Trying to use old ASICS for a ghetto supercomputer

[mathwiz]

Hi!  This is my first post here.  I hope someone can help me!  I'm a very serious student of mathematics... I have a need for a computer which can do a lot of number crunching in the software package known as R.  R can be installed easily on any computer with linux on it.  I've put a lot of time into programming a simulation for a huge research project I've been working on for the past several months -- the project involves tracking the progress of a mutation in a simulated population of animals.  Some of the computations are pretty heavy... the computer I'm running my software on just got to about 26% on a single computation I had it start roughly 2 hours ago!  I need to do many of these computations before I can get anywhere on my project!

I can't help but think there might be some way to take advantage of some of the obsolete bitcoin mining hardware out there to run these computations (I say obsolete because I figure if I go back a few generations it should be pretty cheap).  My alternative to that would be to invest in a powerful computer, but I simply don't have much money (college student).  Does anyone know a way to use the processing power of an ASIC designed for bitcoin mining for something else?  Is this already a thing?  Can anyone at least point me in the right direction?  What sort of language is bitcoin mining software written in?  Perhaps I can write something which uses a similar protocol?

[protokol]

Hi, welcome to BCT!

First off, you should know that the off-topic section of this board is pretty random (and has a few strange characters ), you'd probably find some better answers to your question if you posted it in the "mining" or "development and tech" sub forums.

I'm no expert, but I have used mining hardware and I have a rudimentary understanding of it so I'll tell you what I know.

The newest hardware, The ASICs you mention, do one thing and one thing only - computing SHA-256 hashes as fast as possible. I'm pretty sure they would be useless in the project you're describing, and they can't be modified to do anything else.

Before ASICs there were FPGAs - field-programmable gate arrays. These might be worth looking into as, unlike ASICs, they can be programmed to do different things. Also, you might well be able to find someone on the mining sub forum who would sell you some cheaply, as they have been obsolete in bitcoin mining for a couple of years.

And before FPGAs everyone used GPUs - standard PC graphics cards.

Both FPGAs and GPUs are suited to parallel processing applications, so if your project needs this kind of parallel processing it might be worth investigating.

If your simulated population of animals are "interacting" with each other, then perhaps you don't need parallel processing, and instead just need an actual supercomputer! But I think certain FPGAs can be programmed to do a lot of mathematical functions very efficiently, so that's certainly something to look into.

Do some research on FPGAs, and see if they could be programmed to do the computations in your simulation. If so, it would definitely be worth trying to obtain a cheap one from an old school mining enthusiast in the "mining" section of this forum.

You might also find some experts on this type of thing on reddit.com, perhaps in a programming or mathematical modelling sub reddit.

Good luck!