[XPM] [ANN] Primecoin High Performance | HP14 released!

[K1773R]

Does this mean that people with hp7 that find blocks are effectively at difficulty 10?

That would certainly explain my long dryspell...

yes

[Tamis]

That indeed explains a lot !
96 hours without a block...

I'm thinking about all those that are paying a fortune for vps and were mining at difficulty = 10

[arnuschky]

@mikaelh: Why not merge your code with Sunny King's? He stated that it's due to licensing problems with libgmp (can't find the source), but I think that this is wrong. libgmp is LGPL, not GPL, and can therefore be used even in closed-source projects provided that you link to it only dynamically. Which primecoind does, so you would be fine even if primecoin would be closed-source.

[mikaelh]

@mikaelh: Why not merge your code with Sunny King's? He stated that it's due to licensing problems with libgmp (can't find the source), but I think that this is wrong. libgmp is LGPL, not GPL, and can therefore be used even in closed-source projects provided that you link to it only dynamically. Which primecoind does, so you would be fine even if primecoin would be closed-source.

Well, technically my Windows builds have been using static linking. It can be changed to dynamic linking. x86 will take a minor performance hit from that but x64 should be fine.

Even if the licensing concerns are solved through dynamic linking, it's still Sunny King's call whether he wants the code or not.

[cryptrol]

I am currently testing the latest commits, it seems that the PPS indicator is very low compared to the value before, more than halved my numbers and chainspermin is 0 mostly all the time.
I will keep on testing, meanwhile, is anybody else testing the CURRENT version and seeing the same results out there ?

[mikaelh]

I am currently testing the latest commits, it seems that the PPS indicator is very low compared to the value before, more than halved my numbers and chainspermin is 0 mostly all the time.
I will keep on testing, meanwhile, is anybody else testing the CURRENT version and seeing the same results out there ?

Can you post more information about your system and the which exact versions you are comparing?

[wetroof]

thanks for all the work mikaelh, I will send some XPC tomorrow because I've been using your miner. I compiled with your latest updates and will see how many blocks I solved in a while...

I do not understand primecoin that well at the moment, the problem with v7 would that be reflected in primemeter stats in the debug file, does anyone know?

BTW the measurements on the primemeter lines are about the same I think  for compiled with recent commits from bitbucket vs v7. . the numbers are "per hour" but fluctuate a lot which doesn't make sense really.

i

NEW
2013-07-25 11:00:44 primemeter  11620189 prime/h  99396927 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:01:44 primemeter   8731912 prime/h  73598147 test/h       300 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:03:26 primemeter   6473749 prime/h  53716243 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:04:26 primemeter  11358263 prime/h  94857756 test/h       360 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:05:26 primemeter  10517945 prime/h  86684575 test/h       540 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:06:26 primemeter   6861122 prime/h  56816904 test/h       300 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:07:26 primemeter   7530512 prime/h  62189498 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:08:26 primemeter  11711653 prime/h  97222796 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:09:26 primemeter  10724171 prime/h  91132990 test/h       600 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:10:26 primemeter  10896501 prime/h  95608657 test/h       540 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:11:26 primemeter  11080172 prime/h  92579202 test/h       660 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:12:26 primemeter  10947355 prime/h  90129236 test/h       900 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:13:26 primemeter  10639445 prime/h  87377427 test/h       600 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:14:26 primemeter  11264090 prime/h  94878948 test/h       360 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:15:26 primemeter  11257125 prime/h  93178274 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:16:26 primemeter  10974868 prime/h  93342587 test/h       540 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:17:26 primemeter  10785060 prime/h  94334568 test/h       720 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:18:26 primemeter   9667875 prime/h  83818672 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:19:26 primemeter  11297512 prime/h  96529571 test/h       540 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:20:26 primemeter  11927047 prime/h 101064994 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:21:26 primemeter  11032266 prime/h  96171180 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:22:26 primemeter  10354207 prime/h  89454202 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:23:26 primemeter  11900447 prime/h 102212426 test/h       540 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:24:26 primemeter  11404850 prime/h  98671475 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:25:26 primemeter   9602519 prime/h  84853689 test/h       300 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:26:26 primemeter   9281489 prime/h  78998684 test/h       360 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:27:26 primemeter   8884255 prime/h  75387586 test/h       240 5-chains/h

