[XPM] [ANN] Primecoin Release - First Scientific Computing Cryptocurrency

[Supercomputing]

im sure that if you invent something that really work you could be a millionaire. Invent GPU miner could couse drop reward very quickly and make the price higher. this is the race - so move on. you can find some funds - just try to find a investor on your area.

if you really don't have time/energy to do this - maybe you can give some tips to another devs on public forum

At this stage, funding is no longer necessary for the research from the general public, it is optional. I have five (5) GTX 580's Hydro Copper collecting dust and one (1) in my development PC. Sometime within the next couple of weeks, I will use all six (6) for Primecoin mining and let them run for about two months.

(30 blocks/day) x (60 days) x (10 XPMs) x (6 GTX 580 Hydro's) x (1.17 speed-up over stock ) = 126k XPMs
Early next year I will offer XPM/BTC to those mathematicians who are interested in helping out with the research; and knowledge gained from the research will be made publically available.

I am shell shocked about two things that I did not know just a couple of days ago:
1) Primecoin mining is currently more profitable than Bitcoin mining for the same amount of expenses (GTX 580 vs ASIC pricing).
2) An optimized sieve of Eratosthenes on the GPU makes enough of a difference to increase your probability of finding a valid block.

Here is a link to the CUDA implementation of the sieve that I based mine on. My code is a little bit more optimized, but it is a good start for those who are interested:
https://sites.google.com/site/bbuhrow/home/cuda-sieve-of-eratosthenes

Here is good guide for implementing your own modular arithmetic on the GTX 580:
http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/180450/files/jb_lowlatency.pdf

I am not an expert Nvidia GPU programmer by any means, but I am an FPGA and x64 assembly guy. So I am left with a couple of theories:
1) Nobody who knows about Primecoin mining took the time to implement an optimized modular multiplication and prime sieving on the GPU (very hard to believe).
2) Somebody out there already has an efficient implementation for the GPU and is keeping it to themselves (very easy to believe).

[1619044210]

1619044210

[mhps]

I would estimate somewhere between 15-20 hours of work, but finding the free time for me at this time of the year is more difficult than doing the actual work. Early next year I will have time and the botnets can enjoy Primcoin mining for a couple of months longer before the knockout punch comes to them.

Despite this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=273637.0 many may want to donate/invest again if you lay your case down clearly -- it's been good so far.

[belltown]

(30 blocks/day) x (60 days) x (10 XPMs) x (6 GTX 580 Hydro's) x (1.17 speed-up over stock ) = 126k XPMs

Single GPU will be finding 30 blocks/day!!!!!!!!!!???

There are must be something wrong with your assumption. Previously you used numbers like: "3 blocks/day", "7x faster then CPU". How did you come from that to 30 blocks/day now?

[masterOfDisaster]

I have five (5) GTX 580's Hydro Copper collecting dust and one (1) in my development PC. Sometime within the next couple of weeks, I will use all six (6) for Primecoin mining and let them run for about two months.
(30 blocks/day) x (60 days) x (10 XPMs) x (6 GTX 580 Hydro's) x (1.17 speed-up over stock ) = 126k XPMs

Single GPU will be finding 30 blocks/day!!!!!!!!!!???

There are must be something wrong with your assumption. Previously you used numbers like: "3 blocks/day", "7x faster then CPU". How did you come from that to 30 blocks/day now?

You forgot to quote the base for the calculation. I fixed that for you (and even highlited the important parts

[markm]

(30 blocks/day) x (60 days) x (10 XPMs) x (6 GTX 580 Hydro's) x (1.17 speed-up over stock ) = 126k XPMs

Single GPU will be finding 30 blocks/day!!!!!!!!!!???

There are must be something wrong with your assumption. Previously you used numbers like: "3 blocks/day", "7x faster then CPU". How did you come from that to 30 blocks/day now?

He said he got five blocks in four hours using one GPU. If that can be done consistently it would be 30 blocks per GPU per day.

