[ANN][AR2] Argon2Coin new PoW algo, CPU friendly

[Vorksholk]

There's a surprising amount of argument over whether a small number of network connections means that GPU miners must be possible.

The number of network connections a particular client has is NOT an indicator of how many people are mining. I can spin up 100 servers with CPUMiner installed, and mine to one server, which would appear as one connection on the network.

Additionally, not everyone on a P2P network is necessarily connected to everyone else. If you are behind a firewall, then you can't directly connect to another peer behind a firewall. Sure, things like NAT punchthrough can help. Personally, I have 96 connections on an argon2 daemon running on an unfirewalled server, and 15 connections on one running inside a strict firewall.

The total network hash rate divided by the number of peers your client can reach isn't an estimation of the average mining speed--some nodes aren't mining at all, some are serving as private pools for tons of miners which don't appear as individual nodes on the network.

As for the feasibility of GPU mining, it certainly is possible. In fact, there's even an OpenCL implementation of Argon2d online. There are two versions of the Argon2 hashing algorithm: Argon2d and Argon2i. Argon2i is designed for password hashing (where side-channel timing attacks are a problem), while Argon2d is designed for uses like cryptocurrencies, focusing primarily on working well on CPUs compared to GPUs. Here's a quote from the specifications whitepaper:

Argon2 has two variants: Argon2d and Argon2i. Argon2d is faster and uses data-depending
memory access, which makes it suitable for cryptocurrencies and applications with no threats from side-channel
timing attacks. Argon2i uses data-independent memory access, which is preferred for password hashing and
password-based key derivation. Argon2i is slower as it makes more passes over the memory to protect from
tradeoff attacks.

There is an OpenCL implementation of Argon2d available in John the Ripper. Some benchmarking (http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.phc/3303) shows that extremely powerful GPUs (like the NVidia Titan) clock in below the speed of a 4770k. A Titan x is marginally faster than the 4770k. This doesn't, of course, mean that a faster implementation (on either platform, CPU or GPU) is impossible, but preliminary OpenCL code written by people who certainly know what they're doing shows that GPUs aren't great at crunching Argon2d.

It probably wouldn't be particularly hard for a GPU miner to be written given an OpenCL implementation of Argon2d already exists, but the benefits of such a GPU miner probably wouldn't be spectacular.

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[goblynn]

can change colors and stuff..but this is a good basic logo...that is easily readable at small sizes and has a unique look to it..

here is small version

[Yanakitu Tenatako]

Hello,

I am mining with CPU i5 3470 and not getting 100% cpu load with standalone miner. it is about 80% and drops to 0 every 5 seconds. Parameter -s 20 changes these drops, but am I doing something wrong ?
Starting command is this one: cpuminer -a argon2 -o 192.168.1.103:6875 -u xxx -p pass -t 4

Changing -t to 8 is better, but still with getwork hickups, to 0% cpu.

What is wrong there?

[JJ12880]

Hello,

I am mining with CPU i5 3470 and not getting 100% cpu load with standalone miner. it is about 80% and drops to 0 every 5 seconds. Parameter -s 20 changes these drops, but am I doing something wrong ?
Starting command is this one: cpuminer -a argon2 -o 192.168.1.103:6875 -u xxx -p pass -t 4

Changing -t to 8 is better, but still with getwork hickups, to 0% cpu.

What is wrong there?

That is standard behavior for the miner. There are a few ways to work around that, and squeeze an extra % or two out of it, but that is just about normal.

[OSMIUMCOIN]

Proposition 2
A R G O N 2 My address Ar2  4oWcurYmjiMoDpteFyagTNSVahXtqm63KN some bounty thanks

[ltcnim]

Hello,

I am mining with CPU i5 3470 and not getting 100% cpu load with standalone miner. it is about 80% and drops to 0 every 5 seconds. Parameter -s 20 changes these drops, but am I doing something wrong ?
Starting command is this one: cpuminer -a argon2 -o 192.168.1.103:6875 -u xxx -p pass -t 4

Changing -t to 8 is better, but still with getwork hickups, to 0% cpu.

What is wrong there?

well, the standlone miner isn't really working for me either. I only get ~13% cpu load with -t7 on a 4770k. It's slowing eating my RAM though. Over 3GB after like 3 hours.

[bhokor]

Ouch, we are speaking about a ram eater, it is possible then to mine it in a core2duo with 4gb of ram or it is a waste?

