnect here?
 
Sure, in the short term immediately after the introduction of ASICs, the cost of hardware will drown out the cost of electricity (ASIC hardware is NOT dirt cheap at this point)..
However, as more and more ASIC units come online, the difficulty will sky-rocket. As even more ASICs come up for sale, the ASIC manufacturers will need to start dropping the price or their market will dry up (assuming most miners can do simple ROI calculations). The manufacturers will need to keep droping prices as difficulty incresses.. This will continue till we get to the point where hardware really IS dirt cheap.  At this point difficulty will be so astronomically high, ROI will no longer be so much dependant on hardware but once again, will be majorly based upon the cost of electricity.

Historically (during the golden age of GPU's) the pain point has been around 20 cents per KWh.  If you pay more than that, it is generally a losing proposition to buy GPU's for the sole purpose of mining.

I predict that a year after ASICs go into full bore production, the pain point will be around 20 cents per KWh.  If you pay more than that, it will be generally a losing proposition to buy ASICs for the sole purpose of mining.  Since bitcoin ASICs will be Application Specific, this applies even more to ASICs than GPU's.

Sigg



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: runeks on July 19, 2012, 01:12:08 PM
First you say....

We've always been using ASICs. A CPU is an ASIC, a GPU is and an FPGA is. The reason the great leap (much more than 10x) with regards to cost per hash takes place is because instead of us buying pre-manufactures ASICs (CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs) from someone else, we'll be making them ourselves. That's like the difference between buying apples in a store and planting your own tree in your garden, the costs are several order of magnitudes less in the latter case.

Then you say....

With that being said, it's obvious that the efficiency figure will become increasingly unimportant as we reach these levels. No one is going to be spending a fraction of their investment on power with custom SHA256 ASICs, practically all the cost will be from the hardware.

Or to re-iterate..
your point one:  ASIC hardware is going to be dirt cheap. 
your point two:  ASIC hardware is going to be the majority of ROI when compared to electricity...

Does anyone except me see the disconnect here?
 
Sure, in the short term immediately after the introduction of ASICs, the cost of hardware will drown out the cost of electricity (ASIC hardware is NOT dirt cheap at this point)..
However, as more and more ASIC units come online, the difficulty will sky-rocket. As even more ASICs come up for sale, the ASIC manufacturers will need to start dropping the price or their market will dry up (assuming most miners can do simple ROI calculations). The manufacturers will need to keep droping prices as difficulty incresses.. This will continue till we get to the point where hardware really IS dirt cheap.  At this point difficulty will be so astronomically high, ROI will no longer be so much dependant on hardware but once again, will be majorly based upon the cost of electricity.

Historically (during the golden age of GPU's) the pain point has been around 20 cents per KWh.  If you pay more than that, it is generally a losing proposition to buy GPU's for the sole purpose of mining.

I predict that a year after ASICs go into full bore production, the pain point will be around 20 cents per KWh.  If you pay more than that, it will be generally a losing proposition to buy ASICs for the sole purpose of mining.  Since bitcoin ASICs will be Application Specific, this applies even more to ASICs than GPU's.

Sigg


You make a good point. I guess, as you say, it depends on what impact custom ASICs will have on the difficulty. As far as I can see, if we replace all current mining devices with devices that are 10x as efficient and the difficulty increases by a factor of 10, then there would be no difference - at all. Except BFL will have made a fortune :).

I guess that's why a ROI of a year or less is preferable with these devices. Some might say that one year is too little to expect, but with a market that moves this fast it might not be. Ie., as I said, if difficulty increases by 10 times during the first year of operation with custom ASICs, then power efficiency-wise - kWh spent per $ in mining income - the miner will be in the exact same situation as before, only with added hardware costs.

I can understand why BFL is entering this market and not mining themselves. They must have made these calculations. I imagine not all the people on the BFL ASIC waiting list have.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Ascholten on August 16, 2012, 11:42:40 PM
THose who want to get in quick will pay, just like with any other processor or spiffy new video card.
Within a year, the price for that card is in the basement, the manufacturer made their money 100 times over and your card is just so Jan 2012.
The price of bitcoins is in the toilet because there is such a flood on the market, but that will quell soon as the difficulty increases to the moon.

In the end, if you want any you will need an asic, because otherwise it's just sheer luck, like cpu mining is now.

