AndrewHenson (OP)
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 22
Merit: 0
|
|
September 01, 2013, 06:47:27 PM |
|
Hello,
Does anyone know if it is possible to run bitcoin or litecoin mining software on a HP Superdome computer with Itanium processors?
I have been offered two fully loaded units at scrap value because they have been superseded by quad core versions, if anyone has any experience with these machines your advice would be appreciated.
thanks
Andrew
|
|
|
|
Bitweasil
|
|
September 01, 2013, 09:38:00 PM |
|
It's entirely possible, though you'd likely have to write your own software for it (if you wanted anything resembling optimized code for Itanium).
There's no way it would be worth the power needed to run those, though.
You're probably better off eBaying it to some sort of enthusiast.
|
|
|
|
Graet
VIP
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 980
Merit: 1001
|
|
September 01, 2013, 11:49:44 PM |
|
It's entirely possible, though you'd likely have to write your own software for it (if you wanted anything resembling optimized code for Itanium).
There's no way it would be worth the power needed to run those, though.
You're probably better off eBaying it to some sort of enthusiast.
and buying Bitcoin with the proceeds
|
|
|
|
Trillium
|
|
September 02, 2013, 06:05:26 AM |
|
It's one of those "if you have to ask the question, you probably can't do it" kind of things. Itanium systems are highly specialized, you'd have to develop the code for mining from the ground up in order to get proper performance from the CPUs. And the power to run these things is just outrageous, and you could never break even against electricity costs. If you were going to try and mine anything with such a system it would be XPM, YAC, or another CPU-only coin. The electricity rate where I live is $0.30/kWh and at current XPM prices I cannot break with my systems that are mostly based on 4-5 year old CPUs (both desktop PC cpus - core 2 duo and quads - and Xeon CPUs of that time).
You are going to have a really hard time selling these on eBay too. I have monitored quite a few such systems as their sellers try to get rid of them for huge prices (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars). The simple fact of the matter is that no one wants an old Itanium server/cluster/supercomputer. There are plenty of uses for old desktop PC, laptops, and old servers, but the only good an Itanium is for is i. Spare parts. ii. Collectors items / museum pieces or iii. the hyper-rich enthusiast who wants to tinker with it in their spare time. As you can imagine a sale for the later two wouldn't happen very often.
My only advice I can give is to compare what you have to other listings and then list at 50% or lower than the others. Or else you will just sit there waiting and relisting it for months with nil interest from buyers. Also be sure to include the 'best offer' option on the listing. Depending on your location, eBay may or may not offer free relisting of unsold items.
|
BTC:1AaaAAAAaAAE2L1PXM1x9VDNqvcrfa9He6
|
|
|
AndrewHenson (OP)
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 22
Merit: 0
|
|
September 02, 2013, 07:53:27 PM |
|
Hello,
Thanks for the advice, I will leave this alone as it doesn't seem worth the trouble.
I have a few Jupiters on order for September, its been a long wait since June. The next couple of weeks are going to drag...
Happy mining :-)
Andrew
|
|
|
|
Trillium
|
|
September 02, 2013, 10:36:31 PM |
|
Hello,
Thanks for the advice, I will leave this alone as it doesn't seem worth the trouble.
I have a few Jupiters on order for September, its been a long wait since June. The next couple of weeks are going to drag...
Happy mining :-)
Andrew
While I wouldn't encourage mining on it, how much is 'scrap value' that you have to pay? You may still be able to sell it and make some money, but be prepared to keep in storage for a long time. So you'd need a lot of space, a vehicle to move such large equipment, and probably at least two people to move it around on the ground even! As always with eBay you can get a lot more interest if you can show it at least powers up, do you have the necessary infrastructure to power it? The power requirements should be on the HP site, they have very detailed planning and installation papers for their large systems like these.
|
BTC:1AaaAAAAaAAE2L1PXM1x9VDNqvcrfa9He6
|
|
|
milkbottlec
Member
Offline
Activity: 95
Merit: 10
|
|
September 03, 2013, 04:06:39 AM |
|
What hash rate could it get? Just wonder
|
Will be handling Drillbit System UK/EU replacement components soon (waiting to confirm details, stay tunes) If I helped you and could pop me some treats for this Christmas, donate some BTC to: 1QEhKaUnFoEBaWmXsrE5AUvbAt95254DXr
|
|
|
polarhei
Sr. Member
Offline
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
Firing it up
|
|
September 04, 2013, 11:46:40 AM |
|
I think, Bitcoin would do bad with this one but not litecoin due to connection and the processing issues.
