Um...you need to take 2 seconds and actually read the readme file on the git before you post what can and can't be done.  Or I guess you have no clue what cmake is.

The miner can easily be built using Mingw32 to create a Windows exe.  But I don't plan on posting any binaries, as I've stated all along I don't plan on mining anything...my laptop is for coding only ;-)

Edit:  For anyone who is interested in setting up mingw32 on their computer to build miners (xel_miner, sgminer, etc), I would recommend using the steps documented for sgminer.  The following link will walk you thought how to setup mingw32 and install all the required packages.

https://github.com/sgminer-dev/sgminer/blob/master/doc/windows-build.txt

Here is a more comprehensive list of the enhancements that I know the miner needs.  As I've stated all along, this is just a prototype miner, I'm sure others can improve on it greatly.

Also, I'm not asking for people to tell me how to solve for these issues...I already know how to fix each of them, I'm just not interested at this time.  I'm just hoping this may help others get more involved and help out.

1) OpenCL Enhancement 1 - I don't own any GPU's so my OpenCL logic is very basic.  Right now it uses a very simplistic approach to determine the number of cores to mine with.  This needs to be enhanced, but I don't have the hardware to try out the code with.

2) OpenCL Enhancement 2 - ElasticPL uses 64bit floating point arithmetic...but not all devices support 64bit floats.  Right now, the if the miner doesn't support 64 bit floats, it won't use OpenCL.  Ultimately, it would be better if the miner checks to if the job even requires floats, and if not, it should be able to use OpenCL...or better yet...some floating point operations don't require 64 bits...check if it uses those.

3) OpenCL Enhancement 3 - Create AMD / NVIDIA specific code to optimize the miner for those GPUs....but remember, no one knows what you'll be mining...it's all up to what logic the author submits in the job...so it needs to be very flexible.

4) Mining Algo Switching - The algo to determine which job to mine is pretty simplistic.  You can choose the most profitable job, the easiest job, etc.  First it would be great if the community came up with a list of the various ways the miner could determine which job to mine, then the mining logic could be updated accordingly.

5) C / OpenCL Code Generator - Currently this code generator uses recursive logic.  This puts a limit on how deep the AST tree can be based on the hardware...but, I have a check in place to make sure the miner doesn't exceed it's limits.  We may want to switch the code generators to use an iterative approach instead (see the WCET logic for an example).  I created a prototype of it but it is ugly and hard to maintain.  Maybe someone can come up with something better.

6) WCET Calculations - I modified the calculation to better represent the complexity of the code, but it really needs some additional work.  Someone could spend some time truly figuring out the relative weights of the various operators / functions to better determine how complex the job is.

7) CPU Thread Priority - When I built the miner I removed all thread prioritization logic (remember I never intended this miner to ever be used).  EK added some simple logic back for Linux users, but there is nothing for Windows users...someone could add all this back in.

8 ) Miner Options - I'm sure there are more options that would make the user more user friendly...

This is all I can think of for now.

Nice work Selsonblue...I've added a couple of items where I know the miner needs enhancements.  Maybe this will encourage others to get involved.  Of course there are lots of other needed improvements to the miner...

We appreciate your efforts Selsonblue.  Honestly, I'm guessing Lannister is never coming back so eventually we should probably move to a new thread where someone can make updates to the main post...or just go to slack completely.

clivemy, unfortunately I'm probably not the best person for that.  But if anyone has a question as to a specific use case can be handled by xel, I could answer that (i.e. someone on slack talked about a market prediction algo...yes, xel can do that...here someone asked about video rendering and mining other coins...no we can't do that).

But one thing to keep in mind.  The main reason to go with SNs is that the possibilities for xel are great.  It can be expanded to fulfill any number of use cases.  Without the SNs...as someone else stated...xel would pretty much be a big calculator due to the the limitations of the core servers.

So I get there are concerns with the SN implementation.  It may not be perfect at first...but the idea is to put a framework in place that can allow people to build on.  Without it, we'd be extremely limited.

I realize people want to cash in on the ICO...but, I really just wish this was just an open source project with no ICO.  This project is not about making people a bunch of money...it is about doing something that hasn't been done before that may provide a great benefit to the scientific community.

