SGMiner on XBOX One

[generalheed]

I also agree that there's no reason the Xbox One X can't perform as well as its PC equivalent. That being said, it's true that mining performance is a lot different than gaming performance. Game consoles are indeed optimized for gaming first and foremost. However from what I understand, that's not going to have a huge negative affect on mining performance anyways.

We're talking about DX12 Compute Shaders, so it's not that different from modern video games and certainly not as bad as FurMark (you can burn your GPU with that within a few minutes).

The big question here is how well can an Xbox One X reasonably sustain 100% GPU and CPU performance. When I'm playing demanding games that run in 4K 60fps like Halo 5 or Forza 7, the Xbox One X does get very warm. To keep it like that constantly will no doubt reduce the lifespan of the console, but that's true for any device you use for mining. Someone else above did reference the Xbox 360's red rings of death and PS3's yellow light of death which is a concern and pushing that generation of consoles. But as far as this current generation goes, I've never heard or seen an Xbox One or PS4 have another red rings of death or yellow light of death issue yet. So I think this time around, Microsoft and Sony did a pretty good with the cooling system.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-microsoft-xbox-one-x-review_1
https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/7gq5sw/xbox_one_x_temperature_question/

Doesn't seem that bad compared to a discrete GPU and it's a lot lower than Ryzen APUs (dat thermal paste)... modern chips can reach up to 80C with no problems.

AFAIK, it's the fan that will fail first, depending on its quality. Also, keep in mind that CryptoNight doesn't overheat the GPU that much compared to other algos.

Unfortunately I doubt Microsoft and Sony are going to do anything to make their consoles more friendly for miners. But the fact remains that there's a very real possibility to take full advantage of the Xbox One X for mining. I would love to be able to write the mining software for it too but like I said I'd need help from people who are more experienced. Or another option could be to start a bounty for someone to write the software.

Whoever strikes a deal with MS is going to enjoy 1-2% mining fees easily. There are 30-35 million XB1 consoles out there...

Well sounds like the Xbox One X is the perfect mining rig right now then considering the price. The only barrier is the software then. I still don't see Microsoft personally getting into developing mining software for the Xbox One. I think we're on our own for that. Miners aren't the intended market for Microsoft's Xbox One and I don't see Microsoft really taking much of an interest in mining. That being said, all the tools are there for us to be able to write our own mining software for the Xbox One. There's already open source miners out there too like CCMiner-Cryptonight which is written in C++ I believe. But while UWP does support C++, it's not a simple copy and paste into UWP. It's a good start though, someone with the experience just needs to port CCMiner to UWP.

[cryptosize]

I still don't see Microsoft personally getting into developing mining software for the Xbox One. I think we're on our own for that. Miners aren't the intended market for Microsoft's Xbox One and I don't see Microsoft really taking much of an interest in mining.

Microsoft is preparing something:

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2018/02/12/decentralized-digital-identities-and-blockchain-the-future-as-we-see-it/

We'll have to see if it utilizes PoW (mining) or something else...

[generalheed]

I think that's more for Azure though since they already have their own blockchain service for Azure. Doesn't look like it's meant for mining altcoins anyways, but rather some kind of identity service. Probably not Xbox Live gamertags either. I'd imagine Microsoft would want to keep all Xbox Live services very much centralized.

[cryptosize]

I think that's more for Azure though since they already have their own blockchain service for Azure. Doesn't look like it's meant for mining altcoins anyways, but rather some kind of identity service. Probably not Xbox Live gamertags either. I'd imagine Microsoft would want to keep all Xbox Live services very much centralized.

Yeah, perhaps, but utilizing already existing consoles is probably cheaper than buying tons of server GPUs for PoW... not to mention electricity.

[generalheed]

I think that's more for Azure though since they already have their own blockchain service for Azure. Doesn't look like it's meant for mining altcoins anyways, but rather some kind of identity service. Probably not Xbox Live gamertags either. I'd imagine Microsoft would want to keep all Xbox Live services very much centralized.

Yeah, perhaps, but utilizing already existing consoles is probably cheaper than buying tons of server GPUs for PoW... not to mention electricity.

Microsoft Azure already has tons of those server GPU's. They have several different options for spinning up VM's on Azure with NVidia Tesla GPU's, including the latest versions. Anyways, I'm like very interested in mining on my Xbox One X now but I want to go beyond web-based javascript mining since 11-13 h/s is absolutely not worth it. I need the full power of the CPU and GPU for it to be worth it. But just gotta wait till someone can write the mining software for Xbox One using UWP or a game engine.

[cryptosize]

I think that's more for Azure though since they already have their own blockchain service for Azure. Doesn't look like it's meant for mining altcoins anyways, but rather some kind of identity service. Probably not Xbox Live gamertags either. I'd imagine Microsoft would want to keep all Xbox Live services very much centralized.

