ASICs being tested now?

[organofcorti]

I just finished compiling my weekly pools statistics, and I found something quite odd - the weekly stats imply something strange happened, the simplest explanation of which was a large solominer went offline - perhaps ASICs have been tested?

Welcome, miners.

Something quite strange happened this week. The weekly average network hashrate dropped by almost two Thps. At the same time, the percentage of the network hashrate for each of the top seven pools rose significantly, in some cases reversing longstanding downward trends. The smallest of the top seven, Ozcoin is at ~ 1Thps.

In order for this to occur, some of the network hashrate went offline this week without affecting the larger pools at all, so none of it was from miners at the larger pools. As far as I can tell, the smaller pools that lost hashrate did not lose a total of ~ 2 Thps. So this loss in network hashrate must be from one or more solominers.

My suspicion is that some testing of ASICs has occurred and has now ended. Perhaps it was thought that by gradually adding hashrate no one would notice the increase, but they didn't think about gradually ending testing, hence the rapid decline. And it wouldn't be particularly noticeable if the historic charts of pool % of network hashrate were not available.

......

http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2012/11/18th-november-weekly-pool-statistics.html

[MrTeal]

Very interesting. Do you think you could use the width tag to resize the images to fit better on the forum?

[organofcorti]

Very interesting. Do you think you could use the width tag to resize the images to fit better on the forum?

Never used it before. Can you save me some google time and give me a quick example?

[MrTeal]

Very interesting. Do you think you could use the width tag to resize the images to fit better on the forum?

Never used it before. Can you save me some google time and give me a quick example?

Sure, it's just [ img width=xxxx] [ /img ]
This is your image with a width of 1000

[organofcorti]

Very interesting. Do you think you could use the width tag to resize the images to fit better on the forum?

Never used it before. Can you save me some google time and give me a quick example?

Sure, it's just [ img width=xxxx] [ /img ]
This is your image with a width of 1000

.....

That's handy to know. Thanks for that!

[niko]

An important distinction: if it's on mainnet, it's not "testing" - it's "mining". There's testnet-in-a-box available for testing.

[organofcorti]

An important distinction: if it's on mainnet, it's not "testing" - it's "mining". There's testnet-in-a-box available for testing.

Good point. If ASICs are being burnt in they should have used their own testnet to do it.

[Frizz23]

Good point. If ASICs are being burnt in they should have used their own testnet to do it.

According to BFL, Inaba, BFL_Josh, etc. that's what they do / intend to do. At least that's what they say.

Would be nice to get a comment from BFL on organofcortis posting though ...

[organofcorti]

I'm not saying it's a known manufacturer. Just that a large (~1.5 Thps)  solominer has stopped mining. I'm not even sure when it started. It could be a huge botnet, for all I know. But the timing - just before ASICs are due - is a bit suspicious.

[MrTeal]

Good point. If ASICs are being burnt in they should have used their own testnet to do it.

According to BFL, Inaba, BFL_Josh, etc. that's what they do / intend to do. At least that's what they say.

Would be nice to get a comment from BFL on organofcortis posting though ...

ASICMINER is planning on selfmining and they should be getting going soon. It could be them as well if it is a single large miner.

[Shadow383]

Good point. If ASICs are being burnt in they should have used their own testnet to do it.

According to BFL, Inaba, BFL_Josh, etc. that's what they do / intend to do. At least that's what they say.

Would be nice to get a comment from BFL on organofcortis posting though ...

Have we really not learned our lessons with BFL? 

[thebaron]

I would assume by now that there is at least one kind of ASIC being used to mine Bitcoins besides BFL's.

A smart businessman would have his own designed and produce and never tell anyone but his investors and Asian contractors.

[Fcx35x10]

I would assume by now that there is at least one kind of ASIC being used to mine Bitcoins besides BFL's.

A smart businessman would have his own designed and produce and never tell anyone but his investors and Asian contractors.

good point. why wouldn't they want to jump in while the water is still hot

[yaffare]

Anyone noticed the chart on bitcoinwatch? From the 18th to 19th the hashrate dropped from 30TH to 20TH. What about that? Is the chart correct?

[bitboyben]

This isn't GPU miners in high power cost areas unplugging?

[bitboyben]

This isn't GPU miners in high power cost areas unplugging?

At the same time the price picked up? I have to guess no.

Logically they shouldn't. But block halving, lite coin mining and maybe trying to sell GPUs before everyone else does. Couple reasons it could drop.