However the Itanium series becomes obsolete as the real business is powered by ARM, RISC (Which is mainly PRC operated, just time issues, perhaps three years later?) or X86 based (Including x86) for the time being.
I think the construction is little trickier than I thought even I have read how to mine with cpuminer. It looks like I have to rewrite completely to suit that machine.
|
|
|
|
AndrewHenson (OP)
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 22
Merit: 0
|
|
September 04, 2013, 08:46:46 PM |
|
Hello,
I can get two fully loaded units for 2k euros for the pair. It needs a special phase 2 electricity supply. So I guess I could get that installed if required, or find a datacentre locally to house it.
If your interested in re-writing CGMiner to mine litecoins on a Superdone what would you charge me for writing that?
I have five jupiters on order for September delivery, all hosted so at the moment I will have 2 terra hash, however as the machines are slightly faster I could have 2.5 or even 3 terra hash. WOW I am going to clean up baby :-)
rgds
Andrew
|
|
|
|
Trillium
|
|
September 04, 2013, 11:06:10 PM |
|
Hello,
I can get two fully loaded units for 2k euros for the pair. It needs a special phase 2 electricity supply. So I guess I could get that installed if required, or find a datacentre locally to house it.
If your interested in re-writing CGMiner to mine litecoins on a Superdone what would you charge me for writing that?
I have five jupiters on order for September delivery, all hosted so at the moment I will have 2 terra hash, however as the machines are slightly faster I could have 2.5 or even 3 terra hash. WOW I am going to clean up baby :-)
rgds
Andrew
I highly doubt the entire system would make more MH/s or KH/s (depending on algo in use) than a single Radeon 7950. You would be mining on a lot of highly inefficient (by todays standard) CPUs. It would be no better or worse than running out and buying a huge pallet of Pentium 3 and 4 based desktop PCs: completely useless when GPU/ASIC are available for scrypt mining and very poorly performing for CPU coins compared to today's i7/i5/xeon and AMD equivalents. Even mining XPM / YAC / other CPU coins you would most likely not break-even unless you had free power. Even then it would take a very long time to make back your $2000 investment + infrastructure installation costs. It might sound appealing to run your own quasi-supercomputer however these systems are just too dated now to compete. If you somehow got your hands on a sparkling new new set of super computer server racks from 2012-2013 then you might be able to reach break even with a CPU coin like XPM (if the market were to improve, too).
|
BTC:1AaaAAAAaAAE2L1PXM1x9VDNqvcrfa9He6
|
|
|
AndrewHenson (OP)
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 22
Merit: 0
|
|
September 07, 2013, 08:05:25 AM |
|
ok, before I completely give up on this idea of mining litecoins or any other CPU based coin. Here are the specs of the Superdome, I can get two of these. They went end of line on the 4th June 2013 so I would imagine they must still be relatively current, or maybe not see what you think.
