Bitcoin algorithm change

[sippsnapp]

You exactly know what we talking about, dont pretend you dont understand it.

[hardcore-fs]

I still like the idea of a ram intensive algo (eventually ram speed could play a role) maybe combined with something only multi cpu/gpu can solve effectively.
This way you ban botnets and make asic manufacturers/buyers wet eyes.
I still would like to know for what else beside mining an asic or its technology is useful/applicable, maybe it would be smart to invent a technology if this is not the case that would be useful for other computing operations, with multi cpu this would be the case i guess.

Maybe we can force everybody to print out the bit-coin on a piece of specially manufactured paper, say with a watermark or something that changes colour with heat, that way we will know who used a GPU.

[JoelKatz]

Uuuhhh do you know that every hardware piece is an "asic"? Your cpu, your graphic card etcetcetc

No. Your CPU is not application specific.

And do you know that if you make a ram intensive algo with cpu and gpu you can make an asic optimized for it without problems, exactly like now?

No. Making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory is qualitatively different from making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient at bit twiddling tasks that don't require unpredictable branching or large amounts of memory. These two tasks are not at all exactly alike.

One can easily make ASICs that are thousands of times faster than commodity CPUs at SHA256. One cannot easily make ASICs that are even ten times faster than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory.

[Littleshop]

Uuuhhh do you know that every hardware piece is an "asic"? Your cpu, your graphic card etcetcetc

No. Your CPU is not application specific.

And do you know that if you make a ram intensive algo with cpu and gpu you can make an asic optimized for it without problems, exactly like now?

No. Making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory is qualitatively different from making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient at bit twiddling tasks that don't require unpredictable branching or large amounts of memory. These two tasks are not at all exactly alike.

One can easily make ASICs that are thousands of times faster than commodity CPUs at SHA256. One cannot easily make ASICs that are even ten times faster than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory.

Agreed.  And one could make a task that used required BOTH a GPU and an X86 processor with a certain amount of RAM.  A well designed task could be made that required equal parts of both and could not be optimized for ASIC.  A miner would need to have both a healthy CPU and GPU.  Even if one offloaded tasks to an ASIC a miner would still need an x86 CPU core for each ASIC.  There are many possibilities.   

A huge downside is with a task this complex, there could be an unforeseen shortcut or even a known shortcut (to few people) that gives someone an advantage.  I am not for any of this.  I think SHA256 is fine until there appear to be some cracks in it. 

[hardcore-fs]

Uuuhhh do you know that every hardware piece is an "asic"? Your cpu, your graphic card etcetcetc

No. Your CPU is not application specific.

And do you know that if you make a ram intensive algo with cpu and gpu you can make an asic optimized for it without problems, exactly like now?

No. Making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory is qualitatively different from making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient at bit twiddling tasks that don't require unpredictable branching or large amounts of memory. These two tasks are not at all exactly alike.

One can easily make ASICs that are thousands of times faster than commodity CPUs at SHA256. One cannot easily make ASICs that are even ten times faster than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory.

Agreed.  And one could make a task that used required BOTH a GPU and an X86 processor with a certain amount of RAM.  A well designed task could be made that required equal parts of both and could not be optimized for ASIC.  A miner would need to have both a healthy CPU and GPU.  Even if one offloaded tasks to an ASIC a miner would still need an x86 CPU core for each ASIC.  There are many possibilities.   

A huge downside is with a task this complex, there could be an unforeseen shortcut or even a known shortcut (to few people) that gives someone an advantage.  I am not for any of this.  I think SHA256 is fine until there appear to be some cracks in it. 

er actually the CPU IS application specific.
It takes a finite number of preprogrammed states and produces predictable outputs for those states.

The fact that you can "re-arrange" those states EXTERNALLY to perform another task, does not make the CPU non 'application specific'

The same way that an ASIC inside a software radio, does not work with only one type of spoken language.


Infact Intel take it a step further, in that the  CPU is an ASIC that can be re-arranged via a microcode insert.

HC

[Littleshop]

Uuuhhh do you know that every hardware piece is an "asic"? Your cpu, your graphic card etcetcetc

No. Your CPU is not application specific.

And do you know that if you make a ram intensive algo with cpu and gpu you can make an asic optimized for it without problems, exactly like now?

No. Making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory is qualitatively different from making an ASIC that's significantly more efficient at bit twiddling tasks that don't require unpredictable branching or large amounts of memory. These two tasks are not at all exactly alike.

One can easily make ASICs that are thousands of times faster than commodity CPUs at SHA256. One cannot easily make ASICs that are even ten times faster than commodity hardware at accessing large amounts of memory.

Agreed.  And one could make a task that used required BOTH a GPU and an X86 processor with a certain amount of RAM.  A well designed task could be made that required equal parts of both and could not be optimized for ASIC.  A miner would need to have both a healthy CPU and GPU.  Even if one offloaded tasks to an ASIC a miner would still need an x86 CPU core for each ASIC.  There are many possibilities.   