Yeah, perhaps, but utilizing already existing consoles is probably cheaper than buying tons of server GPUs for PoW... not to mention electricity.

Microsoft Azure already has tons of those server GPU's. They have several different options for spinning up VM's on Azure with NVidia Tesla GPU's, including the latest versions. Anyways, I'm like very interested in mining on my Xbox One X now but I want to go beyond web-based javascript mining since 11-13 h/s is absolutely not worth it. I need the full power of the CPU and GPU for it to be worth it. But just gotta wait till someone can write the mining software for Xbox One using UWP or a game engine.

Now that I think about it, is Azure a good idea (centralization of hashing power/51% double spending attacks)? The whole point is decentralization...

And yeah, I agree that JavaScript mining is not worth it. The best idea would be a dedicated app with 2 CPU threads (4MB L2) and 100% GPGPU utilization.

What if MS cancels your warranty rights as soon as you start mining/accept the terms and conditions? That way they wouldn't have to worry about replacements and you would mine at your own risk.

[generalheed]

I think that's more for Azure though since they already have their own blockchain service for Azure. Doesn't look like it's meant for mining altcoins anyways, but rather some kind of identity service. Probably not Xbox Live gamertags either. I'd imagine Microsoft would want to keep all Xbox Live services very much centralized.

Yeah, perhaps, but utilizing already existing consoles is probably cheaper than buying tons of server GPUs for PoW... not to mention electricity.

Microsoft Azure already has tons of those server GPU's. They have several different options for spinning up VM's on Azure with NVidia Tesla GPU's, including the latest versions. Anyways, I'm like very interested in mining on my Xbox One X now but I want to go beyond web-based javascript mining since 11-13 h/s is absolutely not worth it. I need the full power of the CPU and GPU for it to be worth it. But just gotta wait till someone can write the mining software for Xbox One using UWP or a game engine.

Now that I think about it, is Azure a good idea (centralization of hashing power/51% double spending attacks)? The whole point is decentralization...

And yeah, I agree that JavaScript mining is not worth it. The best idea would be a dedicated app with 2 CPU threads (4MB L2) and 100% GPGPU utilization.

What if MS cancels your warranty rights as soon as you start mining/accept the terms and conditions? That way they wouldn't have to worry about replacements and you would mine at your own risk.

Azure isn't 100% centralized to a specific location, they have server farms all over the world and are expanding that too. I currently use Azure to do some CPU mining actually lol. But yeah I'll reach out to some people and see if anyone else is interested in creating a mining app for the Xbox. As for Microsoft, I still doubt they would do that idea. The whole dev mode program really is meant for games and they rarely approve non entertainment apps for the Xbox One store either.

[cryptosize]

Apparently this is a Microsoft-approved app/game:

https://twitter.com/Scott_Helme/status/963188159348727813

[Deperp]

I was wondering about this since card prices went up and with the crazy bandwidth of the One X it seemed like it could be competitive. I'd like to see what someone with a scorpio dev kit could manage as a proof of concept. Though the dev kit has 4 more CUs than retail.

[cryptosize]

I was wondering about this since card prices went up and with the crazy bandwidth of the One X it seemed like it could be competitive. I'd like to see what someone with a scorpio dev kit could manage as a proof of concept. Though the dev kit has 4 more CUs than retail.

All Scorpio APUs have 44 CUs etched on the die, but 4 of them are disabled "just in case" (for redundancy purposes in case some CUs are defective).

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-ps4-pro-and-xbox-one-x-processors-compared

Dev kits probably have higher-grade chips (silicon lottery) with 44 functional CUs.

[generalheed]

Apparently this is a Microsoft-approved app/game:

https://twitter.com/Scott_Helme/status/963188159348727813

It's easier for things to get approved on the Windows Store. There are straight up bitcoin mining apps on the Windows Store, but so far none of those have been able to get approved for distribution on the Xbox store. Even though the Xbox One can download UWP apps from the store, only a small selection are actually approved.

[generalheed]

Just out of sheer curiosity, I attempted to do a quick port of both CCMiner and GatelessGateSharp to UWP and failed miserably. There's way too many dependencies on things that I'm pretty sure I don't have access to in UWP. To write a miner for UWP or any game engines supported by Xbox One would most likely require a lot of from the ground up work and there probably isn't any easy way to port existing mining apps. However, that UWP game you shared above that has coinhive built into it, it does make me wonder if we took the coinhive approach and just simply made a JS UWP app, mine with coinhive, and call it a day? It would probably perform better than mining through the Xbox One's edge browser, however it'll still be CPU mining on Xbox One. But perhaps as a proof of concept, it wouldn't be such a bad idea and a good start till someone else figures out GPU mining on the Xbox One.

