[ANN][RIC] Riecoin: constellations POW *CPU* HARD FORK successful, world record

[merc84]

Hi gatra, do we have P2Pool support for RIC?

Not yet, but it's on my to do list

Any update this week Gatra?

I'm currently on the hardfork. After some analysis and testing, I think that the best is to start with one superblock of (about one hour) per week and break the record for sextuplets. We would add an entry to the top ten once per week.
After that and with more time we can think of breaking the others. I've been thinking on how to work with much larger tuplets that would take hours or days to find, without the need for superblocks. It would work similar to how pooled mining works: blocks would allow tuplets with one or two composites until we finally find the record tuple of all primes. Doing this we could obliterate all records for tuples of size 6 and onwards!

Tuplets of fewer primes, like twin primes or even single primes are still out of reach until we have more ideas because block verification would take too long.

It's nice to see this idea sparking discussion
What is the logic behind only once per week, 1 hour every few days wouldn't be a terrible interruption to the network?

[gatra]

What is the logic behind only once per week, 1 hour every few days wouldn't be a terrible interruption to the network?

yes, that was the idea, one small interruption per week felt like a small price for the records

[merc84]

Why settle for 52 world records per year when u could have more Say at least 3 super blocks per week? I don't think 3 hours a week would be a big impact on the riecoin network. I originally thought even everyday would be fine and would make mining more interesting for the average miner hopefully attracting more miners and having the flow on effect of making records easier to achieve. Though i can see the reasoning behind wanting to cause the least disruption while still breaking records. Perhaps you could also have POS blocks for the duration of the superblock this way tx can still be processed and you can have as many superblocks as deemed practical.

[vancsj]

What is the logic behind only once per week, 1 hour every few days wouldn't be a terrible interruption to the network?

yes, that was the idea, one small interruption per week felt like a small price for the records

To implement this, how would the restrictions on block timestamp change? It may affect the security level around superblocks IMO.

[bsunau7]

Why settle for 52 world records per year when u could have more Say at least 3 super blocks per week? I don't think 3 hours a week would be a big impact on the riecoin network. I originally thought even everyday would be fine and would make mining more interesting for the average miner hopefully attracting more miners and having the flow on effect of making records easier to achieve. Though i can see the reasoning behind wanting to cause the least disruption while still breaking records. Perhaps you could also have POS blocks for the duration of the superblock this way tx can still be processed and you can have as many superblocks as deemed practical.

I think once a week is more than enough, once a month would be my personal preference.  Or 13 a year and make it a "full moon" thing  

Breaking records is a one trick pony, you don't want to flog that pony any more than you need to.  We'll get a nice up tick on the first record and the second but over time breaking the same record will have less and less value; it'll become the norm not the exception.  Going on a slower path extends the marketing benefits while keeping the record difficulty somewhat in check.

Also knowing how superblocks will be sized would be nice.  While you've touched on some of them there are significant risks if the superblock is a guaranteed record (i.e superblock difficulty only ever increases).  Also  you need to consider that once the "record euphoria" passes we'll see a reduction in overall network performance potentially making the next record block a huge liability.

Just some thoughts...

--
bsunau7

[merc84]

Why settle for 52 world records per year when u could have more Say at least 3 super blocks per week? I don't think 3 hours a week would be a big impact on the riecoin network. I originally thought even everyday would be fine and would make mining more interesting for the average miner hopefully attracting more miners and having the flow on effect of making records easier to achieve. Though i can see the reasoning behind wanting to cause the least disruption while still breaking records. Perhaps you could also have POS blocks for the duration of the superblock this way tx can still be processed and you can have as many superblocks as deemed practical.

I think once a week is more than enough, once a month would be my personal preference.  Or 13 a year and make it a "full moon" thing  

Breaking records is a one trick pony, you don't want to flog that pony any more than you need to.  We'll get a nice up tick on the first record and the second but over time breaking the same record will have less and less value; it'll become the norm not the exception.  Going on a slower path extends the marketing benefits while keeping the record difficulty somewhat in check.

Also knowing how superblocks will be sized would be nice.  While you've touched on some of them there are significant risks if the superblock is a guaranteed record (i.e superblock difficulty only ever increases).  Also  you need to consider that once the "record euphoria" passes we'll see a reduction in overall network performance potentially making the next record block a huge liability.