Aaron


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: runeks on August 18, 2012, 02:22:42 PM
THose who want to get in quick will pay, just like with any other processor or spiffy new video card.
Within a year, the price for that card is in the basement, the manufacturer made their money 100 times over and your card is just so Jan 2012.
The price of bitcoins is in the toilet because there is such a flood on the market, but that will quell soon as the difficulty increases to the moon.

In the end, if you want any you will need an asic, because otherwise it's just sheer luck, like cpu mining is now.

Aaron
What do you mean by this? The price of bitcoins doesn't seem to be declining, to put it mildly.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bitarrow on August 18, 2012, 09:52:23 PM
I assume he is speculating the bitcoin price will tank once the ASICS arrive and all the miners are dumping coins.
But hopefully the ASIC miners can not sell at market value and be smart with the selling of their coins. I will.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: runeks on August 18, 2012, 10:36:56 PM
I assume he is speculating the bitcoin price will tank once the ASICS arrive and all the miners are dumping coins.
But hopefully the ASIC miners can not sell at market value and be smart with the selling of their coins. I will.
But why would miner's be selling a larger share of their coins compared to now, just because mining is powered by a custom ASIC? I don't get the logic. Also, coin reward will drop to 25 BTC per block at the most two months after the devices are released. I doubt an increase in miner's mining for profitability (who isn't mining for profitability already, anyway?) will more than offset the halving of new coins entering the market.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bitarrow on August 18, 2012, 10:54:03 PM
I assume he is speculating the bitcoin price will tank once the ASICS arrive and all the miners are dumping coins.
But hopefully the ASIC miners can not sell at market value and be smart with the selling of their coins. I will.
But why would miner's be selling a larger share of their coins compared to now, just because mining is powered by a custom ASIC? I don't get the logic. Also, coin reward will drop to 25 BTC per block at the most two months after the devices are released. I doubt an increase in miner's mining for profitability (who isn't mining for profitability already, anyway?) will more than offset the halving of new coins entering the market.
If you compare todays bitcoin price to a 1-2 months ago, we are double the value of bitcoin. So with reward cutting in half, as long as the bitcoin price is doubled then its a wash. I don't see the price being below $10 for any length of time so reward halving shouldnt be a factor.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: fabiomiguel on August 19, 2012, 02:36:29 AM
Hello guys. I'm following this topic very close and some people don't know what are saying.

This is some relevant quotes from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki
Anyone with enough computing power can take over the network?
Quote
CONFIRMED, see Weaknesses.
That said, as the network grows, it becomes harder and harder for a single entity to do so. Already the Bitcoin network's computing power is quite ahead of the world's fastest supercomputers, together.
What an attacker can do once the network is taken over is quite limited. Under no circumstances could an attacker take anybody else's money. An attacker's capabilities are limited to taking back their own money that they very recently spent, and preventing other people's transactions from receiving confirmations. Such an attack would be very costly in resources, and for such meager benefits there is little rational economic incentive to do such a thing.
Furthermore, this attack scenario would only be feasible for as long as it was actively underway. As soon as the attack stopped, the network would resume normal operation.

The value of bitcoins are based on how much electricity and computing power it takes to mine them

Quote
This statement is an attempt to apply to Bitcoin the labor theory of value, which is generally accepted as false. Just because something takes X resources to create does not mean that the resulting product will be worth X. It can be worth more, or less, depending on the utility thereof to its users.
In fact the causality is the reverse of that (this applies to the labor theory of value in general). The cost to mine Bitcoins is based on how much they are worth. If Bitcoins go up in value, more people will mine (because mining is profitable), thus difficulty will go up, thus the cost of mining will go up. The inverse happens if bitcoins go down in value. These effects balance out to cause mining to always cost the amount of bitcoins it produces.

Oh btw:
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/8462/totalbitcoinsovertimegr.png

No matter what happens this will be allways true.

This and alot more at: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: -ck on August 19, 2012, 09:43:01 AM
This and alot more at: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki)
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: runeks on August 19, 2012, 12:41:34 PM
This and alot more at: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki)
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
LOL! :D


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: candoo on August 20, 2012, 12:38:15 AM
Well,

there is at least one thing we're not considering right now: BFL could start selling ASICs which are underclocked so that while being better than the average FPGA they don't give out the maximum available hashing power.

Doing so they can, next year, sell their ASIC/2 board, with higher clock and same price just like GPU vendors do all the time.

