Can I use an ASIC device for science and not for mining ?

[crocko]

Hello !

FLOPS  is an abbreviation of FLoating-point Operations Per Second, and is a common measure of a computer’s speed. According to bitcoinwatch.com, the hashrate estimate for the bitcoin network has passed 1 exaFLOPS (or 1000 petaFLOPS)
The bitcoin mining, the process which maintains the bitcoin network, uses almost no floating point operations, relying entirely on integer calculations instead.
The FLOPS estimate is based on the cost for a system to do bitcoin hash operations on its graphics card, rather than perform other tasks. A conversion rate of 1 hash = 12.7K FLOPS is used to determine the general speed of the network contribution.
The ASIC device is very specialized and doesn’t use floating point operations at all.
An exaFLOPS is an impressive number, regardless of whether it is technically correct.
If all supercomputers were combined, they’d have less than 10% of what bitcoin is using.

My question is:
Can I use an ASIC device (let say 100 GH/s) for science and not for mining ?
Is this the right tool ?

[OnkelPaul]

No, bitcoin ASICs only compute a very specialized hash function.
There's no use for them outside of bitcoin mining (or mining of altcoins with the same hash function).

Onkel Paul

[greyhawk]

Q: Can you use your alarm clock for science? It is an ASIC after all.

A: Depends on the science.

[rigel]

Can I use an ASIC device (let say 100 GH/s) for science and not for mining ?
Is this the right tool ?

ASIC means Application Specific Integrated Circuits = piece of hardware which can do just one job (calculating one type of hash)

Better use the old FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) that miners are now dismissing

[OnkelPaul]

this.

A: Depends on the science.

Science can be done with the most improbable devices.
If you want to do some specific scientific stuff, use appropriate tools. If you just want to put an unprofitable bitcoin ASIC device into scientific use you'd be very hard pressed to find a scientific experiment that both can use this device and is actually useful.

Onkel Paul

[Truecoin]

My question is:
Can I use an ASIC device (let say 100 GH/s) for science and not for mining ?
Is this the right tool ?

You can do some weired SHA256 experiments.

[b!z]

If your science requires SHA256 hashes, sure.

[crocko]

Right now, to build a software project is a time consuming operation. Who used bitbake under Linux knows what I am talking about here.
That was on my mind.
Is the ASIC or FPGA the right tools ?

Feel free to share your opinion.
Regards !

[viboracecata]

Yes, of course.

[Rannasha]

Hello !

FLOPS  is an abbreviation of FLoating-point Operations Per Second, and is a common measure of a computer’s speed. According to bitcoinwatch.com, the hashrate estimate for the bitcoin network has passed 1 exaFLOPS (or 1000 petaFLOPS)
The bitcoin mining, the process which maintains the bitcoin network, uses almost no floating point operations, relying entirely on integer calculations instead.
The FLOPS estimate is based on the cost for a system to do bitcoin hash operations on its graphics card, rather than perform other tasks. A conversion rate of 1 hash = 12.7K FLOPS is used to determine the general speed of the network contribution.
The ASIC device is very specialized and doesn’t use floating point operations at all.
An exaFLOPS is an impressive number, regardless of whether it is technically correct.
If all supercomputers were combined, they’d have less than 10% of what bitcoin is using.

My question is:
Can I use an ASIC device (let say 100 GH/s) for science and not for mining ?
Is this the right tool ?

It is wrong to express the computing power of the bitcoin network in terms of FLOPS. Like you said, FLOPS stands for FLoating point OPerations per Second. Bitcoin mining consists purely of integer operation. Not single floating point is operated on.

The number people quote for the FLOPS-count for the Bitcoin network is just a mostly arbitrary guess. Back when the majority of the network consisted of CPU and GPU miners, it was probably an okay estimate, since those devices can be used for all kinds of operations. But ASICs can do one thing only and Bitcoin-ASICs only do mining operations.

You could design and produce ASICs for scientific computations and it would be very efficient. However, in science your computer model is often improved or completely replaced, which would make developing ASICs for science a very time-consuming, expensive and ultimately not very worthwhile endeavour. Bitcoin on the other hand has the advantage that the mining algorithm is fixed and while in theory it could be changed, in practice this isn't going to happen unless SHA-256 is found to have a vulnerability.

[crocko]

@viboracecata

Are you sure ?
If you are just trolling, please stop it.
If you know something about the subject, please give more details. ( eg.: What should I use ? ASIC or FPGA  ?)