A huge downside is with a task this complex, there could be an unforeseen shortcut or even a known shortcut (to few people) that gives someone an advantage.  I am not for any of this.  I think SHA256 is fine until there appear to be some cracks in it. 

er actually the CPU IS application specific.
It takes a finite number of preprogrammed states and produces predictable outputs for those states.

The fact that you can "re-arrange" those states EXTERNALLY to perform another task, does not make the CPU non 'application specific'

The same way that an ASIC inside a software radio, does not work with only one type of spoken language.


Infact Intel take it a step further, in that the  CPU is an ASIC that can be re-arranged via a microcode insert.

HC

By your logic nearly all chips are ASICs.  But ASIC is an industry term for a chip that is designed to a specific application.  The part that is not explicitly said but CLEARLY IMPLIED is that an ASIC is for a narrow application, not  a broad one.  A 7404 TTL chip is application specific for inverting TTL, that does not make it an ASIC. 

[stochastic]

I only voted yes, because I hope down the road they will use a higher bit hash algorithm such as SHA 512 or if one comes along 1024. Not to undermine ASICS and FPGA's, or upset the decentralized balance of mining, but to increase the key space for private keys and bitcoin addresses to make it even harder to brute force someones address, because 40 quadrillion years is to damn short!

The block hashing algorithm (SHA256) isn't related to the number of possible Bitcoin addresses.

But you're probably right. At some point we will have to change the address space, and probably also the block hashing algorithm. But there's really no reason to worry about this yet.

When it is cracked bitcoin is dead and a new currency will take its place.

[JoelKatz]

er actually the CPU IS application specific.
It takes a finite number of preprogrammed states and produces predictable outputs for those states.

The fact that you can "re-arrange" those states EXTERNALLY to perform another task, does not make the CPU non 'application specific'

The same way that an ASIC inside a software radio, does not work with only one type of spoken language.


Infact Intel take it a step further, in that the  CPU is an ASIC that can be re-arranged via a microcode insert.

HC

You are using the term "ASIC" differently from the way everyone else is using it. If you are doing this deliberately, then you are a malicious jerk out to waste everyone else's time. If you are doing this inadvertently, then you are an ignorant fool claiming to correct those who know more than you do. I don't know which, but either way, it's not too good for you.

The difference between an ASIC and a general-purpose component like a CPU is that an ASIC is specifically designed to be used in a specific application whereas a general-purpose component like a CPU is designed to be flexible and find use in many different applications.

[sharky112065]

We started off with a bitcoin that anyone could use attack and now were attackers are forced to buy stuff we they dont really want.

This is the second thing. The purpose of mining is not to allow "anyone" to create free money by burning spare CPU cycles all day. The purpose of mining is to secure the network from attack. Nothing more. One of the larget threats is posed by mining botnets, and such botnets will have access to a lot of powerful CPUs and some decent GPUs, but almost certainly no suitable FPGAs or ASICs. Litecoin and other "CPU-friendly" coins are ipso facto botnet-friendly, and there is a very real danger that an attacker with a reasonably sized botnet could pull off a 51% attack against Litecoin. On the other hand, by requiring specialised hardware to mine efficiently, Bitcoin also requires specialised hardware to attack efficiently, making it much more secure against attackers using conventional hardware.

I could not have said it better.

[hardcore-fs]

er actually the CPU IS application specific.
It takes a finite number of preprogrammed states and produces predictable outputs for those states.

The fact that you can "re-arrange" those states EXTERNALLY to perform another task, does not make the CPU non 'application specific'

The same way that an ASIC inside a software radio, does not work with only one type of spoken language.


Infact Intel take it a step further, in that the  CPU is an ASIC that can be re-arranged via a microcode insert.

HC

You are using the term "ASIC" differently from the way everyone else is using it. If you are doing this deliberately, then you are a malicious jerk out to waste everyone else's time. If you are doing this inadvertently, then you are an ignorant fool claiming to correct those who know more than you do. I don't know which, but either way, it's not too good for you.

The difference between an ASIC and a general-purpose component like a CPU is that an ASIC is specifically designed to be used in a specific application whereas a general-purpose component like a CPU is designed to be flexible and find use in many different applications.

Actually it is you that is the jerk, for taking such a high handed  Holier than thou attitude.

http://www.open-silicon.com/company/news-events/press-releases/open-silicon,-mips-technologies,-and-dolphin-technology-achieve-asic-cpu-performance-of-over-24ghz-in-tsmc-40nm/

[Stephen Gornick]

When it is cracked bitcoin is dead and a new currency will take its place.

When SHA-256 is cracked?

If SHA-256 became completely broken, I think we could come to some agreement about what the honest block chain was before the trouble started, lock that in and continue from there with a new hash function.

[muyuu]

When it is cracked bitcoin is dead and a new currency will take its place.

When SHA-256 is cracked?

If SHA-256 became completely broken, I think we could come to some agreement about what the honest block chain was before the trouble started, lock that in and continue from there with a new hash function.

I doubt the community would be strong enough to achieve that kind of agreement. However, there is no better alternative now so I doubt Bitcoin would be dead, it would be just set back noticeably, but it would continue ahead.