Dev have you think about  to add the coin to some other pool?

thanks

[Vorksholk]

Ouch, we are speaking about a ram eater, it is possible then to mine it in a core2duo with 4gb of ram or it is a waste?

Dev have you think about  to add the coin to some other pool?

thanks

Some people seem to be having trouble with the Windows CPUMiner, but on Linux cpuminer is using less than 50MB of RAM to mine on 8 hyperthreaded cores.

[ocminer]

Pool:

https://ar2.suprnova.cc

The CPU-Miner needs a patch for pooled mining, i've included it here:
https://github.com/ocminer/cpuminer-multi-1

And created a pull request and the Dev's branch so he can merge that as soon as he's back online.

Hashrate calculation needs to be fixed on the pool probably because this algo is so ultraslow.. We'll see when some hash is in the pool.
While Blocks are being found without problems, consider the pool beta for now though.

thanks, oc

[ltcnim]

Ouch, we are speaking about a ram eater, it is possible then to mine it in a core2duo with 4gb of ram or it is a waste?

Dev have you think about  to add the coin to some other pool?

thanks

Some people seem to be having trouble with the Windows CPUMiner, but on Linux cpuminer is using less than 50MB of RAM to mine on 8 hyperthreaded cores.

even on ubuntu the standalone miner gives me only 90-100 H/s per thread on my box, while setgenerate gives a little over 300 H/s per thread. I tried building the miner with VS2013 but the libs are missing.

[Vorksholk]

Selling Argon2 coins for 0.000075 BTC/coin.

you maybe want to buy for less than your sell price?
selling 1000 AR2 for 3000 CURE (right now cure only 0.00002381)

Not interested in spending much CURE, but I'll buy 300 AR2 for 750 CURE, get the market moving a tad

[Vorksholk]

Ouch, we are speaking about a ram eater, it is possible then to mine it in a core2duo with 4gb of ram or it is a waste?

Dev have you think about  to add the coin to some other pool?

thanks

Some people seem to be having trouble with the Windows CPUMiner, but on Linux cpuminer is using less than 50MB of RAM to mine on 8 hyperthreaded cores.

even on ubuntu the standalone miner gives me only 90-100 H/s per thread on my box, while setgenerate gives a little over 300 H/s per thread. I tried building the miner with VS2013 but the libs are missing.

What CPU do you have? In an ubuntu VM I'm having no trouble mining at 700kH/s+ on 5 of my 6 5820k cores, and I spun up an EC2 instance a bit ago, which has no problem hitting ~1000 kH/s per (physical) core. I've noticed that, on machines with very high core counts, performance seems to take a hit below what I'd expect (AKA a c4.2xlarge, which has 4 cores/8 threads, actually runs FASTER than a c4.8xlarge when all cores are committed, although a c4.8xlarge runs at the same speed as a c4.2xlarge when only a fraction of the cores are wired). Also, the Argon2d hashing algorithm is, according to the whitepaper, designed to take advantage of modern x86-platform features, so perhaps you have a very old processor where these optimizations aren't available?

If you're running it in a VM, try some CPU benchmarks to make sure your virtualization isn't giving your CPU power a haircut.

[SalimNagamato]

Selling Argon2 coins for 0.000075 BTC/coin.

you maybe want to buy for less than your sell price?
selling 1000 AR2 for 3000 CURE (right now cure only 0.00002381)

Not interested in spending much CURE, but I'll buy 300 AR2 for 750 CURE, get the market moving a tad

deal
can send them B4vkfJSJjKDe85n6nRBtBybr9pg988nAEN
give me your AR2 addy

[Vorksholk]

Selling Argon2 coins for 0.000075 BTC/coin.

you maybe want to buy for less than your sell price?
selling 1000 AR2 for 3000 CURE (right now cure only 0.00002381)

Not interested in spending much CURE, but I'll buy 300 AR2 for 750 CURE, get the market moving a tad

deal
can send them B4vkfJSJjKDe85n6nRBtBybr9pg988nAEN
give me your AR2 addy

Sent the CURE, here's an AR2 address: 4oEvG1hJQmbSZjHrGs2iTtta7b1MpKAzWk

TxID for CURE: 1324c496fe2e30a7dbc9f244ab49b00f9d6b166ef8ef447a92457f301bf56b82

[SalimNagamato]

Selling Argon2 coins for 0.000075 BTC/coin.

you maybe want to buy for less than your sell price?
selling 1000 AR2 for 3000 CURE (right now cure only 0.00002381)