Exactly the point I was trying to make...you just probably stated it better.

I think we need to be careful saying it's a "final" product.  The code will be working code that applies to use cases that fit within it's limitations (and I don't think these are the same use cases Golem and others are going after...but I could be wrong). 

Even reading the various feedback over the last few days regarding the SN's it seems that a lot of people have various opinions regarding how the system should behave.  It can certainly be enhanced to do addition use cases or behave anyway anyone can dream up, but that takes time and effort.

Congratulations unvoid...enjoy spending time with your new little boy!

I think I disagree with most of what you wrote...


That is the reason for the 300K...we don't want it easy / cheap for people to create malicious supernodes.


If there is only one supernode, then xel has failed it purpose anyway.  What's the point of xel if no one is interested in supporting the network.


Huh?  What about POW rewards and Bounties?  Are those not incentive enough to run a regular node?  What other incentives would they need?


Yes this scenario is handled in the design.  I'll let EK speak to how it would work.


Ok, this may be the only thing I agree with that you wrote.  Yes it makes things more complex.  But this complexity provides a couple things.

1) Without it, xel can only work on small jobs with limited memory.  With SN, we can increase the size / complexity of the use cases considerably.
2) Read what EK wrote above...without SNs it would mean that for Exchanges, etc to run a wallet, they would be required to verify all the ElasticPL jobs / solutions / pow submissions flowing through the network.  I don't really think you'll find many, if any exchanges that would agree to this.

EK, can you clarify something about the SNs, which may help make this decision...my understanding is that we went to the SN approach to offload the ElasticPL validation from the core server for a couple reasons, the main ones being:

  1) The time it takes to validate the submissions from multiple jobs (even small ones) could impact the performance of the core server if done there
  2) Using SNs would allow us to increase the memory available to ElasticPL jobs

If either or both of these are the case, I would think SNs are required for ElasticPL processing.

My vote would be that the supernodes are required for any ElasticPL processing (of course, wallets would still work fine w/o SNs).  But in the least I don't think we should allow any new work to be submitted if there are no SNs.

I like the idea of a contest, but I'm not really sure how it would work.  The TSP example that was mentioned is just an approach to solving a problem...even if you came up with a TSP example to solve for 10,000 cities or something...it's the network that actually solves the problem.  The author just codes the algorithm...they don't solve anything.

Maybe a different way to look at this would be to come up with some sort of incentive for authors to create different types of basic examples that could demonstrate various use cases for xel.  That might draw in some outside groups to take a look at xel to see what it is capable.

To me it looks like they are promoting a new form of banking...which xel really can't help with.  But I may have misread what they are doing.

Thanks guys.  And just to clarify, it was EK that say he didn't wan't anything for his effort, not me   However, my attitude is that I'd rather no one from the community send anything until after the code is deployed and working, and only if they have determined that it is useful to them

Thank you Berns! I do appreciate it.  But there's no need for anyone to send anything.

Velenar, first, thank you for the donation...that was very generous of you.  I didn't mean to imply I was looking for donations, I was just stating that I have no financial tie to the project (nothing to gain or lose)....but it was appreciated.

I like how you summarized your thoughts, and I do completely understand the sentiment.  I'm just not sure if the community is looking for a project leader that they need to be technical in nature.

Selsonblue, clivemy, and others that have volunteered to help...I'm sure the community would appreciate your efforts.  However, I'd like to clarify what I'm trying to say...there is no one available to direct your efforts...there is no one who is going to say "go do this" or "go do that"...Maybe once the testnet is up you can play around with it and better understand how it works.

My comments were directed at those who keep saying they need someone in charge (or to launch mainnet, or whatever)...neither EK or I are looking to lead this project (we see it as an open-source project where all contributors are equal peers), and I guess I don't understand why everyone keeps pushing EK to provide direction to them.

All I keep seeing is post after post of people saying "others" need to do something.  I have yet to see any recent posts from this community where anyone actually stands up and does something.

I regret spending the last 4 months of nights and weekends developing the miner to support xel.  It doesn't matter to me if someone clones the code or if it never gets used at all...I get paid the same either way...nothing.  At the time, I just did it for fun, but looking at all the whining going on here, I wish I hadn't.