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

[Stinky_Pete]

I'm running HP11 and Windows 7 on 4 machines and haven't noticed any great change from HP10.

One of these machines got 1 block late one day and 3 the next day - which is more than the usual 1 every 2-3 days. Another has found 0 in the past week and its twin has found 2 blocks. Variance.

[gwedo]

I'm running HP11 and Windows 7 on 4 machines and haven't noticed any great change from HP10.

Thank you for the information. I stopped mining XPM in August after a month passed and I mined only 1 block.

[markm]

Well of course once I posted my previous post one of my servers found a block. So here's nagging the other two hoping this post will get them off the pot too.

-MarkM-

[gwedo]

I assume now it is cheaper to buy XPM directly at exchange than mine it. (I am buying on mcxnow where I get also small interest rate on my deposit).
But it depends, if you have admin access to server farm where you can mine coins in large extent like my friend then mining is still very profiatble.

[mikaelh]

I've been going for almost 7 days now with HP11 and 0 blocks found with a number of machines running 24x7
1 with 1.5 cpd
1 with 0.9 cpd
4 with 0.2 cpd

Well, your total chains/day is about 3.2 then. Since difficulty is about 9.86, that means only about 14% of chains will result in a block (because 1 - 0.86 = 0.14). Then we can estimate how many blocks you should get in a week:

3.2 chains/day * 7 days/week * 0.14 blocks/chain = 3.136 blocks/week

Of course chains/day isn't completely accurate, so let's assume that in reality it would be 20% lower (this is just a guess).

3.136 blocks/week * 0.8 = 2.5088 blocks/week

2.5 blocks isn't much as far as statistics are concerned. It is still very much possible that you simply got unlucky. That is unfortunately one of the realities of solo mining primecoins. If you want less variance, you can try one of the mining pools.

[Ifaistos]

mikaelh,
first of all, thanks for all the hard work you have put into this.

I am not complaining about not getting any blocks, i am aware of variance/"luck" factor.
All things equal,usually it takes a month of 24/7 mining to get an idea of how things go.

That said, i've done the "math" myself and was expecting at least 1 block/week given the hardware available.
But again,as you said, sample is small so it might be off.

I've seen others comparing HP10 to HP11 block rates and looks like, at least for those reporting them, that they "see" some difference.
Not sure if this is due to variance,difficulty or some other factor,but unless we get some concrete data of blocks generated during that period its impossible to figure out if its true or just mind games.

[FoldingTime]

mikaelh,
first of all, thanks for all the hard work you have put into this.

I am not complaining about not getting any blocks, i am aware of variance/"luck" factor.
All things equal,usually it takes a month of 24/7 mining to get an idea of how things go.

That said, i've done the "math" myself and was expecting at least 1 block/week given the hardware available.
But again,as you said, sample is small so it might be off.

I've seen others comparing HP10 to HP11 block rates and looks like, at least for those reporting them, that they "see" some difference.
Not sure if this is due to variance,difficulty or some other factor,but unless we get some concrete data of blocks generated during that period its impossible to figure out if its true or just mind games.

Here are my stats with 1.27 CPD on HP11. You can see I've had periods of up to 9 days without finding a block.

Sun Aug 11 22:11:51 CEST 2013
Mon Aug 12 23:37:51 CEST 2013
Sun Aug 18 11:19:38 CEST 2013
Tue Aug 27 17:31:03 CEST 2013
Wed Aug 28 11:53:26 CEST 2013
Fri Sep  6 08:24:34 CEST 2013
Sun Sep 15 08:11:59 CEST 2013
Sun Sep 15 10:23:27 CEST 2013
Tue Sep 17 21:18:17 CEST 2013

[Trillium]

My calculations show that for older systems ~0.5 chainsperday eg. Core 2 Duo (higher end models), i5 mobile (higher end), i3 (higher end), or i5 desktop (lower end) (or the Xeon or AMD equivalents of any of these) will find a block every 15-20 days on average. If you want to find blocks regularly ie. 1-3 days you need the very high end CPUs that have come out during the last two years. Possibly some older Xeon/Opteron CPUs with release prices >$1000 will also give you frequent blocks.

It's important to realize though, that bad luck with such infrequent blocks can result in months passing without finding any. For example I have a i5 laptop that's mined for over 50 days without finding a block @ 0.55 CPD.

[LewiesMan]

Thanks! downloading now.

[Ifaistos]

Well the primecoin gods heard me and a block showed up 

let's see how this week goes

[ReCat]

I found two blocks on my server since I started mining on it again.

That's three blocks in the past 30 days.

Sounds about right?

But then I realize... that's only like... $15 nowadays.

Primecoin profitability is down.