-MarkM-

[Trillium]

Unfortunately, carrying out the research to analyze collected data will require funding. I have been running "Primecoin version v0.1.2.0xpm-hp11-unk-beta" for 4 days now on a 32/64 core/thread server and I have only mined a block (primemeter  43807850 prime/h 663367364 test/h  180 7-chains/h 8.075400 chain/d). I just cannot see how anyone, other that people who have access to botnets, can be profitable at mining Primecoin.

8.0754 * 0.8 * 0.04 = 0.26 blocks per day (no variance) = those results are completely as expected = deal with it!

Edit: Apparently this old method of estimating blocks/day is outdated: ref: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=255782.msg3487226#msg3487226

My GTX 580 disagrees with that mathematical formula and it did not even enroll in any engineering classes at MIT. You need to actually count the number of 9-chains at a fixed precision for a given amount of time before you can estimate your probability of finding a chain that meets the requirement.

My comment above has nothing to do with the discussion about GPU. You are confusing two different discussions going on in this thread simultaneously. The formula I provided is one determined by the work of mikaelh, who is the author of the HP series of miners. I realize you are fairly new and may not have read all 170+ pages of this thread, you would've come across it many times if you had. The formula provides an accurate representation of the mining reward when using CPU and when assuming zero variance, eg. an average over a long period of time.

(30 blocks/day) x (60 days) x (10 XPMs) x (6 GTX 580 Hydro's) x (1.17 speed-up over stock ) = 126k XPMs

I suspect you are in fact trying to subtly manipulate the markets by stirring up the "IMPENDING GPU MINER" hysteria (again) that serves to create sillyness in the altcoin exchange trollboxes and market instability in general.

I am putting this down to another piss-poor attempt at market manipulation until some code is released and verified as working by other miners.

[Supercomputing]

I suspect you are in fact trying to subtly manipulate the markets by stirring up the "IMPENDING GPU MINER" hysteria (again) that serves to create sillyness in the altcoin exchange trollboxes and market instability in general.

I am putting this down to another piss-poor attempt at market manipulation until some code is released and verified as working by other miners.

Haters Gonna Hate

Sorry, the source code is proprietary (IP) closed source. However, I have outlined the exact steps that you need to take to verify the results.

Please consult the following documentation for further assistance:

The Billion-Mulmod-Per-Second PC
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.150.4576&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Usable assembly language for GPUs
https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/137.pdf

[Supercomputing]

My objective is not to code an Nvidia GPU Primecoin miner, that part is functional but not completely optimized. The objective is to find an algorithmic enhancement for reducing the overall run-time complexity. If we keep the same complexity but execute the algorithm faster on the same hardware, I call it an optimization. But if we reduce the overall run-time complexity of the algorithm, I call it a breakthrough.

Now with that said, is seems to me that people are more interested in the Nvidia GPU Primecoin miner. But I say, be careful what you ask for, just follow the programming guideline I posted earlier and you will have a working miner that blows away the current high performance CPU miner implementation. Additionally, I know nothing about AMD GPU programming and never owned one, therefore I do not know how powerful they are for multiprecision arithmetic.

There are several enhancements which account for the drastic increase in performance over the current CPU implementation:
1) Montgomery Reduction is used.
2) The size of the multiprecision arithmetic is fixed.
3) An optimized sieve is running on the GPU.
4) An optimized primorial search is running on the GPU (double SHA-256).
5) An exploitation of the difficulty (Sunny King knows what I am referring to here, just ask Sunny).

If you apply the same enhancements to the CPU code, then the gap will close to about 7x in favor for the GPU (Nvidia GTX 580 vs AMD Phenom II X6 1100T)

Please note that I am not accepting any donations for the research, the XPMs from GPUs will fully fund the research and the result will be made publically available. Someone from this forum made an attempt to program an Nvidia card, but after looking at the source code(https://github.com/primedigger/primecoin/blob/master/src/cuda/mainkernel.cu), I am surprised that it even made a difference at all.