I mean what makes you think that the first board will be 100x when a 10-20x underclocked or otherwise "crippled" board can be sold as well?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Korbman on August 20, 2012, 07:22:11 PM
I've been following this topic for a bit as well. Though there is a lot of speculation, Fabiomiguel makes a good point:

Oh btw:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/8462/totalbitcoinsovertimegr.png

No matter what happens this will be allways true.

This and alot more at: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki)

No matter what happens, the creation of bitcoins will ALWAYS maintain it's curve to 21 million. Difficulty keeps it in line. The more ASICs that come to market, the higher the difficulty. It will be the same as the transition from CPU to GPU and GPU to FPGA...from MH/s to TH/s. Most of the mining that occurs right now is done by people dedicated to the cause.

Now, I do see where 'centralization' comes into play here. The "average joe" that bought a $200 card to get 300MH/s is also probably the person who will buy a BFL SC Jalapeno for $150 to get 3.5GH/s. Only the extremely dedicated and financially capable will go into the TH/s range...which is a handful of people so far.

NOTE: I'm actually writing up a sort of analysis about this, taking into account a fair amount of math and speculation that we've touched on during this thread so far. I'll link it here when it's done and edited.
Figured I should at least get some thoughts out into this thread first :)

EDIT: The first part of my analysis: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102268.0


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Gabi on August 20, 2012, 09:26:34 PM
Quote
Under no circumstances could an attacker take anybody else's money. An attacker's capabilities are limited to taking back their own money that they very recently spent, and preventing other people's transactions from receiving confirmations.
If the attacker make a blockchain starting from like a year ago he will have all the coins mined from a year ago until today so if you have coins that were mined six months ago, the attacker will have them. So yes, the attacker can take anybody else's money.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: amgomez on August 20, 2012, 10:33:41 PM
...
Now, I do see where 'centralization' comes into play here. The "average joe" that bought a $200 card to get 300MH/s is also probably the person who will buy a BFL SC Jalapeno for $150 to get 3.5GH/s. Only the extremely dedicated and financially capable will go into the TH/s range...which is a handful of people so far.
...

Also, now you can buy a card from a bunch of different builders (Asus, sapphire, ...) at your closest store. Jalapeņos can only be bought to BFL, and only in the states, which causes not only delays but also troubles at customs.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Garr255 on August 21, 2012, 05:26:56 PM
Jalapeņos can only be bought to BFL, and only in the states, which causes not only delays but also troubles at customs.

I offer a proxy service in the US for FPGAs and ASICs for 10% of the mining revenue.
</advertisement>


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: TheDom on September 17, 2012, 11:56:57 PM
I don't think it is the end of decentralized mining at all. I just started mining a few weeks ago on a 5770 I just happened to have when I rediscovered Bitcoin, and now plan on ordering a Single SC. The way I see it if it is profitable, great, if not, it will cost so little in power compared to the activism credits I get for supporting Bitcoin.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Luceo on September 18, 2012, 04:32:58 AM
Right now if I want even the cheapest dedicated miner I need about $500 for a CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU etc.

I then need to be able to deal with the heat produced by another computer, storing another computer and to have the technical skill and knowledge to set up an OS, keep the thing overclocked right, etc.

Once BFL arrives on the scene, I spend $300 and I need 2 USB ports. No outlets, no overclocking, very little heat. I can leave my miners running at 9W, using very little energy and hashing away for me without preventing me working on my computer.

Which do you think is better for the casual, decentralized,miner?

Your argument is like suggesting that the personal computer was bad for decentralized computer. We're replacing lumbering pieces of hardware forced into a niche with incredibly affordable dedicated hardware designed for the purpose it's serving.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: meebs on September 18, 2012, 10:21:15 PM
Right now if I want even the cheapest dedicated miner I need about $500 for a CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU etc.

I then need to be able to deal with the heat produced by another computer, storing another computer and to have the technical skill and knowledge to set up an OS, keep the thing overclocked right, etc.

Once BFL arrives on the scene, I spend $300 and I need 2 USB ports. No outlets, no overclocking, very little heat. I can leave my miners running at 9W, using very little energy and hashing away for me without preventing me working on my computer.

Which do you think is better for the casual, decentralized,miner?

Your argument is like suggesting that the personal computer was bad for decentralized computer. We're replacing lumbering pieces of hardware forced into a niche with incredibly affordable dedicated hardware designed for the purpose it's serving.

that is a very good point.

Heck, if the jalapeno truly only uses a teeny tiny amount of power it would be easy for a huge number of people to own one or two and contribute.