V7

2013-07-25 11:00:14 primemeter  12709168 prime/h 102728788 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:01:14 primemeter  12230125 prime/h  96631178 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:02:14 primemeter   9534801 prime/h  74242523 test/h       720 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:03:14 primemeter  11987920 prime/h  97475875 test/h       360 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:04:14 primemeter  12769249 prime/h 104281388 test/h       360 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:05:14 primemeter  12493744 prime/h  99081597 test/h       660 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:06:14 primemeter  11579987 prime/h  96437593 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:07:14 primemeter  12332598 prime/h  98128858 test/h       660 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:08:14 primemeter  11683786 prime/h  95558717 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:09:14 primemeter   8767002 prime/h  70311084 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:10:14 primemeter  12229069 prime/h  97593820 test/h       780 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:11:14 primemeter  12784167 prime/h 102993623 test/h       840 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:12:14 primemeter  11273512 prime/h  90101818 test/h      1020 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:13:14 primemeter   9378264 prime/h  75669719 test/h       180 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:14:14 primemeter  11606913 prime/h  97411733 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:15:14 primemeter  11406520 prime/h  94552468 test/h       480 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:16:14 primemeter  13122741 prime/h 106142671 test/h       600 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:17:14 primemeter  13195040 prime/h 106230149 test/h       660 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:18:14 primemeter  11849023 prime/h  96649509 test/h       660 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:19:14 primemeter  13291085 prime/h 106534624 test/h       660 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:20:14 primemeter  12262307 prime/h  97869387 test/h       540 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:21:14 primemeter  12022898 prime/h  97095967 test/h       240 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:22:14 primemeter  10369642 prime/h  82206150 test/h       420 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:23:14 primemeter  13693115 prime/h 109174861 test/h       300 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:24:14 primemeter   9506542 prime/h  78578050 test/h       360 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:25:14 primemeter   8806506 prime/h  72187974 test/h       240 5-chains/h
2013-07-25 11:26:14 primemeter   5864129 prime/h  45733931 test/h       300 5-chains/h

[mikaelh]

I do not understand primecoin that well at the moment, the problem with v7 would that be reflected in primemeter stats in the debug file, does anyone know?

No, it won't show up in primes/sec or chains/min. I'm guessing it's reducing block rate by about 20%.

[wetroof]

ah - thanks for your answer  . 20% seems about right to me from the blocks I solved with v7 vs v5. I had about half my instances on v5 and half on v7.

edit: NVM I understand the debug file and why it fluctuates. the stats are calculated based on last 60 seconds of mining, then multiplied by 60 to get per hour.

[kendog77]

I do not understand primecoin that well at the moment, the problem with v7 would that be reflected in primemeter stats in the debug file, does anyone know?

No, it won't show up in primes/sec or chains/min. I'm guessing it's reducing block rate by about 20%.

Is this only a problem in hp7? If it is, I assume that most folks would be better off by going back to hp6.

[juhakall]

ah - thanks for your answer  . 20% seems about right to me from the blocks I solved with v7 vs v5. I had about half my instances on v5 and half on v7.

edit: NVM I understand the debug file and why it fluctuates. the stats are calculated based on last 60 seconds of mining, then multiplied by 60 to get per hour.

I really wish it was averaged over a longer period, now I have to monitor the average with a shell script.

[mikaelh]

I do not understand primecoin that well at the moment, the problem with v7 would that be reflected in primemeter stats in the debug file, does anyone know?

No, it won't show up in primes/sec or chains/min. I'm guessing it's reducing block rate by about 20%.

Is this only a problem in hp7? If it is, I assume that most folks would be better off by going back to hp6.

HP6 is also affected.

[OnkelPaul]

ah - thanks for your answer  . 20% seems about right to me from the blocks I solved with v7 vs v5. I had about half my instances on v5 and half on v7.

edit: NVM I understand the debug file and why it fluctuates. the stats are calculated based on last 60 seconds of mining, then multiplied by 60 to get per hour.

I really wish it was averaged over a longer period, now I have to monitor the average with a shell script.

Use the source, Luke!
(it's open source, you know...)

Changing the code to compute a sliding average over the last half hour or so should be a bit easier than implementing a faster prime finding algorithm :-)

Onkel Paul

[itod]

@mikaelh: Why not merge your code with Sunny King's? He stated that it's due to licensing problems with libgmp (can't find the source), but I think that this is wrong. libgmp is LGPL, not GPL, and can therefore be used even in closed-source projects provided that you link to it only dynamically. Which primecoind does, so you would be fine even if primecoin would be closed-source.

Well, technically my Windows builds have been using static linking. It can be changed to dynamic linking. x86 will take a minor performance hit from that but x64 should be fine.