[Stinky_Pete]

I am shell shocked about two things that I did not know just a couple of days ago:
1) Primecoin mining is currently more profitable than Bitcoin mining for the same amount of expenses (GTX 580 vs ASIC pricing).

Does that include electricity costs?

[cryptrol]

5) An exploitation of the difficulty (Sunny King knows what I am referring to here, just ask Sunny).

Sunny ?

[theskillzdatklls]

Never mined anything before.

Is it possible to [profitably] solo mine with a 2010 iMac with all cores running 24/7 and free electricity?

[Trillium]

Never mined anything before.

Is it possible to [profitably] solo mine with a 2010 iMac with all cores running 24/7 and free electricity?

Well if you have the hardware (no investment / capital cost) and free electricity (no operational costs) then yes, by definition you are mining with 100% profit.

Will you make A LOT of money from it? No. (Probably a few cents or tens of cents per day on average). You'll also want to look at pooled mining.

[Supercomputing]

5) An exploitation of the difficulty (Sunny King knows what I am referring to here, just ask Sunny).

Sunny ?

From Sunny King's design document.

"Block hash, the value that is embedded in the child block, is derived from hashing the
header together with the proof-of-work certificate. This not only prevents the proof-ofwork
certificate from being tampered with, but also defeats attempt at generating a single
proof-of-work certificate usable on multiple blocks on the block chain, since the block
header hash of a descendant block then depends on the certificate itself. Note that, if an
attacker generates a different proof-of-work certificate for an existing block, the block
would then have a different block hash even though the block content remains the same
other than the certificate, and would be accepted to the block chain as a sibling block to
the existing block."

Unless I completely misunderstood the meaning of that statement, but why would generating a different proof-of-work certificate for an existing block be considered an attack? Which implies two things:

1) The difficulty of that block will be frozen, and you can add as many sibling  blocks as you whish, as the probability of finding the next sibling block is not much lower than finding the next block.
2) There is no mechanism in place to prevent spending from the sibling block, double spending attack.

Please let me know if I misunderstood something.

[mikaelh]

5) An exploitation of the difficulty (Sunny King knows what I am referring to here, just ask Sunny).

Sunny ?

From Sunny King's design document.

"Block hash, the value that is embedded in the child block, is derived from hashing the
header together with the proof-of-work certificate. This not only prevents the proof-ofwork
certificate from being tampered with, but also defeats attempt at generating a single
proof-of-work certificate usable on multiple blocks on the block chain, since the block
header hash of a descendant block then depends on the certificate itself. Note that, if an
attacker generates a different proof-of-work certificate for an existing block, the block
would then have a different block hash even though the block content remains the same
other than the certificate, and would be accepted to the block chain as a sibling block to
the existing block."

Unless I completely misunderstood the meaning of that statement, but why would generating a different proof-of-work certificate for an existing block be considered an attack? Which implies two things:

1) The difficulty of that block will be frozen, and you can add as many sibling  blocks as you whish, as the probability of finding the next sibling block is not much lower than finding the next block.
2) There is no mechanism in place to prevent spending from the sibling block, double spending attack.

Please let me know if I misunderstood something.

I think you have misunderstood the paragraph you quoted. That note is trying to say that the attack wouldn't work. The sibling blocks would all be orphans which makes them useless. Only one of the blocks will be part of the blockchain because its block hash is referenced from the next block in the blockchain. The block cannot be replaced unless you are able to create another block with the same block hash. I think Sunny was trying to say that it's not possible to create such a block in Primecoin even if the attacker finds a different proof-of-work certificate. That's because the certificate (i.e. the prime chain multiplier) is hashed into the block hash. Note that there are two hashes: the block header hash and the block hash. They are defined as follows:

blockHeaderHash = HASH(nVersion, hashPrevBlock, hashMerkleRoot, nTime, nBits, nNonce)
blockHash = HASH(nVersion, hashPrevBlock, hashMerkleRoot, nTime, nBits, nNonce, bnPrimeChainMultiplier)

The block hash is the "official" hash of the block which is referenced in the next block as hashPrevBlock.