However unless the price of a BTC keeps going up, the profitability of doing so will eventually decline enough to dissuade the "masses".


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: HorseRider on September 28, 2012, 04:31:52 PM
the cheap ASIC will be distributed all around the world. it will be very decentralized.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: HorseRider on September 28, 2012, 04:33:08 PM
Right now if I want even the cheapest dedicated miner I need about $500 for a CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU etc.

I then need to be able to deal with the heat produced by another computer, storing another computer and to have the technical skill and knowledge to set up an OS, keep the thing overclocked right, etc.

Once BFL arrives on the scene, I spend $300 and I need 2 USB ports. No outlets, no overclocking, very little heat. I can leave my miners running at 9W, using very little energy and hashing away for me without preventing me working on my computer.

Which do you think is better for the casual, decentralized,miner?

Your argument is like suggesting that the personal computer was bad for decentralized computer. We're replacing lumbering pieces of hardware forced into a niche with incredibly affordable dedicated hardware designed for the purpose it's serving.

+1

More importantly,it is very likely that the $300 will be reduced to $20-30 in less than 18 months.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: SgtSpike on September 28, 2012, 04:33:34 PM
the cheap ASIC will be distributed all around the world. it will be very decentralized.
Exactly this. Thousands of people are going to be running them.  Sure, it won't be every person in the world like it can be now (with using GPU's), but everyone will certainly have a chance to purchase one.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Korbman on September 29, 2012, 10:11:54 PM
the cheap ASIC will be distributed all around the world. it will be very decentralized.
Exactly this. Thousands of people are going to be running them.  Sure, it won't be every person in the world like it can be now (with using GPU's), but everyone will certainly have a chance to purchase one.

Essentially yes. My thought is that at the very beginning, ASIC power will be centralized to a group of people (maybe a couple hundred), but just like with GPUs I'm sure it'll spread extremely quickly over 12 months. The majority of people would invest in a Jalapeno or two at 3.5GH/s (or whatever the equivalent is for other ASIC companies), but the dedicated Bitcoiners would go with Singles...and the rich with Mini Rigs :P


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Korbman on October 05, 2012, 09:45:47 PM
More funny people on this forum ... govs backed by bankers to buy hardware to combat Bitcoin, LOL, I can't stop laughing!
It seems many of you here are unaware of diversity of "weapons" which lie at disposal of obvious enemies of Bitcoin. It's very
possible Bitcoin is already overtaken by those entities.

[sarcasm] Oh my god, you're so right! Bitcoin has grown so incredibly vast and powerful, it will definitely be targeted by major countries around the world. [/sarcasm]

Bitcoin has a total economy value of, what, a bit over $100 million? The world's GDP is around $70 trillion, which puts bitcoin's worldly influence at .000143% ...it would mean absolutely nothing if Bitcoin grew two-fold or disappeared tomorrow.


Side note: Sorry guys, I didn't mean to feed the troll. Sometimes I just like their reactions though ;D


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Desolator on October 06, 2012, 02:47:51 AM

Do you REALLY think bankers, people who create money out of thin air, give a shit about AMOUNT of money? It's about control.

It's also about convenience though.  If I don't have to go to some weird, offsite, super sketchy-sounding 3rd party like Liberty Reserve and pay fees just to turn some of my USD into BTC, that's a big plus.  Creating BTC out of nowhere is slower at turning USD into BTC (buy the hardware, mine the coins) but much better sounding.  A small but steady stream of BTC would be quite nice.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Flowz on October 06, 2012, 09:05:11 PM
I think ASIC's will mess with the basic principle of economics.
Demand and supply, supply will raise a lot because of these ASIC miners, so the demand has to raise in the same proportion or the break-even-price will drop.
Conclussion: The value of bitcoins will decrease.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: flower1024 on October 06, 2012, 10:00:42 PM
I think ASIC's will mess with the basic principle of economics.
Demand and supply, supply will raise a lot because of these ASIC miners, so the demand has to raise in the same proportion or the break-even-price will drop.
Conclussion: The value of bitcoins will decrease.

the supply does not change with more mining-power.
in fact the supply lowers at december because of the protocol (but this has nothing to do with hashrate)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: bitcool on October 06, 2012, 10:14:32 PM
Comparing to real world example, good diamond or platinum mines are few and far between, mining is much more centralized and monopolized.

Gold and silver mining on the other hand, is much more decentralized. This probably helped them being popularized as monetary metals.