Not interested in spending much CURE, but I'll buy 300 AR2 for 750 CURE, get the market moving a tad

deal
can send them B4vkfJSJjKDe85n6nRBtBybr9pg988nAEN
give me your AR2 addy

Sent the CURE, here's an AR2 address: 4oEvG1hJQmbSZjHrGs2iTtta7b1MpKAzWk

TxID for CURE: 1324c496fe2e30a7dbc9f244ab49b00f9d6b166ef8ef447a92457f301bf56b82

sent AR2 e081b073f4bf89027d26ac500cde4964cbd639f7855dd77344fbb72972c103d2
thank you. this is few days of folding worth for me...

[Vorksholk]

Selling Argon2 coins for 0.000075 BTC/coin.

you maybe want to buy for less than your sell price?
selling 1000 AR2 for 3000 CURE (right now cure only 0.00002381)

Not interested in spending much CURE, but I'll buy 300 AR2 for 750 CURE, get the market moving a tad

deal
can send them B4vkfJSJjKDe85n6nRBtBybr9pg988nAEN
give me your AR2 addy

Sent the CURE, here's an AR2 address: 4oEvG1hJQmbSZjHrGs2iTtta7b1MpKAzWk

TxID for CURE: 1324c496fe2e30a7dbc9f244ab49b00f9d6b166ef8ef447a92457f301bf56b82

sent AR2 e081b073f4bf89027d26ac500cde4964cbd639f7855dd77344fbb72972c103d2
thank you. this is few days of folding worth for me...

Received, cheers! Yup, a few days of folding for me too, but on the plus side it's also a room heater.

[JJ12880]

Ouch, we are speaking about a ram eater, it is possible then to mine it in a core2duo with 4gb of ram or it is a waste?

Dev have you think about  to add the coin to some other pool?

thanks

Some people seem to be having trouble with the Windows CPUMiner, but on Linux cpuminer is using less than 50MB of RAM to mine on 8 hyperthreaded cores.

even on ubuntu the standalone miner gives me only 90-100 H/s per thread on my box, while setgenerate gives a little over 300 H/s per thread. I tried building the miner with VS2013 but the libs are missing.

yea i cant get it to build ether.

[bitwonder]

hello there, i would give anyone 500 creditbit coin for helping me setup miner for argon2 to supernova pool, use the teamviewer. any help please? i got 1 R280x. and BTW were there any rental rig could be use for this coin?

[Vorksholk]

Ouch, we are speaking about a ram eater, it is possible then to mine it in a core2duo with 4gb of ram or it is a waste?

Dev have you think about  to add the coin to some other pool?

thanks

Some people seem to be having trouble with the Windows CPUMiner, but on Linux cpuminer is using less than 50MB of RAM to mine on 8 hyperthreaded cores.

even on ubuntu the standalone miner gives me only 90-100 H/s per thread on my box, while setgenerate gives a little over 300 H/s per thread. I tried building the miner with VS2013 but the libs are missing.

yea i cant get it to build ether.

What error(s) are you getting?

Code:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install -y git curl gedit autoconf automake build-essential libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev pkg-config 

git clone https://github.com/ocminer/cpuminer-multi-1
cd cpuminer-multi-1
./autogen.sh
./configure CFLAGS="-O3"
make
sudo make install [b]OPTIONAL, then you don't have to run with ./cpuminer since cpuminer will be located in something like /usr/local/bin/cpuminer[/b]

./cpuminer -a argon2 -o stratum+tcp://ar2.suprnova.cc:7095 -u username.worker -p password -t threads

Of course, you can change the above stratum+tcp://... to 127.0.0.1:5555 for local solomining if you have RPC set up correctly, and the username, password, and thread count need to be set.

As usual, I'd recommend putting it in a screen session so it doesn't die if you close your SSH window:

Code:

screen -S miner -d -m ./cpuminer -a argon2 -o stratum+tcp://ar2.suprnova.cc:7095 -u username.worker -p password -t threads

If the above doesn't work, install screen:

Code:

sudo apt-get install screen

This works fine on Ubuntu 14.04 fresh from an ISO.

[Vorksholk]

hello there, i would give anyone 500 creditbit coin for helping me setup miner for argon2 to supernova pool, use the teamviewer. any help please? i got 1 R280x. and BTW were there any rental rig could be use for this coin?

There's no GPU miner at the moment, but you can use the CPU miner floating around