[kactech]

@mikaelh Thank you for clarifying, could you also discuss shortly other enhancements pointed by Supercomputing? Not necessarily definitely, just from the perspective of your experience.

There are several enhancements which account for the drastic increase in performance over the current CPU implementation:
1) Montgomery Reduction is used.
2) The size of the multiprecision arithmetic is fixed.
3) An optimized sieve is running on the GPU.
4) An optimized primorial search is running on the GPU (double SHA-256).
5) An exploitation of the difficulty (Sunny King knows what I am referring to here, just ask Sunny).

Thanks

[Supercomputing]

5) An exploitation of the difficulty (Sunny King knows what I am referring to here, just ask Sunny).

Sunny ?

From Sunny King's design document.

"Block hash, the value that is embedded in the child block, is derived from hashing the
header together with the proof-of-work certificate. This not only prevents the proof-ofwork
certificate from being tampered with, but also defeats attempt at generating a single
proof-of-work certificate usable on multiple blocks on the block chain, since the block
header hash of a descendant block then depends on the certificate itself. Note that, if an
attacker generates a different proof-of-work certificate for an existing block, the block
would then have a different block hash even though the block content remains the same
other than the certificate, and would be accepted to the block chain as a sibling block to
the existing block."

Unless I completely misunderstood the meaning of that statement, but why would generating a different proof-of-work certificate for an existing block be considered an attack? Which implies two things:

1) The difficulty of that block will be frozen, and you can add as many sibling  blocks as you whish, as the probability of finding the next sibling block is not much lower than finding the next block.
2) There is no mechanism in place to prevent spending from the sibling block, double spending attack.

Please let me know if I misunderstood something.

I think you have misunderstood the paragraph you quoted. That note is trying to say that the attack wouldn't work. The sibling blocks would all be orphans which makes them useless. Only one of the blocks will be part of the blockchain because its block hash is referenced from the next block in the blockchain. The block cannot be replaced unless you are able to create another block with the same block hash. I think Sunny was trying to say that it's not possible to create such a block in Primecoin even if the attacker finds a different proof-of-work certificate. That's because the certificate (i.e. the prime chain multiplier) is hashed into the block hash. Note that there are two hashes: the block header hash and the block hash. They are defined as follows:

blockHeaderHash = HASH(nVersion, hashPrevBlock, hashMerkleRoot, nTime, nBits, nNonce)
blockHash = HASH(nVersion, hashPrevBlock, hashMerkleRoot, nTime, nBits, nNonce, bnPrimeChainMultiplier)

The block hash is the "official" hash of the block which is referenced in the next block as hashPrevBlock.

Thank you mikaelh, your input is greatly appreciated and it saves me the trouble of going through the source code.

Thank you again.

[theskillzdatklls]

iMac with all cores running 24/7

The thing is going to explode. (i)Macs are extremely bad at handling constant heat.

ok, ty, ill change that.

Never mined anything before.

Is it possible to [profitably] solo mine with a 2010 iMac with all cores running 24/7 and free electricity?

Well if you have the hardware (no investment / capital cost) and free electricity (no operational costs) then yes, by definition you are mining with 100% profit.

Will you make A LOT of money from it? No. (Probably a few cents or tens of cents per day on average). You'll also want to look at pooled mining.

sounds pretty bad. ill look into pooled mining, thanks.

[Brewins]

anyone got any tips for optimizing shares/s for pooled mining?

[Sunny King]

5) An exploitation of the difficulty (Sunny King knows what I am referring to here, just ask Sunny).

Sunny ?

Supercomputing does Fermat test on the last number of a candidate chain first, rather than the first number first. This may improve the performance of Fermat test stage of the miner when fractional difficulty is high. After some discussion we agree that it should be considered a mining optimization rather than an exploit.

[TrippyPippy]

Hi Guys,

What is the difference between jhPrimeminer-T15-AVX.exe and jhPrimeminer-T15.exe in aerocloud's miner ?

thanks