Even if the licensing concerns are solved through dynamic linking, it's still Sunny King's call whether he wants the code or not.

+1 for merging code, hope Sunny King will make clear where he stands on this one. It's not normal that wast majority of miners ignore the official version, not to mention the security issues. The problem few days ago had to wait for mikaelh to wake up for solution to be implemented network-wide, is that what Sunny King wants? It certainly doesn't add to confidence in XPM. Also it will give mikaelh recognition for his work on this coin, I hope Sunny King agrees with that.

[juhakall]

I am currently testing the latest commits, it seems that the PPS indicator is very low compared to the value before, more than halved my numbers and chainspermin is 0 mostly all the time.
I will keep on testing, meanwhile, is anybody else testing the CURRENT version and seeing the same results out there ?

This happened for me too, on my Debian server with an i5-3570. I can't get even 1k PPS anymore, and chainspermin is around 1. HP7 was performing much better before. I don't have this performance problem with the newest version on an Ubuntu VirtualBox installation.

[mikaelh]

I am currently testing the latest commits, it seems that the PPS indicator is very low compared to the value before, more than halved my numbers and chainspermin is 0 mostly all the time.
I will keep on testing, meanwhile, is anybody else testing the CURRENT version and seeing the same results out there ?

This happened for me too, on my Debian server with an i5-3570. I can't get even 1k PPS anymore, and chainspermin is around 1. HP7 was performing much better before. I don't have this performance problem with the newest version on an Ubuntu VirtualBox installation.

There does indeed seem to be a regression with the latest code on mainnet. I'm trying to investigate it further now.

[Pt0x]

I might have found a bug in hp7. I copied the hp7 code over to Reaper, and found some weird behavior. I noticed that many shares/blocks it found, had a difficulty with a fractional part of 0.

Function: FermatProbablePrimalityTestFast. It does a Fermat test, and if it fails, it calculates the fractional part. However, there's a fast division test before the Fermat test. If the fast division test is succesful, the function is returned from and the fractional part isn't calculated. If it just happened to be the last number in a chain, the fractional part isn't calculated and is left at 0. This means if the difficulty is for example 6.2, and the miner found a block of difficulty 6.3, it's possible that the fractional part was left uncalculated, and the miner thinks it's difficulty 6.0. The block doesn't get submitted and lots of profit has been lost.

The same applies to EulerLagrangeLifchitzPrimalityTestFast.

Right now I don't have git set up, I can't submit a patch.

I updated to hp7 today on 13 i5 and i7s mining machines, only found 2 blocks in 14 hours, maybe I ran out of luck but I guess its the bug. I'm thinking about reverting to hp5 before going to sleep.

But then there is the issue of random crashes - I had no luck mining with hp5 or hp6 due to crashes every hour or so on my 3930k - did you experience this on hp5 with those machines at all?

I followed this guide to the end: http://ecoinomist.com/xpm-primecoin-mining-guide-on-linux
And there is a simple script + cronjob combo that takes care of the crash, if it happened to me I didn't notice. By using hp5 I found my first block in 4 hours.

When I was using hp5 and hp6 I didn't get anything for two days and when I installed hp7 yesterday I got a block within a half hour - It seems to come down to luck in the end - My first two days had nothing and then I got a block yesterday and today on hp7. I would really like to know how much of a difference it makes for you reverting back to hp5.

I feel a sleep last night, but this morning I re-installed hp5 on all my machines and found a block within 15 minutes. I'll report back tonight.

[idny]

Is there anyway to find out which version of the HP* I have installed?

Getinfo just shows which just shows the primecoin rev:

{
"version" : "v0.1.1.0-unk-beta",
"protocolversion" : 70001,
"walletversion" : 60000,
"balance" : 203.26000000,
"blocks" : 82636,
"moneysupply" : 1193468.71000000,
"timeoffset" : -1,
"connections" : 8,
"proxy" : "",
"testnet" : false,
"keypoololdest" : 1373284836,
"keypoolsize" : 106,
"paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
"errors" : ""
}

[mikaelh]

Is there anyway to find out which version of the HP* I have installed?

Currently there isn't. You can try comparing your binary file against different releases.

Also I found the reason for the performance regression. The latest code seems to get stuck on using too low round primorials.

[cryptrol]

Is there anyway to find out which version of the HP* I have installed?

You can also check the output of getmininginfo, and see if the latest commands are added chainspermin, sievepercentage and sievesize.
This will get you close to the hpX release you are using.