How are dev fee's included into firmware?

[bommachine]

Hi,

Wondering if anyone knows how developer fees are included into asic miner firmware? Are they baked into the compiled version of Cgminer.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Sort of. It is coded into the driver that cgminer uses to interface with a miner. More specifically it uses the #xnonce function to parallel mine to a different account (the dev ones). That in itself is one of the issues (using #xnonce) [edit: or is it #xnsub?] some folks have with the software as it opens a security hole to do work - ANY work, not just mining - that is invisible to the operator of the miner.

[bommachine]

thank you that is very helpfu. So in theory you can replace cgminer  and remove dev fee.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

No, you can replace the driver that cgminer uses and use the OEM one but that would most likely break the modified cgminer code. cgminer is a generic mining program that relies on a driver to communicate with a miner. Each kind of miner has a custom driver that is written for it and that driver is (well, was) the 'secret sauce' that the manufacturers do not want released.

One has to assume that you are using non-OEM firmware for various reasons such as tweaking speeds & chip voltages. However if you change cgminer - or the driver - you lose those supposed advantages to the firmware making it a rather pointless excercise.