[XPM] Miner Development thread

[shinkicker]

To keep things consolidated and tidy I have started this thread as a focal point on what needs to be done to get other miners (namely bfgminer and cgminer) supporting primecoin.

So far it has been established that there is no API active in primecoind and consensus is saying the best one to use is GetBlockTemplate (which replaced the former GetWork). Sunny King has kindly asked which API we want, so that shows he is willing to work with us on this!

Tasks we need to address / work on (with only bfgminer played with so far)


* Difficulty reporting.
* PPS stats (per core perhaps).
* Difficulty reporting.
* GetBlockTemplate API.

Here is the repo:

https://github.com/luke-jr/bfgminer/tree/prime

I will keep updating this post as new info is found.

Please lets try to keep in on topic, so as to benefit all by having a thread that is easy to follow and keep track of.

[Tgspring]

any new progress?

[shinkicker]

any new progress?

Not back from work yet, but going to look in a few hours. Also when Sunny gets online shortly, we can see what he says / can do.

[Sunny King]

Sure, getblocktemplate API needs to be proposed, mainly how to submit block with the additional proof-of-work certificate (bnPrimeChainMultiplier) when block is found.

[super3]

Looks very promising.

[ivanlabrie]

I'll keep an eye on this...once this is out, BOOM. There goes litecoin :p

[Schleicher]

What does a Primecoin block look like?
A Bitcoin block header looks like this:

Code:

 4 bytes version
32 bytes previous block hash
32 bytes merkle root hash
 4 bytes time
 4 bytes target
 4 bytes nonce

I assume we have the certificate instead of the nonce, right?

[Sunny King]

No. nonce is still there. The certificate is a serialized CBigNum type (bnPrimeChainMultiplier) following nonce.

[gateway]

Ya so it looks like first we need to get the primecoin API working before any minging software can use it efficiently ..

[TheSwede75]

Would love to see good old Guiminer dev. Take a stab at this as well. Mainstream adoption comes with simplicity.

[gateway]

btw some of us are hanging out on #eligius-prime to work though some bfg stuff if you want to join, trolls need not apply