Luckily, there's Litecoin. In the future most likely there will be other algorithms to level the play field.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Flowz on October 07, 2012, 05:04:03 PM
I think ASIC's will mess with the basic principle of economics.
Demand and supply, supply will raise a lot because of these ASIC miners, so the demand has to raise in the same proportion or the break-even-price will drop.
Conclussion: The value of bitcoins will decrease.

the supply does not change with more mining-power.
in fact the supply lowers at december because of the protocol (but this has nothing to do with hashrate)
Oh I overlooked the fact that blocks generate each 10 minutes.
But won't the difficulty raise a lot then, which means small miners won't be able to get a good profit?


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Flowz on October 08, 2012, 07:42:23 PM
I think ASIC's will mess with the basic principle of economics.
Demand and supply, supply will raise a lot because of these ASIC miners, so the demand has to raise in the same proportion or the break-even-price will drop.
Conclussion: The value of bitcoins will decrease.

the supply does not change with more mining-power.
in fact the supply lowers at december because of the protocol (but this has nothing to do with hashrate)
Oh I overlooked the fact that blocks generate each 10 minutes.
But won't the difficulty raise a lot then, which means small miners won't be able to get a good profit?

Yes. Unless you have massive GPU / FPGA farm or ASICs, you'll be out of race.
Aren't we able to serve shares at the same difficulty as today but with the only exception that the # of shares needed will increased giantly.



Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Desolator on October 09, 2012, 12:31:04 AM
Once BFL arrives on the scene, I spend $300 and I need 2 USB ports. No outlets, no overclocking, very little heat. I can leave my miners running at 9W,

No, you need 4 USB ports and they better not be on the same circuit and they better not share 1 circuit (almost all do).  I hope you have an MSI motherboard that's 2 or less years old :P That or a pretty high end powered USB hub.  I can't wait to see just how many people are thoroughly disappointed by their melted front USB headers, the device powering down constantly, their mouse randomly cutting out, and their computer restarting randomly from the insane (in USB terms) power draw that just 1 Jalapeno will cause.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BCMan on October 09, 2012, 01:23:05 PM
Once BFL arrives on the scene, I spend $300 and I need 2 USB ports. No outlets, no overclocking, very little heat. I can leave my miners running at 9W,

No, you need 4 USB ports and they better not be on the same circuit and they better not share 1 circuit (almost all do).  I hope you have an MSI motherboard that's 2 or less years old :P That or a pretty high end powered USB hub.  I can't wait to see just how many people are thoroughly disappointed by their melted front USB headers, the device powering down constantly, their mouse randomly cutting out, and their computer restarting randomly from the insane (in USB terms) power draw that just 1 Jalapeno will cause.
+1


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: BCMan on October 09, 2012, 01:26:41 PM
We're replacing lumbering pieces of hardware forced into a niche with incredibly affordable dedicated hardware designed for the purpose it's serving.

... which is EXACTLY the reason why less and less ordinary people will start mining. First it was just ordinary computer, something
almost everyone had at the time, than it was computer with good GPU, than it was FPGA. It still worked fine because FPGAs were still
not so cheap and faster than GPU rigs to push them from scene. But now with cheap and super fast ASICs, mining means investing in
hardware that serves absolutely no purpose other than rising hash rate, and does not really guarantee return of investments. Go out
on fucking street and try to recruit random people, you'll see what they think of your "amazing deal".

There was a time when Bitcoin had bright future, but greedy stupid unenlightened self-interest bastards decided they want more for
themself and less for others. Idea of recruiting as many miners as possible instead of rising individual hash rates wasn't probably even
considered, or it was but sounded like major nightmare.

Since I like the idea of Bitcoin and I don't like what most of you turned it into, I'll say it loud and clear = FUCK YOU, RETARDS!

You are oblivious of so many important things. Justice is in the fact you can't buy that what you miss with your stupid earned money.
I couldn't agree with you more, man.


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Desolator on October 10, 2012, 05:00:18 AM
Quote
Demand and supply, supply will raise a lot because of these ASIC miners
I think my head just exploded.

Btw I was wrong :P you don't need 4 USB ports, you actually need a better computer :P So 5v, 500ma (aka 2.5W) is THE spec for USB.  That means if you've got a laptop, I absolutely guarantee that's what it is and it's usually in pairs.  That means 2.5W over 2 adjacent USBs since they use the same wiring.  Trust me, I use external hard drive enclosures and hard drive adapters all the time and this is a big problem on hundreds of laptops.

