Bitcoin network passed 4000 Petaflops

[kik1977]

But it is hard to make such comparison when ASICs are involved. You could do that comparison with GPU, by checking the FLOPS that the card made, so it was a bit like "if all the gpus were used for flops, then it would be like xyz". And it was a fail comparison because if you did the same with nvidia you would have totally different results despite both AMD and NVIDIA having similar FLOPS per cards.  But with ASIC? They can only do 1 thing.

You are absolutely right, that's why I explained the reason at the beginning of this post: I often need to explain bitcoins in a short time to people who, in  99.999999% of the cases have never heard of it and are usually not very knowledgeable about computers, too. Comparing the network and supercomputers lights their interest up and give them a vague idea of the magnitude of power I am talking about.  Whenever I found an audience of computer experts I wouldn't use this example, I agree wholeheartedly! 
   

[jarhed]

TL;DR

Total FUD

/thread

[Hyperbolical]

But it is hard to make such comparison when ASICs are involved. You could do that comparison with GPU, by checking the FLOPS that the card made, so it was a bit like "if all the gpus were used for flops, then it would be like xyz". And it was a fail comparison because if you did the same with nvidia you would have totally different results despite both AMD and NVIDIA having similar FLOPS per cards.  But with ASIC? They can only do 1 thing.

I agree, FLOPS isn't a very good way to measure the power of the Bitcoin network, if we wanted to measure how fast the network was growing, hashes per second would be a better option. I suspect several websites use FLOPS because they want to compare Bitcoin's growth with other networks, and there aren't really many decent ways to make these comparisions (Bitcoin doesn't have any FLOPS, and the other networks don't perform any hashes), FLOPS is chosen as it's a little better than the other methods (such as electricity consumption).

[Gabi]

Ok who put red bull as fuel in that car?

I think it rather is Monster energy drink.

But it is Red Bull wich gives you wings!

[Gabi]

Well, other projects too does not use only FLOPS. Every scientific project uses both int and floating operations. Point is that measuring computing power in FLOPS is mostly a marketing things, like when it looked like the performance of cpus depended only on megahertz or how manufacturers try to advertise GPUs by their memory.

[ElectricMucus]

The only universal measure is the number of transistors. It wouldn't even be that hard to estimate that if we get the numbers from Avalon & Co.
It's easy to compare to CPUs, GPUs & so on, and it's a "fair" measure factoring in efficiency improvements.

[gollum]

Comparing the bitcoin network with supercomputers is stupid,
Insted you should calculate the cost of buying 400,000 Ghash/s that the bitcoin network got right now:
Assuming that you buy ASICs it would cost you about 20 million dollars.
Lets say you want 80% of the network to be sure you can manipulate the blockchain, it would "only" cost you 80 million dollars, which is a fraction of the cost to do the same mainipulation with super computers. Such manipulation cannot be profitable so only governments would potentially be interested in investing that money to harm the network. My conclusion: the bitcoin network is safe as long as governments and banks dont feel threatened.

[kik1977]

Comparing the bitcoin network with supercomputers is stupid,
Insted you should calculate the cost of buying 400,000 Ghash/s that the bitcoin network got right now:
Assuming that you buy ASICs it would cost you about 20 million dollars.
Lets say you want 80% of the network to be sure you can manipulate the blockchain, it would "only" cost you 80 million dollars, which is a fraction of the cost to do the same mainipulation with super computers. Such manipulation cannot be profitable so only governments would potentially be interested in investing that money to harm the network. My conclusion: the bitcoin network is safe as long as governments and banks dont feel threatened.

Thank you for your politeness Gollum! That's very kind of you, although the parallel I did doesn't sound so stupid to me.
Try and make the example you mentioned to a group of people with an average age of 50 and computer literacy=0.. you will lose them almost immediately. It's already difficult to explain what a "network" of computer is, how many days you would need to get them through hash functions, ASICs, 51% attack, etc.?
As I said already several times, the parallel doesn't pretend to be accurate at ALL, it's just meant to give a vague but understandable idea to the average Bitcoin profane of the size and power of the Bitcoin network.
Anyway that's just my idea based of my experience of a few years of teaching about Bitcoin.

[HeroC]

People. People. Calm down. The bitcoin hash rate is big, and that car is on steroids. 

[davidgdg]

Surely the best comparison is to compare the hash rate achievable by supercomputers with the hash rate of the network? Then you are comparing like with like. In other words, to achieve the same computing (hashing) power as the Bitcoin network would require a supercomputer of X (peta)flops.

[kik1977]

UPDATE: after just one week, the network has passed 5300 Petaflop (+1300 in one week).

Ok you may not like measuring the network in Petaflops...

here you are, one week ago the network was capable of an Hashrate of 380 Terahashs/s while now it's up to 420 Terahashs/s..
which means an increase of roughly 10% in a single week time..

[WinVery.com]

That's impressive.

[Realpra]

Just look at bit operations? Also a FLOP is LESS than a hash so Bitcoin is 12.4 K larger?

[Notanon]

Bitcoin network does exactly 0 FLOPS. Comparing int and flops is pointless.

Measuring computing power in flops is like measuring how a car is good in altitude. Pointless, it is not a plane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ZklI4D5Ko

[Hfleer]

Part of my job is training and Bitcoin, together with other payment methods, is one of the modules I teach. To explain how powerful the network is, I compare it with the most powerful supercomputer. The last time I updated that slide, 2-3 months ago, the Bitcoin network had a "calculating power" of 1700 Petaflops, while the fastest supercomputer (Tianhe-2) had (and still has) an average of..... 33 (http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/) !!
Tonight I checked it again (http://bitcoinwatch.com/) and found out it has grown to ... 4327 !! Yes, exactly 4327 to 33..  

Insane..

[edit] that's also a comparison I like to tell to people when I describe what bitcoins are!

With all the Asics in process that number will not look so high.  Let's see in another 2-3 months.

[kik1977]

UPDATE: after just one week, the network has passed 5300 Petaflop (+1300 in one week).

Ok you may not like measuring the network in Petaflops...

here you are, one week ago the network was capable of an Hashrate of 380 Terahashs/s while now it's up to 420 Terahashs/s..
which means an increase of roughly 10% in a single week time..

UPDATE: after 1 month from my last update, here are the amazing figures, testifing a huge amount of mining power being delivered in the last few days:

Bitcoin network PetaFlops (even if not appropriate): 5300 to 9966

Bitcoin network Hashrate (more accurate): 420 to 784 Terahashs/s

This means that the Bitcoin network has almost doubled its calculating power just in the last 30 days, or that in the last month the same amount of calculating power has been added than in the last 4 years!

[justusranvier]

This means that the Bitcoin network has almost doubled its calculating power just in the last 30 days

Some people are predicting this to continue for the next two years.

[Come-from-Beyond]

This means that the Bitcoin network has almost doubled its calculating power just in the last 30 days

Some people are predicting this to continue for the next two years.

60 days ago the hashrate was 4.5 times lower.

[kik1977]

Today's news:

"The bitcoin network reached another historic milestone milestone today, achieving an estimated total computational speed of 1 petahash per second (1 PH/s = 1,000,000 GH/s). The current speed is 40x faster than where we began the year, faster than 79% of the bitcoin community expected as of just seven months ago. The path to this point goes back to the genesis block itself and offers insight into the foundations of the world’s first digital currency."

Complete article here: http://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-network-reaches-1-petahash-per-second/

[cypherdoc]

This is truly an extraordinary story.

And underappreciated.