[generalheed]

An xbox one cryptonight miner is actively under development by therealcrypt for the altcoin Turtle Coin.  It's in alpha, so not publicly released as of yet.

It is working with native CPU mining, currently around 100 h/s (hasn't been fully optimized yet, and running in low power mode).

Once GPU mining is working, the total hash rate is estimated to be around 900 H/s.

Apparently it doesn't matter which xbox one version is being used (xbox one, xbox one s, or xbox one x), they will all get the same hash rate since teraflops doesn't compute to mining & all versions have the same CPU and GPU.

If you have UWP or other M$ related dev skills, you might be able contribute to project, or at least get the latest status updates at the TurtleCoin discord channel @ https://discord.gg/cP7NcGw

I've been buying up xbox one s at discounts, hope to have 10 of them running eventually

Wow really? That's absolutely amazing! I'll definitely try to reach out to them soon. Sounds like at its full potential, the Xbox One can get over 1 KH/s which is actually really good for a single device mining cryptonote.

[cryptosize]

An xbox one cryptonight miner is actively under development by therealcrypt for the altcoin Turtle Coin.  It's in alpha, so not publicly released as of yet.

It is working with native CPU mining, currently around 100 h/s (hasn't been fully optimized yet, and running in low power mode).

Once GPU mining is working, the total hash rate is estimated to be around 900 H/s.

Apparently it doesn't matter which xbox one version is being used (xbox one, xbox one s, or xbox one x), they will all get the same hash rate since teraflops doesn't compute to mining & all versions have the same CPU and GPU.

If you have UWP or other M$ related dev skills, you might be able contribute to project, or at least get the latest status updates at the TurtleCoin discord channel @ https://discord.gg/cP7NcGw

I've been buying up xbox one s at discounts, hope to have 10 of them running eventually

That's good news. Thanks for the heads up!

Btw, can you explain why both the OG/S and the X GPU have the same hashing performance?

OG XBOX ONE has a Radeon 7790 (200 H/s*), while XBOX ONE X has an RX 580 (800 H/s*). Surely they cannot have the same hashing performance?

* Source: http://monerobenchmarks.info/

[generalheed]

That was my very same impression... I assumed the Xbox one x would provide a better hash rate too.  I’m not qualified to provide any explanation I was just repeating what @therealcrypt posted in the discord channel earlier this month.

I’m not the dev, just a random end user eagerly awaiting the ability to mine on Xbox.  You could try asking in the discord channel, there is #dev-xbone but read only to plebs like me.  But #general has all the info I posted above if you use the discord search.

Sorry I didn’t have a better answer for you...

I joined the server and asked around, I haven't spoken to therealcrypt yet but there seems to be some confusion amongst the others as well. I think it was just a misinterpretation. Both the Xbox One and Xbox One X use GPU's similar to PC counterparts, so the performance difference between the two consoles should be pretty similar to that of the difference between the PC versions.

That being said, I might have 1 theory about why the original Xbox One might actually perform as well as the Xbox One X for mining. Since cryptonote currencies are more memory reliant than other cryptocurrencies, the original Xbox One had 32 MB of high speed ESRAM to make up for the shortcomings of its DDR3 RAM before the Xbox One X switched to GDDR5. Since the Xbox One X is obviously optimized for gaming performance, and since gaming performance doesn't translate to mining performance, it's possible the ESRAM in the original Xbox One gives it such a good boost while the Xbox One X is more like a traditional graphics card so its hashrate is where we expect it to be.

But still, to give it such a huge boost that it's nearly equivalent to the Xbox One X? It still seems unlikely even with my ESRAM theory. I think most likely it was just some confusion or misinterpretation. He was probably referring to the CPU's between the two systems having the same performance. In fact, in my own browser based JavaScript mining on my Xbox One consoles, the original Xbox One actually got slightly, but consistently better hashrates than the Xbox One X CPU. It was really weird and I had no explanation for it. So if the original Xbox One could somehow pull off better CPU mining hashrate than the Xbox One X, then maybe GPU mining on the original Xbox One will surprise me too!

[cryptosize]

That was my very same impression... I assumed the Xbox one x would provide a better hash rate too.  I’m not qualified to provide any explanation I was just repeating what @therealcrypt posted in the discord channel earlier this month.

I’m not the dev, just a random end user eagerly awaiting the ability to mine on Xbox.  You could try asking in the discord channel, there is #dev-xbone but read only to plebs like me.  But #general has all the info I posted above if you use the discord search.

Sorry I didn’t have a better answer for you...

I joined the server and asked around, I haven't spoken to therealcrypt yet but there seems to be some confusion amongst the others as well. I think it was just a misinterpretation. Both the Xbox One and Xbox One X use GPU's similar to PC counterparts, so the performance difference between the two consoles should be pretty similar to that of the difference between the PC versions.

