Bitcoin network passed 4000 Petaflops

[kik1977]

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!

[ElectricMucus]

Flops (Floating Point Operations Per Second) do not apply to Bitcoin, Especially not since the advert of ASICs.

If you want to do a comparison do it with the estimated power consumption.

[evoorhees]

Flops (Floating Point Operations Per Second) do not apply to Bitcoin, Especially not since the advert of ASICs.

If you want to do a comparison do it with the estimated power consumption.

That's not a good comparison either, because btc mining gets more efficient. Mining power has gone up by a order of magnitude, but I bet actual electricity usage isn't substantially higher than a year ago.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Flops (Floating Point Operations Per Second) do not apply to Bitcoin, Especially not since the advert of ASICs.

If you want to do a comparison do it with the estimated power consumption.

That's not a good comparison either, because btc mining gets more efficient. Mining power has gone up by a order of magnitude, but I bet actual electricity usage isn't substantially higher than a year ago.

That's not a good comparison either. I suggest counting the number of startups claiming to be building ASIC-based... 

[kik1977]

Flops (Floating Point Operations Per Second) do not apply to Bitcoin, Especially not since the advert of ASICs.

If you want to do a comparison do it with the estimated power consumption.

That's not a good comparison either, because btc mining gets more efficient. Mining power has gone up by a order of magnitude, but I bet actual electricity usage isn't substantially higher than a year ago.

Exactly, electricity consumption doesn't give any idea about the size of the network, the development of more efficient mining equipment can suggest, on the contrary, that the network is shrinking!!

From my experience (three years now teaching about Bitcoin) I found out that, when you try to explain Bitcoin to someone who has no idea of the concept, even more accurate measures like hashrate don't help them that much.
But when you compare the network with supercomputer and point out the ratio of 100:1 (even if less accurate) they will immediately grasp the size.. it's something very simple but astonishing at the same time.

[tondaS]

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..  

How many Floating Point Operations you count per one hash?

[kik1977]

An old topic (2011) which explains it better than I could do.. but raising concerns about the validity of the comparison. It's funny to read that post today, talking about Radeon Cards... and have a look at the difficulty! 

This is exactly how bitcoinwatch estimates FLOPS.  I am not saying it is an acurate way to do the estimate, all I am saying is this is how they do it for what it is worth and for comparison to your other methods.  Many here among us question the valididty of this estimation method.

The page simply uses the following assumptions/estimates:

    1 INTOP = 2 FLOP
    1 hash = 6.35K INTOP
    1 hash = 12.7K FLOP

So the hashrate in TeraFLOP/s is simply 12.7 times the hashrate in Gigahashes/s.

As an example:  11,558.55 Gigahashs/s * 12.7 TeraFLOP/Gigahash = 146,794 TeraFLOP/s = 146 PetaFLOP/s

[tondaS]

This I was afraid. CPUs doing one independend FLOP operation per tact, and ASICs can do one hash per tact as well. Seems you overestimate Bitcoin computing ability by 12.7K 

An old topic (2011) which explains it better than I could do.. but raising concerns about the validity of the comparison. It's funny to read that post today, talking about Radeon Cards... and have a look at the difficulty! 

This is exactly how bitcoinwatch estimates FLOPS.  I am not saying it is an acurate way to do the estimate, all I am saying is this is how they do it for what it is worth and for comparison to your other methods.  Many here among us question the valididty of this estimation method.

The page simply uses the following assumptions/estimates:

    1 INTOP = 2 FLOP
    1 hash = 6.35K INTOP
    1 hash = 12.7K FLOP

So the hashrate in TeraFLOP/s is simply 12.7 times the hashrate in Gigahashes/s.

As an example:  11,558.55 Gigahashs/s * 12.7 TeraFLOP/Gigahash = 146,794 TeraFLOP/s = 146 PetaFLOP/s

[tinus42]

Someone add this to this list on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Distributed_computing_records

[kik1977]

Someone add this to this list on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Distributed_computing_records

Wiki edited. Thanks for the hint!

[tinus42]

Someone add this to this list on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Distributed_computing_records

Wiki edited. Thanks for the hint!

Thanks for the update!

[WikileaksDude]

it will reach way more than this.. i predict over 10x time more

[tinus42]

BTW it should be read as 4.32726 exaFLOPS. Is Bitcoin the first distributed network to reach exaFLOPS power?

[Hyperbolical]

BTW it should be read as 4.32726 exaFLOPS. Is Bitcoin the first distributed network to reach exaFLOPS power?

I think so, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects seems to indicate that the next highest is the Folding@home network, with about 9 petaFLOPS.

[Gabi]

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.

[tinus42]

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.

[Gabi]

Ok who put red bull as fuel in that car?

[Hyperbolical]

Bitcoin network does exactly 0 FLOPS.

This is true, however, I think the FLOPS figures are mainly meant to give an idea as to the scale of the Bitcoin network compared to other networks, they are not meant to actually imply that the Bitcoin network does any FLOPS.

[Gabi]

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.

[tinus42]

Ok who put red bull as fuel in that car?

I think it rather is Monster energy drink.