If it's a regular PC from Dell or HP or one of those losers, it's very likely also exactly those specs.  The Jalapeno allegedly draws 4.5W.  That means it'd draw 90% power from both USBs combined if they combine perfectly and don't overheat and don't share a circuit (that's not real common) and that's if you connected a y-cable connector with the data pins removed from the 2nd USB head.  So then your quite possibly 28 gauge cables feeding the USB port have to not melt so I hope your case was expensive if you're using the front USBs.

Then you have to never vary the usage of any part on the motherboard other than the CPU which has its own dedicated power circuit.  Every board is different but a sudden draw on the sound port for example to play an song at full amplification could dip the voltage down below 5V for a split second and disrupt the Jalapeno.

JUST KIDDING!  You can't play sound at all :P at that power draw level, the Jalapeno will send electrical noise back down the USB line and amplify the crap out of it on the audio circuit that it leaks into on even medium end boards, turning all music into crap.  Anyone who's ever used USB powered speakers knows what I'm talking about.  Theoretically the speakers can send interference back down the same line and affect USB power but that's less likely.  I might shoot a video of just how bad this really is on one of the brand new computers I built with a high end motherboard.

Then you better not have a cheap codegen or Gigabyte case for example or they like to build up static along their improperly grounded front USB ports which causes voltage variation and noise and other chaos that would affect such a sensitive chip as the Jalapeno's.

New MSI motherboards, most ASUS motherboard, some Gigabyte ones too I think have a "supercharge" feature that can run like 5 amps through a USB port to charge a phone or other device so that at least takes away the melted wire and electrical limitations problems.  Hope your computer is brand new! lol.

Or

you can just use a powered USB hub that guarantees 2.5W+ per individual port.  In other words, order one :P


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Korbman on October 10, 2012, 02:05:43 PM
Btw I was wrong :P you don't need 4 USB ports, you actually need a better computer :P So 5v, 500ma (aka 2.5W) is THE spec for USB.  That means if you've got a laptop, I absolutely guarantee that's what it is and it's usually in pairs.  That means 2.5W over 2 adjacent USBs since they use the same wiring.  Trust me, I use external hard drive enclosures and hard drive adapters all the time and this is a big problem on hundreds of laptops.

If it's a regular PC from Dell or HP or one of those losers, it's very likely also exactly those specs.  The Jalapeno allegedly draws 4.5W.  That means it'd draw 90% power from both USBs combined if they combine perfectly and don't overheat and don't share a circuit (that's not real common) and that's if you connected a y-cable connector with the data pins removed from the 2nd USB head.  So then your quite possibly 28 gauge cables feeding the USB port have to not melt so I hope your case was expensive if you're using the front USBs.

Then you have to never vary the usage of any part on the motherboard other than the CPU which has its own dedicated power circuit.  Every board is different but a sudden draw on the sound port for example to play an song at full amplification could dip the voltage down below 5V for a split second and disrupt the Jalapeno.

JUST KIDDING!  You can't play sound at all :P at that power draw level, the Jalapeno will send electrical noise back down the USB line and amplify the crap out of it on the audio circuit that it leaks into on even medium end boards, turning all music into crap.  Anyone who's ever used USB powered speakers knows what I'm talking about.  Theoretically the speakers can send interference back down the same line and affect USB power but that's less likely.  I might shoot a video of just how bad this really is on one of the brand new computers I built with a high end motherboard.

Interesting. I have a 2 year old, low end, Gigabyte motherboard in a cheap $40 case...yet I manage to charge my GPS, phone, and iTouch all over USB and all at the same time. By your logic, my computer should have exploded by now.

Something tells me your math is off...

you can just use a powered USB hub that guarantees 2.5W+ per individual port.  In other words, order one :P

This, however, is the best idea under any scenario :)


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: Flowz on October 10, 2012, 06:13:16 PM
In the end, buying a few female USB-ports, hooking them up with a transformer, a 5 volt regulator and a few capicitors and you can have simple and cheap USB powered board.
Then you just connect the data transfer lines to the computer and you're set!


Title: Re: ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
Post by: 420 on October 11, 2012, 03:37:12 AM
So many arguments assuming the fact that bitcoin is only an investment for miners;

Bitcoin is a currency or good exchange medium and it's not just an investment; some miners want to mine their own bitcoins and not just buy them outright.

There's the learning, excitement and potential gains of doing it yourself and also helping with the network