That being said, I might have 1 theory about why the original Xbox One might actually perform as well as the Xbox One X for mining. Since cryptonote currencies are more memory reliant than other cryptocurrencies, the original Xbox One had 32 MB of high speed ESRAM to make up for the shortcomings of its DDR3 RAM before the Xbox One X switched to GDDR5. Since the Xbox One X is obviously optimized for gaming performance, and since gaming performance doesn't translate to mining performance, it's possible the ESRAM in the original Xbox One gives it such a good boost while the Xbox One X is more like a traditional graphics card so its hashrate is where we expect it to be.

But still, to give it such a huge boost that it's nearly equivalent to the Xbox One X? It still seems unlikely even with my ESRAM theory. I think most likely it was just some confusion or misinterpretation. He was probably referring to the CPU's between the two systems having the same performance. In fact, in my own browser based JavaScript mining on my Xbox One consoles, the original Xbox One actually got slightly, but consistently better hashrates than the Xbox One X CPU. It was really weird and I had no explanation for it. So if the original Xbox One could somehow pull off better CPU mining hashrate than the Xbox One X, then maybe GPU mining on the original Xbox One will surprise me too!

OG XB1 CPU is 1.75 GHz vs 2.3 GHz on X, so this is really weird... +32% difference in single-threaded tasks.

[dhouse]

An xbox one cryptonight miner is actively under development by therealcrypt for the altcoin Turtle Coin.  It's in alpha, so not publicly released as of yet.

It is working with native CPU mining, currently around 100 h/s (hasn't been fully optimized yet, and running in low power mode).

Once GPU mining is working, the total hash rate is estimated to be around 900 H/s.

Apparently it doesn't matter which xbox one version is being used (xbox one, xbox one s, or xbox one x), they will all get the same hash rate since teraflops doesn't compute to mining & all versions have the same CPU and GPU.

If you have UWP or other M$ related dev skills, you might be able contribute to project, or at least get the latest status updates at the TurtleCoin discord channel @ https://discord.gg/cP7NcGw

I've been buying up xbox one s at discounts, hope to have 10 of them running eventually

Wow really? That's absolutely amazing! I'll definitely try to reach out to them soon. Sounds like at its full potential, the Xbox One can get over 1 KH/s which is actually really good for a single device mining cryptonote.

 

[Dithery]

Hello,
Sorry but what's a teraflop ?
Thanks

[generalheed]

That was my very same impression... I assumed the Xbox one x would provide a better hash rate too.  I’m not qualified to provide any explanation I was just repeating what @therealcrypt posted in the discord channel earlier this month.

I’m not the dev, just a random end user eagerly awaiting the ability to mine on Xbox.  You could try asking in the discord channel, there is #dev-xbone but read only to plebs like me.  But #general has all the info I posted above if you use the discord search.

Sorry I didn’t have a better answer for you...

I joined the server and asked around, I haven't spoken to therealcrypt yet but there seems to be some confusion amongst the others as well. I think it was just a misinterpretation. Both the Xbox One and Xbox One X use GPU's similar to PC counterparts, so the performance difference between the two consoles should be pretty similar to that of the difference between the PC versions.

That being said, I might have 1 theory about why the original Xbox One might actually perform as well as the Xbox One X for mining. Since cryptonote currencies are more memory reliant than other cryptocurrencies, the original Xbox One had 32 MB of high speed ESRAM to make up for the shortcomings of its DDR3 RAM before the Xbox One X switched to GDDR5. Since the Xbox One X is obviously optimized for gaming performance, and since gaming performance doesn't translate to mining performance, it's possible the ESRAM in the original Xbox One gives it such a good boost while the Xbox One X is more like a traditional graphics card so its hashrate is where we expect it to be.

But still, to give it such a huge boost that it's nearly equivalent to the Xbox One X? It still seems unlikely even with my ESRAM theory. I think most likely it was just some confusion or misinterpretation. He was probably referring to the CPU's between the two systems having the same performance. In fact, in my own browser based JavaScript mining on my Xbox One consoles, the original Xbox One actually got slightly, but consistently better hashrates than the Xbox One X CPU. It was really weird and I had no explanation for it. So if the original Xbox One could somehow pull off better CPU mining hashrate than the Xbox One X, then maybe GPU mining on the original Xbox One will surprise me too!

OG XB1 CPU is 1.75 GHz vs 2.3 GHz on X, so this is really weird... +32% difference in single-threaded tasks.

Yeah it really baffles me too. I've had other people test my JavaScript miner on their Xbox's and the results were 100% consistent with the OG XB1 CPU always pulling off a slightly better hashrate than the XB1 X CPU. The Xbox One X CPU is supposedly based on an improved or modified Jaguar architecture compared to the original, so perhaps something with the architecture made it better for games, but not necessary for hashing?

[Rux]

Very interesting stuff, deff worth trying