Edit:

16:07:58

getmininginfo


16:07:58

{
"blocks" : 176432,
"chainspermin" : 17,
"chainsperday" : 1.46708134,
"currentblocksize" : 1000,
"currentblocktx" : 0,
"difficulty" : 9.86501253,
"errors" : "",
"generate" : true,
"genproclimit" : 7,
"primespersec" : 2680,
"pooledtx" : 0,
"sieveextensions" : 9,
"sievepercentage" : 10,
"sievesize" : 1000000,
"testnet" : false
}

My chainsperday is 1.46. Does this serve as a kind of ACTUAL benchmark of performance with mining?

[Trillium]

My chainsperday is 1.46. Does this serve as a kind of ACTUAL benchmark of performance with mining?

mikaelh discussed this in the ANN thread the other day.

[acoiner1]

XPM difficulty keeps on trending downwards and devastate the confidence of miners and investors. Now it is fighting for its survival.

[Stinky_Pete]

XPM difficulty keeps on trending downwards and devastate the confidence of miners and investors. Now it is fighting for its survival.

Is the difficulty trending downwards?  I think it has stablized at about 9.865. I'm worried that the exchange rate is low, but then so are most of the alt-coins. I say hang on in.

[acoiner1]

XPM difficulty keeps on trending downwards and devastate the confidence of miners and investors. Now it is fighting for its survival.

Is the difficulty trending downwards?  I think it has stablized at about 9.865. I'm worried that the exchange rate is low, but then so are most of the alt-coins. I say hang on in.

It is not stabilized yet. Even stabilized is not a good sign as which indicates no new mining power join in.

[Trillium]

XPM difficulty keeps on trending downwards and devastate the confidence of miners and investors. Now it is fighting for its survival.

Is the difficulty trending downwards?  I think it has stablized at about 9.865. I'm worried that the exchange rate is low, but then so are most of the alt-coins. I say hang on in.

It is not stabilized yet. Even stabilized is not a good sign as which indicates no new mining power join in.

Again the issue of 'what is significant change in difficulty' comes up.

Look at the difficulty over roughly the last 20 days. It is showing variation but that variation is VERY SMALL at most 9.86 +/- 0.01. We are only talking +/- 1% over in the difficulty 9 range. You wouldn't care if petrol / gas prices raised or lowered 1%... or if the price of milk or bread at the grocery store varied by 1%. We can assume primecoin diff is stable. The oscillations seen when the y-axis of that graph is showing a small range are not significant.

https://i.imgur.com/DALgbJw.png

[mhps]

It's important to realize though, that bad luck with such infrequent blocks can result in months passing without finding any. For example I have a i5 laptop that's mined for over 50 days without finding a block @ 0.55 CPD.

What does listtranscactions tell you? Has there been orphaned blocks? Not knonwing the chain-length distribution of found chains -- lack of debugging information is a problem of the solo miners -- I am  not sure if the problem is settings, network connection, or pure luck. You can try the latest ypool miner to see what the 7-chain and 8-chain rates are.

[Trillium]

It's important to realize though, that bad luck with such infrequent blocks can result in months passing without finding any. For example I have a i5 laptop that's mined for over 50 days without finding a block @ 0.55 CPD.

What does listtranscactions tell you? Has there been orphaned blocks? Not knonwing the chain-length distribution of found chains -- lack of debugging information is a problem of the solo miners -- I am  not sure if the problem is settings, network connection, or pure luck. You can try the latest ypool miner to see what the 7-chain and 8-chain rates are.

It is just bad luck. If you work out what 0.55 CPD translates to at the current decimal difficulty:

0.55 * 0.8 * (1-0.86) = 0.0616 blocks/day assuming no variance

Which is 1 block every ~16 days. So I have been fairly unlucky on that machine.

[acoiner1]

XPM difficulty keeps on trending downwards and devastate the confidence of miners and investors. Now it is fighting for its survival.

Is the difficulty trending downwards?  I think it has stablized at about 9.865. I'm worried that the exchange rate is low, but then so are most of the alt-coins. I say hang on in.

It is not stabilized yet. Even stabilized is not a good sign as which indicates no new mining power join in.

Again the issue of 'what is significant change in difficulty' comes up.

Look at the difficulty over roughly the last 20 days. It is showing variation but that variation is VERY SMALL at most 9.86 +/- 0.01. We are only talking +/- 1% over in the difficulty 9 range. You wouldn't care if petrol / gas prices raised or lowered 1%... or if the price of milk or bread at the grocery store varied by 1%. We can assume primecoin diff is stable. The oscillations seen when the y-axis of that graph is showing a small range are not significant.

https://i.imgur.com/DALgbJw.png

The point is, XPM lost its steam, and if it is not able to standout - it is doomed to fail. That is what we saw right now. If it can not distinguish it from the rest alt coins, there will be no chance for it to attract attention AGAIN, as new alt-coin may come to be the poster boy. That is to say, it lost its opportunity.

[cbhelp]

I plan to download and start mining this next week.