Just some thoughts...
--
bsunau7

If the superblock is not found within set time frame then normal blocks can resume, and perhaps it can jackpot over to the next superblock round. But i would think that making the superblock infrequent might promote miners to mine for that particular day once per month/week leaving dedicated miners carrying the network the majority of the time, having more frequent superblocks should encourage those who are likely to stick around, to stick around. Also about world records, once the network passes a certain difficulty with current design every block would set a new world record, so i fail to see how you can "break too many records" in fact that seems to be the point of riecoin. That said i'm not a programmer and have no idea of the technical issues that may arise from the superblock idea, I was just putting some ideas out their to foster healthy discussion

[Ellieo]

Why settle for 52 world records per year when u could have more Say at least 3 super blocks per week? I don't think 3 hours a week would be a big impact on the riecoin network. I originally thought even everyday would be fine and would make mining more interesting for the average miner hopefully attracting more miners and having the flow on effect of making records easier to achieve. Though i can see the reasoning behind wanting to cause the least disruption while still breaking records. Perhaps you could also have POS blocks for the duration of the superblock this way tx can still be processed and you can have as many superblocks as deemed practical.

My preference of each world records breaking would come in this form

and subjected to this condition

where the variable t could represents the total time needed for mininng all Riecoin, etc.

[fairglu]

Breaking records is a one trick pony, you don't want to flog that pony any more than you need to.  We'll get a nice up tick on the first record and the second but over time breaking the same record will have less and less value; it'll become the norm not the exception.  Going on a slower path extends the marketing benefits while keeping the record difficulty somewhat in check.

Agreed.

The "one trick ponies" of beating world records for different constellation sizes might offer a couple more ponies to flog around, but it would still run out of juice.
"Slower" might also allow enough time for scientific and academic press to pick it up.

Beyond the world records, are there interesting things that could be more "visual" about RIC constellations? (like what Ulam's spiral does for the regular primes)
Any work or ideas on "plotting" the constellations?

[fairglu]

But i would think that making the superblock infrequent might promote miners to mine for that particular day once per month/week leaving dedicated miners carrying the network the majority of the time

If that happens, it might not be bad actually, it could make for a sort of prime marathon event.
Of course that means superblocks would have to follow their own difficulty curve so such events don't wreck the blockchain for the rest of the week.

[merc84]

What are the chances that everyone that jumps on for the super block day would be there just for exactly the time needed to find the superblock, even if superblocks have thier own diff curve (which u can safely assume they would) if its a one day a month thing u can expect that the extra mining power will start sometime before the superblock and linger some time after, in which case it will effect the network till next retarget.

[bsunau7]

What are the chances that everyone that jumps on for the super block day would be there just for exactly the time needed to find the superblock, even if superblocks have thier own diff curve (which u can safely assume they would) if its a one day a month thing u can expect that the extra mining power will start sometime before the superblock and linger some time after, in which case it will effect the network till next retarget.

Low, when ypool's riecoin wallet was being re-built there were still 4k clients "mining" nothing.  There are a lot of miners (either knowingly or un-knowingly) mining while their machines are on.  If they can't stop mining when there is no reward I don't think they will change their behaviour if they are mining the superblock or not.

--
bsunau7

[gatra]

Beyond the world records, are there interesting things that could be more "visual" about RIC constellations? (like what Ulam's spiral does for the regular primes)
Any work or ideas on "plotting" the constellations?

these have nice visualizations:
http://www.bigblueboo.com/prime/ you can find 6-tuples at 97, 19417, 43777
http://www.sievesofchaos.com/

A prime number wheel with 210 numbers on each concentric circle would show all sextuplets aligned starting from 97. This could be nice.

[gatra]

The idea is that superblocks would be 70 minutes long, and it would be like 28 standard blocks fused together.
So their difficulty would be 28 times as hard as the difficulty at the moment, and their reward would be 28 times higher, ie 1400.
This way there is no incentive to mine only during superblocks, since the expected reward is always the same. With this implementation there are no timestamp issues or anything special during or around superblocks. We don't need a special difficulty adjustment or tracking of 2 different difficulties.

If the superblock is not found within set time frame then normal blocks can resume, and perhaps it can jackpot over to the next superblock round.

There is no consensus of current time on the network, so using time frames could lead to security problems.


I agree that this may work as a "one trick pony", but going for the other tricks (records for 7-tuples up to 15-tuples) requires more effort and implies an update to the pool software and all the miners. Superblocks are a simpler change that I'd like to try first, they would give us time to work on the other stuff.

Once per week would help show the power of RIC. A greater display of power could have greater impact, I'd like to stress out how much processing power is used in BTC and how RIC can divert it for more interesting things while still securing the network.

[merc84]

The idea is that superblocks would be 70 minutes long, and it would be like 28 standard blocks fused together.
So their difficulty would be 28 times as hard as the difficulty at the moment, and their reward would be 28 times higher, ie 1400.
This way there is no incentive to mine only during superblocks, since the expected reward is always the same. With this implementation there are no timestamp issues or anything special during or around superblocks. We don't need a special difficulty adjustment or tracking of 2 different difficulties.

If the superblock is not found within set time frame then normal blocks can resume, and perhaps it can jackpot over to the next superblock round.

There is no consensus of current time on the network, so using time frames could lead to security problems.


I agree that this may work as a "one trick pony", but going for the other tricks (records for 7-tuples up to 15-tuples) requires more effort and implies an update to the pool software and all the miners. Superblocks are a simpler change that I'd like to try first, they would give us time to work on the other stuff.