[The_Duke]

When it is cracked bitcoin is dead and a new currency will take its place.

When SHA-256 is cracked?

If SHA-256 became completely broken, I think we could come to some agreement about what the honest block chain was before the trouble started, lock that in and continue from there with a new hash function.

As if when SHA-256 gets cracked, suddenly ALL transaction in the blockchain would be "bad" ones and you could just draw a line through the chain. In reality, for a time you will just have a mix of bad and good transactions and finding this "agreement" would be very hard. And whatever the "agreemend" would end up to be, a lot of good transactions would suffer from it. Imagine just having sold some expensive goods or services for a lot of bitcoins, and that transaction suddenly behing *after* that "agreement"-line through the blockchain...

[sharky112065]

When it is cracked bitcoin is dead and a new currency will take its place.

When SHA-256 is cracked?

If SHA-256 became completely broken, I think we could come to some agreement about what the honest block chain was before the trouble started, lock that in and continue from there with a new hash function.

I doubt the community would be strong enough to achieve that kind of agreement. However, there is no better alternative now so I doubt Bitcoin would be dead, it would be just set back noticeably, but it would continue ahead.

Most of the community would just blindly follow what ever Gavin and the dev team puts out.

[muyuu]

When it is cracked bitcoin is dead and a new currency will take its place.

When SHA-256 is cracked?

If SHA-256 became completely broken, I think we could come to some agreement about what the honest block chain was before the trouble started, lock that in and continue from there with a new hash function.

I doubt the community would be strong enough to achieve that kind of agreement. However, there is no better alternative now so I doubt Bitcoin would be dead, it would be just set back noticeably, but it would continue ahead.

Most of the community would just blindly follow what ever Gavin and the dev team puts out.

That's the forums. The valuation would tell you a different story.

[Stephen Gornick]

I doubt the community would be strong enough to achieve that kind of agreement.

That is only needed if there were a crack exploited suddenly, and not the more likely scenario where the weakness is known years before it can become a problem.   If it were to occur suddenly, a lot more is affected than just Bitcoin.

[franky1]

replying to OP first post.

back in the medieval times people could easily mine gold with just a bucket and filter out all the minerals to keep the shiny stuff.. now'a days you need expensive machinery, experts in mechanics, explosives and geology...

so this is the natural progression of mining a limited resource.

so trade in your bucket (GPU) for a box of TNT and a drill (FPGA) and if you have the money an excavator/ gold wash filtering machine(ASIC).

i understand you want to keep your bucket so u can mine gold, and know it has other uses such as making sand castles or fetching water from a well. but times move on. gold miners wouldn't take their kids to school in a excavator, but they do see the benefits in having one.

[novusordo]

Would it be even remotely possible to force the change in sha256 bitcoin algorith to something else that asic and fpga devices couldnt compute?

We started off with a bitcoin that anyone could use and now were forced to buy stuff we dont really want.

I realise that there are some ppl that allready invested in asic and fpga, but ton off ppl are unsatisfied with this.

Do U think btc should move away from sha256 and let "normal" people the chance ?

Even if there was an algorithm change, someone would create an ASIC Bitcoin miner for the new algorithm.

Also, by having dedicated Bitcoin mining hardware (as opposed to using GPUs), the money that miners pay for their hardware goes directly back into the Bitcoin economy most of the time. For instance, by paying for an ASIC mining unit in BTC, your BTC is being paid to the employees in the company manufacturing it, who then will spend it elsewhere. When miners buy GPUs, they're giving fiat money to AMD. While their employees may use Bitcoin, I would imagine their use is at a much lower level than that of employees in a Bitcoin-centric company.

[giszmo]

Would it be even remotely possible to force the change in sha256 bitcoin algorith to something else that asic and fpga devices couldnt compute?

We started off with a bitcoin that anyone could use and now were forced to buy stuff we dont really want.

I realise that there are some ppl that allready invested in asic and fpga, but ton off ppl are unsatisfied with this.

Do U think btc should move away from sha256 and let "normal" people the chance ?

Even if there was an algorithm change, someone would create an ASIC Bitcoin miner for the new algorithm.

If you change the algo to repell custom hardware producers, you will do so every now and then. Result would be some mistery miners that still do custom hardware for their benefit under the radar so the algo keeps stable longer.

Please don't hurt those that are more into bitcoin than anybody else. Please don't hurt those that cast our beloved algorithms in silicon.

[giszmo]

replying to OP first post.

back in the medieval times people could easily mine gold with just a bucket and filter out all the minerals to keep the shiny stuff.. now'a days you need expensive machinery, experts in mechanics, explosives and geology...

so this is the natural progression of mining a limited resource.

so trade in your bucket (GPU) for a box of TNT and a drill (FPGA) and if you have the money an excavator/ gold wash filtering machine(ASIC).

i understand you want to keep your bucket so u can mine gold, and know it has other uses such as making sand castles or fetching water from a well. but times move on. gold miners wouldn't take their kids to school in a excavator, but they do see the benefits in having one.

+1