Prod Nbr Description (EN) Qty A5200A HP Superdome Server Solution 1 A9834A HP Superdome 32/64 Core Chassis 1 A9834A#429 HP 32p Chassis,Hardware Only 1 A5800A PDCA Redundant Power Source 1 A6440A SuperDome in-line power connector 2 A6440A#501 In-line connector for 5 wire power 2 A9837A HP Superdome sx2000 Cell Board 8 AD371A HP Superdome dual core 1.6/18M processor 16 AD372A HP Superdome iCAP 1.6/18M processor 2c 16 A9857A HP SD 512GB(128x4GB) PC2-4200 R Memory 2 AB405A HP Superdome PCIe/PCI-X 6/6 I/O chassis 4 AB545A HP PCI-X 4-port 1000Base-T Gigabit Adptr 16 AB290A HP PCI-X 2p 1000BT, 2p U320 SCSI Adptr 2 AH403A HP PCIe 2-port 8Gb FC SR (Emulex) HBA 16 A9835A HP Superdome 32/64 Core Addon Chassis 1 A9835A#429 HP 32p Add On Chassis, Hardware Only 1 A5800A PDCA Redundant Power Source 1 A6440A SuperDome in-line power connector 2 A6440A#501 In-line connector for 5 wire power 2 A9837A HP Superdome sx2000 Cell Board 8 AD371A HP Superdome dual core 1.6/18M processor 16 AD372A HP Superdome iCAP 1.6/18M processor 2c 16 A9857A HP SD 512GB(128x4GB) PC2-4200 R Memory 2 AB405A HP Superdome PCIe/PCI-X 6/6 I/O chassis 4 AB545A HP PCI-X 4-port 1000Base-T Gigabit Adptr 16 AB290A HP PCI-X 2p 1000BT, 2p U320 SCSI Adptr 2 AH403A HP PCIe 2-port 8Gb FC SR (Emulex) HBA 16 BA931AA HP-UX 11i v3 DC-OE Media 4 BA931AA#AJR DVD media 4 BA931AC HP-UX 11i v3 Data Center OE LTU 4 BA931AC#055 PCL HP-UX 11i v3 DCOE IPF 16+Skt LTU 64 AF034A HP 10642G2 200mm Extn Shock Rack 1 AF034A#001 Factory Express Base Racking 1 C7508BZ HP Tape Array 5300 Factory Rack 2 Q1592B HP DVD + RW Array Field Module 4 Q1575A HP DAT 160 Array Module 4 C2364A SCSI Terminator LVD/SE HDTS68 Multimd 8 C2363B SCSI Cable 10m VHDTS68/HDTS68 M/M Multimd 8 AF074A HP Rack Grounding Kit 1 AF062A HP 10K G2 600mm Stabilizer Kit 1 AF054A HP 10642 G2 Sidepanel Kit 1 252663-B24 HP 16A High Voltage Modular PDU 2 AF581A HP 3.6m 16A C19 IEC309 Pwr Cord 2 AD277A HP GiCAP Sharing Right 64 A9802D HP Superdome SMS PC Solution 1 AG066A HP TFT7600 Rckmnt Kybd 17in Intl Monitor 1 J9085A HP 2610-24 Switch 1 508783-B21 HP 2610 series Rail Kit 1
thanks
Andrew
|
|
|
|
polarhei
Sr. Member
Offline
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
Firing it up
|
|
September 07, 2013, 11:36:20 AM |
|
Hello,
I can get two fully loaded units for 2k euros for the pair. It needs a special phase 2 electricity supply. So I guess I could get that installed if required, or find a datacentre locally to house it.
If your interested in re-writing CGMiner to mine litecoins on a Superdone what would you charge me for writing that?
I have five jupiters on order for September delivery, all hosted so at the moment I will have 2 terra hash, however as the machines are slightly faster I could have 2.5 or even 3 terra hash. WOW I am going to clean up baby :-)
rgds
Andrew
Andrew, The simple way should be, you will need to find C/c++ compiler for Itanium , Then go to sourceforge to search the cpuminer, You will need to do from starch. It is just some c code. Your OS should contain the needed. You may take a try http://noggin.intel.com/content/programming-itanium-based-systems-intro (Accessed on 7 September 2013, I think I do no need to rewrite the code, just need to compile from zero)
|
|
|
|
Trillium
|
|
September 07, 2013, 02:10:53 PM |
|
I reckon its a trap. It'll cost thousands to buy and then thousands more to either install power infrastructure or find a datacenter to host it (which can be both difficult to arrange and expensive). This doesn't even consider the efficiency of the CPU nor that SHA-256 and scrypt are two hardware generations ahead already. This will be my last post advising you of how terrible this idea is. Best of luck.
|
BTC:1AaaAAAAaAAE2L1PXM1x9VDNqvcrfa9He6
|
|
|
polarhei
Sr. Member
Offline
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
Firing it up
|
|
September 08, 2013, 04:40:12 AM |
|
however, this may be used as people dislike to face the coding hell so they throw away. if for me thus may be interesting.
|
|
|
|
|