Next generation 14nm mining grid

[EBM]

Never-ending random payouts, constantly raising money for charity, free to download – what's not to like?
Even if the user doesn't win a prize, they're always computing for good

-quoted from your pitch

no one in their right mind buys a lottery ticket

you already said no one cares about computing for good, well maybe several thousand yip-de-do

don't be obtuse. you can't persuade enough people to buy a high end phone and join your club

anyone with a good phone would mine for themselves, then choose which charity to donate to

if they could mine with a phone

You're not understanding the concept.

There are 2 billion PCs and another 1 billion smartphones already out there. Nobody has to buy anything. Even the app is a free download.

Not enough people care about computing for science projects - far more care about computing for the chance to win massive cash prizes and constant charity fundraising.

As for the phone mining - just like the PC computing, it can only earn pennies per device. Not enough to make it worth doing UNLESS there's some other motivation.

Like being in a series of massive prize draws and constantly raising money for those nine charities, for example.

Hundreds of millions of people buy lottery tickets every week, by the way. Not sure what their state of mind has to do with it.

[railzand]

Hmm, now I see it all. Quite brilliant.

I offer you £24.99 a fiver for 51% equity.

[EBM]

Hi there.

To counterbalance the healthy skepticism of some and frankly rude behaviour of others, I'd like to say that I find your idea very interesting. Unlike others, I can see what you are aiming to achieve here and think it could really work.

I'm also pleased to see a British company taking steps towards innovation in the bitcoin world. I don't have  early enough money to take part in this, but I wish you the best of luck. If you succeed, it can only be good for bitcoin as a whole.

Thanks. Never had to use the ignore button on a forum before, but hey.

I'm all for healthy skepticism, not nearly enough of it in this world. Could live without the paranoia and insults though. Two minutes on Google and it's completely obvious we're legit. Our PC app has been out for two years!

Cheers,
Mark

[EBM]

Hmm, now I see it all. Quite brilliant.

I offer you £24.99 a fiver for 51% equity.

Very gracious. I'll put your offer to the shareholders.

[jimmothy]

Can we get an estimate on total hashrate in an optimum situation in your mind? How much electricity would this farm require vs competitors? Trying to get a better understanding of the plan.

[EBM]

Can we get an estimate on total hashrate in an optimum situation in your mind? How much electricity would this farm require vs competitors? Trying to get a better understanding of the plan.

It won't be a farm as such, merely a network of idle charging Android devices all around the world. The more people run the app, the greater the hashrate - so number of users is the limiting factor.

The more people have the app, the more it earns, the bigger the donations and prize payouts - which encourages more people to get the app, etc. Scale is everything.

Actual hashrate per device is unknown. All we know is that custom SHA-256 silicon is coming to mobiles, and smarter people than us are adamant they will be more efficient, pound-for-pound, than ASICs. (We have that in writing.)

Electricity usage will also depend on user numbers, but mobile devices always have the lowest-energy chips with the lowest nanometer processes. For each individual contributor, it will barely be noticeable. A few hours per night using a couple of watts, maximum.

As for us, we could admin a million nodes with two racks of servers.

[EBM]

Still that "SHA-256" nonsense. The thing is, running a mining pool with many of little slow as fuck devices (because again Bitcoin ASICs aren't doing SHA-256 like that) is going to be very costly. Most pools are already phasing out diff1 shares!

Why would you ever need "investors" for a mobile application anyway?

It's not that costly if you don't have to pay out 97% of the earnings, like every other pool does.

We need investors to expand the company, not just for the mobile app. Read the pitch deck. The PC app is earning nicely, thanks.

[EBM]

Ugh. You still don't understand anything about my point.
And your way of misleading people makes you no better than a scammer.

Then explain. And less of the insults, please. If I'm missing the point, tell me.

Why won't smaller, more efficient chips be usable as miners?

We have a professor of Comp Sci who says they will be. I'm quite open to hearing why you think they won't.

[EBM]

Why won't smaller, more efficient chips be usable as miners?

I just told you twice. They do not remotely compare to Bitcoin ASICs, and you only want see the magic "SHA-256" word.

We have a professor of Comp Sci who says they will be.

Hilarious.

I'm aware they won't be as powerful, per unit, as mains-powered ASICs. (Although they will be more efficient in hashing per watt.) They're mobile chips. That's not in debate.

