Build an ASIC Scrypt

[Zeytan]

Hello there,

/!\ Please forgive me if I'm not in the right section, I searched, but it's kinda messy out here for this specific type of question, so I'm gonna go ahead and write my post, move it if it's not fitting your terms.

Let me be straight:

I'm looking on creating my own ASIC Scrypt Miner. Why ? Profits. I know, i know, it's maybe not the best motivation, but, lets be realistic, I'm here for it ahah.

Since i got into this miner thing, I realized that it was almost impossible to make real and efficient profit from GPU miners, hardware are expensive, such as the electricity cost. You can eventually make some profit out of an old (and used by Chinese) ASIC miner. Cheaper hardware, cheaper electricity consumption, and a High Hashrate. So unless you have several non overconsuming machines, and a good electricity prize, it almost impossible to make more than 3-4k a year.

Since all 10TH/s+ ASICs BTC miners are Scams, and as Bitcoin mining difficulty is increasing a lot, it is almost not profitable anymore, or not for very long. You'll soon need 50TH, to get what you get today, and honestly I don't really see where it is going from there.

So why am I talking about BTC which is a SHA256 hash, while i said I want to build my own ASIC Scrypt Miner ? Mostly because, it might be the only way to still make a lot of profit from the cryptocurrencies. Scrypt ASICs do not seems to be built with the same efficiency than the SHA256 miners, which is a shame, since the only thing that these machines are doing, is pure hashing. So why can we make 14TH/s machines for hashing SHA256, while we can't make more than 500MH/s to hash Scrypt values ? I'm sure it is doable.

First if we compare an ASIC to a GPU Miner, if we get reed of that Windows OS, replacing it with a Linux (Debian for example), it could roughly increase or ratio. But it's still not enough. So Windows is consuming far too much ressources and i understand why, but having 3/6x a 8GB GPU, and still not have enough power to produce more than 500MH/s, are you kidding me ? There is something going wrong somewhere. A computer is a super calculator, created to solve complex math in milliseconds, so there must be a way to have a correct balance between the power of your GPUs, and the Hashrate generated.

Honestly seeing 4x4GB miners, only Mine few MH/s, is kinda misleading, because GPU Miners would have more power than basic ASIC Miners, but would still Mine less ? What is an ASIC doing better than a GPU setup ?
The main role of the computer is calculating, nothing more, so why is it so tricky to have a good Hashrate?

My second question, what is an ASIC made of ? (I already have my leads, but i just want confirmation from someone who owns one.)
I really want to go further investigating this aspect of Cryptomining, and maybe come with a new product or a new setup.

I greatly thank every people joining this thread, and to some time to answer my questions.
THANK YOU.

[civilufo]

Interesting topic, but seems like you don't have such technical knowledge which disappointed me. The reason why scrypt hashrate not better than sha256 is mainly because scrypt requires more calculations. So, if you can build scrypt asic with TH, then sha256 will reach PH.

[Zeytan]

Interesting topic, but seems like you don't have such technical knowledge which disappointed me. The reason why scrypt hashrate not better than sha256 is mainly because scrypt requires more calculations. So, if you can build scrypt asic with TH, then sha256 will reach PH.

Hey civilufo ! Thank you for your reply, I have some some technical knowledge, but I'm still learning specifications about this peculiar subject, which is kind of tricky. I would like your point to be true, but, as an Antminer S9 is optimized to hash SHA256, you can't simply use the same components and have a different ratio.

[mjgraham]

I don't think it is so inefficient, in the start I think it was designed to be FPGA and ASIC resistant although if something is worth enough then it will be developed. It has to have a lot more memory on die to do the calcs and that introduces a bottleneck accessing memory. I am just guessing but sha256 may not require so much memory everything can be built out of logic gates and there for higher speed. I think (or thought) I read that an scrypt hash engine requires at least 1mbit of memory and chips now a days have 100+ engines while 100Mbit of memory is not a lot it may take a lot of die space to put 100 engines and 100 separate pieces of memory and interface all that out the chip. Could be way off on all this just my guess.