Once per week would help show the power of RIC. A greater display of power could have greater impact, I'd like to stress out how much processing power is used in BTC and how RIC can divert it for more interesting things while still securing the network.

Indeed the btc network some time ago surpassed 256 times the computational power of the worlds top 500 supercomputers http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global-bitcoin-computing-power-now-256-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers-combined/ .

[cinnamon_carter]

fyi i tried to compile it for windows with mingw using Gatra's fork , no go / lol

Any updates this week Gatra?

We're waiting for dga to merge the stratum code. I'm hoping he could make new binaries for Linux and Windows: that would leave miners no excuse for trying other pools.

I've started working on the superblock thing which feels like the new priority, I'm thinking on the easiest and safest way to implement the difficulty adjustments taking superblocks into account. I'm determined to break at least one record.


Thanks for keeping pushing me to write the updates!

Argh - sorry.  This is still on my todo, I'm just lagging a little.  I will try to get it done by tomorrow.

[fairglu]

http://www.bigblueboo.com/prime/ you can find 6-tuples at 97, 19417, 43777

Did not knew that one, been spending/playing a few minutes on it, very nice indeed!

[vidarn]

Hi,
A few days ago I submitted to Anthony Forbes a 597-digit 6-tuplet and had it verified as a new world record:

http://anthony.d.forbes.googlepages.com/ktuplets.htm

This number is only a few digits above the previous record, and it should be quite possible for the superblock project to beat it!

The program used was based on the b14 version of dga's xptminer (which was the latest version I was able to compile using Windows and Visual Studio) and ran on 11 cores for about a month before it suddenly surprised me with a find. I'll give some further details later.

The 6-tuplet is

1268360451482944051031693571608646702803337857417059923179003396370803464447945 9213486050679397935104622682138475913438101505200313946821621485384179510473697 9433691754086534863323734928743959323221865529501237655633762351765417920461874 1258860678645822691792395092270199088414732238122470003707838866453023159582123 7351808046531772170786266328462890225388980932631840153394721839158254583153068 7931209705774579874734193952405536748117312631969874545797052973507394025122061 8770487542157843118646752735712130590319004160226700306792249093957168851751545 30232372583285744387264936607664813582967597
+d, d = 0, 4, 6, 10, 12, 16

or

4921035090333221245281056600469203091910280140820896181940314619657756374547612 4680711202733554189605614783506825475691404888752144184576829642013820327715134 5176983584805931408105542588834038851652656017513154942170087395616822290168504 6046380856370538924059371410139041704192384855299316496758299832292941057155474 6087497007967825846220015325654831770578435398632279854720 * 547# + 8061997 +d, d = 0, 4, 6, 10, 12, 16

Regards,
Vidar

[vancsj]

Hi,
A few days ago I submitted to Anthony Forbes a 597-digit 6-tuplet and had it verified as a new world record:

http://anthony.d.forbes.googlepages.com/ktuplets.htm

This number is only a few digits above the previous record, and it should be quite possible for the superblock project to beat it!

The program used was based on the b14 version of dga's xptminer (which was the latest version I was able to compile using Windows and Visual Studio) and ran on 11 cores for about a month before it suddenly surprised me with a find. I'll give some further details later.

Regards,
Vidar

Wow, 11 cores running for 1 month, that needs patience man, cong!

[northranger79510]

Hi,
A few days ago I submitted to Anthony Forbes a 597-digit 6-tuplet and had it verified as a new world record:

http://anthony.d.forbes.googlepages.com/ktuplets.htm

This number is only a few digits above the previous record, and it should be quite possible for the superblock project to beat it!

The program used was based on the b14 version of dga's xptminer (which was the latest version I was able to compile using Windows and Visual Studio) and ran on 11 cores for about a month before it suddenly surprised me with a find. I'll give some further details later.

Regards,
Vidar

Wow, 11 cores running for 1 month, that needs patience man, cong!

Any updates this week Gatra?

[bsunau7]

Hi All,

I've had very little time recently and it looks like the next 3-4 months will afford me even less time.  As such I've released the code for my ARMv7 miner to the public.  The link is:

https://bitbucket.org/bsunau7/riecoin-armv7

There are lots of ideas I would like to try out, some of which are:

• Seeing if the '0' heavy primes I generate can be used to speed up modular exponentiation (initial tests got within 5% of GMP performance without using montgomery)
• fast_recip might be faster than the fastmod code, making more use of fast_recip might get performance gains.
• It might be quicker to calculate the reciprocals inline as opposed to fetching from memory.
• Interleaving primes/reciprocals/offsets should be more efficient from a memory access viewpoint, worth investigating.
• I've only optimized fast_recip for memory access, should be some wins in the fastmod code.

Hope this is of interest!

Regards,

--
bsunau7