"Columbia’s Sethumadhavan says custom ASICs may soon face a challenge from chips for mobile devices with circuits dedicated to performing encryption operations. These chips, expected next year, will probably be designed to a standard higher than the miners can reach and could be used to build powerful mining rigs without ASICs." http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508061/custom-chips-could-be-the-shovels-in-a-bitcoin-gold-rush/

(Sorry, he's actually an Assistant Prof of Comp Sci. My mistake.)

EDIT - we are not just going by this one MIT article. We followed it up.

[Mabsark]

Why won't smaller, more efficient chips be usable as miners?

I just told you twice. They do not remotely compare to Bitcoin ASICs, and you only want see the magic "SHA-256" word.

We have a professor of Comp Sci who says they will be.

Hilarious.

I'm aware they won't be as powerful, per unit, as mains-powered ASICs. (Although they will be more efficient in hashing per watt.) They're mobile chips. That's not in debate.

Why does that make them unusable?

How on earth is a 14nm general purpose SHA-256 ASIC going to be more efficient that a 14nm ASIC designed specifically to mine bitcoins?

What you are saying makes no sense.

[crumbs]

...
In that article:

"Columbia’s Sethumadhavan says custom ASICs may soon face a challenge from chips for mobile devices with circuits dedicated to performing encryption operations. These chips, expected next year, will probably be designed to a standard higher than the miners can reach and could be used to build powerful mining rigs without ASICs."
...

That article was written over a year ago, on December 5, 2012.  It was wrong then, and now it is verifiably wrong.  Don't try to bootstrap your scam on top of another man's mistakes.

Many here think that you are clueless, giving too much credence to the adage "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Not I.
You're here to con and bilk coin.
Monumental stupidity required for your scheme is not realizable within the constraints of spacetime as we know it.
Bitcoin is not a playground for failed scammers.  It is not a nursing home where burnt down scams come to die.
Pool's closed

[EBM]

Why won't smaller, more efficient chips be usable as miners?

I just told you twice. They do not remotely compare to Bitcoin ASICs, and you only want see the magic "SHA-256" word.

We have a professor of Comp Sci who says they will be.

Hilarious.

I'm aware they won't be as powerful, per unit, as mains-powered ASICs. (Although they will be more efficient in hashing per watt.) They're mobile chips. That's not in debate.

Why does that make them unusable?

How on earth is a 14nm general purpose SHA-256 ASIC going to be more efficient that a 14nm ASIC designed specifically to mine bitcoins?

What you are saying makes no sense.

Er, it wouldn't be. I never said a 14nm would be more efficient than another 14nm.

But it will be more efficient than a 25nm. Or a 20nm.

The point is; whatever is the cutting-edge process at the time (14nm, 12nm, 9nm, whatever) - that's only in the mobiles, stamped out in their hundreds of millions.

You can't afford the latest process (or even obtain it) for small production runs, eg. BTC ASICS. They will always be a couple of generations behind.

[EBM]

We've had 40 nm Bitcoin ASICs be more efficient than 28 nm ones, so stop with the process size obsession already.

But again, those are not Bitcoin ASICs, but just measly SHA-256 instructions, which isn't what the Bitcoin ASICs do. Please stop ignoring that simple fact.

Bitcoin ASICs do not simply SHA256(x), they do the whole "search for SHA256(SHA256(x+y)) and gimme y when the result has zeroes".

They're not "just measly SHA-256 instructions", they will be hardware. Yes, I understand that BTC ASICS are doing the exact equation and I'm sure the mobile chips won't be. But there is more to it than that - and I don't just mean process size (which is a huge deal, and the obsession of every chip maker out there, including the ASIC guys). Indeed, if you've heard of 40nm ASICs beating 28nm ones (really?), then you've already alluded to this.

A handful of bootstrapped ASIC makers has nowhere near the chip design expertise of the multi-billion-dollar mobile industry. Cellphone chips have every energy-saving optimization trick in the book. ASICs don't.

ASICs are getting more efficient, sure, but that's down to the process size and not much else. They're certainly not designed to be mobile. Even the USB ones only just scraped under 5W.

So yes, I do get your point: these things won't be true 'baby BTC ASICs', but they'll still be ridiculously energy-efficient and kicking out well over a GH/s per Watt.

And more to the point; there will be millions of them just sat there every night doing absolutely nothing but watch a battery charge - and some web-crawling. We'd be crazy not to tap them for mining as well.

[EBM]

They're not "just measly SHA-256 instructions", they will be hardware.

that's what I meant dum-dum.

AGAIN YOU ARE STILL CONFUSING GENERIC HARDWARE SHA-256 INSTRUCTIONS WITH WHAT BITCOIN ASICS DO. YOU ARE EITHER A SCAMMER OR REALLY REALLY DUMB.

Or maybe I just didn't get what you meant because it wasn't what you said. That's the first time you've even used the word 'hardware'.

I thought you meant just an extra set of CPU commands or something. In fact, it's blatantly obvious I thought that. Hardly worth a shouting fit.

Anyway, as you're losing the ability to have a civil conversation, let's leave it there.

[crumbs]

...
In that article:

"Columbia’s Sethumadhavan says custom ASICs may soon face a challenge from chips for mobile devices with circuits dedicated to performing encryption operations. These chips, expected next year, will probably be designed to a standard higher than the miners can reach and could be used to build powerful mining rigs without ASICs."
...

That article was written over a year ago, on December 5, 2012.  It was wrong then, and now it is verifiably wrong.  Don't try to bootstrap your scam on top of another man's mistakes.

Many here think that you are clueless, giving too much credence to the adage "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Not I.
You're here to con and bilk coin.
Monumental stupidity required for your scheme is not realizable within the constraints of spacetime as we know it.
Bitcoin is not a playground for failed scammers.  It is not a nursing home where burnt down scams come to die.
Pool's closed

Just get out.

[crumbs]

I thought you meant just an extra set of CPU commands or something. In fact, it's blatantly obvious I thought that. Hardly worth a shouting fit.

Anyway, as you're losing the ability to have a civil conversation, let's leave it there.

Wait, what? Extra set of CPU commands is what this *you* are referring to, and it's... hardware. You truly have no grasp of what you are talking about.

I have zero interest in being civil towards scammers.

You are not so much dealing with raw stupidity as much as a lazy scam.  It's pointless to offer logical arguments when you're engaging someone like that.
After his arguments are conclusively shown to be meritless, he refuses to concede.  There is nothing else you can do.

Posting gifs used to help, but now the animations don't work 

[EBM]

I thought you meant just an extra set of CPU commands or something. In fact, it's blatantly obvious I thought that. Hardly worth a shouting fit.

Anyway, as you're losing the ability to have a civil conversation, let's leave it there.

Wait, what? Extra set of CPU commands is what this *you* are referring to, and it's... hardware. You truly have no grasp of what you are talking about.

I have zero interest in being civil towards scammers.

Yes, I wasn't aware an extra set of CPU commands automatically means additional silicon. I thought it could be emulation - which is what I thought you were referring to. Alert the Washington Post.

I'm a CEO, not a chip designer. That's why I took advice from a professor.

EDIT: Well, well, well. "In traditional CPU design there have been two common approaches: hardwired logic and emulation. The 80x86 family uses both of these techniques." http://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/Linux/HTML/CPUArchitecturea3.html

[crumbs]

...
I'm a CEO, not a chip designer. That's why I took advice from a professor.

If you do not know WTF you're talking about, the smart thing to do is STFU.

[railzand]

Mark is an ex-programmer and professional writer, who invented Charity Engine as part of a sci-fi novel, figured it would really work, so stopped writing the novel and started the company.

[EBM]

Mark is an ex-programmer and professional writer, who invented Charity Engine as part of a sci-fi novel, figured it would really work, so stopped writing the novel and started the company.

Yup. Best way to predict the future is to create it. Surprised you didn't post the link where that's from, though?

You know, the one that also says this about me and our company http://www.svc2uk.com/100club/ceo-profiles/ :

"The SVC2UK ‘100 Club’ is a group of individuals who we believe to have the most innovative, high-growth ventures and who show the greatest promise to become future serial entrepreneurs and investors themselves. The Club is rigorously handpicked by SVC2UK experts via a multi-step selection process, and consists of CEOs likely to build global businesses worth £100 million in the next three to five years."

FTFY