RAM mining?

[shorena]

Never heard that. If someone set up it , what will happen ? It must be amazing at least.

Because it is nonsense. RAM can by definition of RAM not calculate anything, but only store information.

[JoelKatz]

Never heard that. If someone set up it , what will happen ? It must be amazing at least.

Because it is nonsense. RAM can by definition of RAM not calculate anything, but only store information.

There is almost no difference between calculating and storing/retrieving. A multiplication table can only store information, but it can also "calculate" products.

[shorena]

Never heard that. If someone set up it , what will happen ? It must be amazing at least.

Because it is nonsense. RAM can by definition of RAM not calculate anything, but only store information.

There is almost no difference between calculating and storing/retrieving. A multiplication table can only store information, but it can also "calculate" products.

There is a big difference as in: the table itself (or the thing the information is storred on) can not calculate. You can calculate more efficiently while using such a table. That does not make the paper the table is written on a calculator.

[JoelKatz]

There is a big difference as in: the table itself (or the thing the information is storred on) can not calculate. You can calculate more efficiently while using such a table. That does not make the paper the table is written on a calculator.

I disagree. The way RAM works is if you feed it an address, a number, and you get a value out, a number. The essence of calculating is converting one or more input numbers into one or more output numbers, regardless of how you do it. A lookup table is a perfectly valid way of calculating things. If you feed two one-digit numbers into something and outputs their sum, then it calculated that sum, regardless of its method.

[shorena]

There is a big difference as in: the table itself (or the thing the information is storred on) can not calculate. You can calculate more efficiently while using such a table. That does not make the paper the table is written on a calculator.

I disagree. The way RAM works is if you feed it an address, a number, and you get a value out, a number. The essence of calculating is converting one or more input numbers into one or more output numbers, regardless of how you do it. A lookup table is a perfectly valid way of calculating things. If you feed two one-digit numbers into something and outputs their sum, then it calculated that sum, regardless of its method.

Well if you consider looking up a calculation, than a phone book does a calculation for you. Yet, unless someone allready knows which person has which phonenumber there is no such book. If you want to make a big table for all possible future blocks. Be my guest.

[JoelKatz]

Well if you consider looking up a calculation, than a phone book does a calculation for you.

No, because a phone book doesn't actually look anything up, RAM does.

Yet, unless someone allready knows which person has which phonenumber there is no such book.

By that logic, CPUs don't calculate because they don't know how to do anything until they're instructed to do things.

If you want to make a big table for all possible future blocks. Be my guest.

That's the problem. The limited calculation that RAM can do is only useful for real-world crypto problems with amounts of RAM that wouldn't fit in any known universe. (Perhaps unknown ones are larger?)

[shorena]

Well if you consider looking up a calculation, than a phone book does a calculation for you.

No, because a phone book doesn't actually look anything up, RAM does.

Well that sounds like a philosophical question, but afaik the aritmetic unit does the look up, not the memory unit.

Yet, unless someone allready knows which person has which phonenumber there is no such book.

By that logic, CPUs don't calculate because they don't know how to do anything until they're instructed to do things.

No, a CPU does a calculation because it changes the input according to a cerrain pattern (given by the instructionset) to from a "new" output. It does not need to "know" that 1 + 1 = 10 it just calculates that every time. The way a CPU is build is fundementally different from a lookup table.

If you want to make a big table for all possible future blocks. Be my guest.

That's the problem. The limited calculation that RAM can do is only useful for real-world crypto problems with amounts of RAM that wouldn't fit in any known universe. (Perhaps unknown ones are larger?)

Its allways the same, either you have time or you have space. You need less time if you have more space, as its with rainbow tables. Still in my book a table is still something that was precalculated and does no calculation whatsoever.

[JoelKatz]

Its allways the same, either you have time or you have space. You need less time if you have more space, as its with rainbow tables. Still in my book a table is still something that was precalculated and does no calculation whatsoever.

So let's say you have a machine that has two wheels that can each be set for a number from zero to ten. You push a button, and an LED display lights up with the sum of those two numbers. Do you have to look inside the machine to tell if it's calculating or not?

[shorena]

Its allways the same, either you have time or you have space. You need less time if you have more space, as its with rainbow tables. Still in my book a table is still something that was precalculated and does no calculation whatsoever.

So let's say you have a machine that has two wheels that can each be set for a number from zero to ten. You push a button, and an LED display lights up with the sum of those two numbers. Do you have to look inside the machine to tell if it's calculating or not?

Yes. I dont want to go further into this because I feel every example either of us can give just confuses how a computer actually works.

Thats what we are talking about after all. RAM as in the memory unit of a von Neumann machine. Almost every computer today is von Neumann architecture. A von Neumann machine is made of: the memory unit, the control unit, the logic unit (or arithmetic logic unit). As well as input and output, which does not matter here. The control unit fetches the commands and data from the memory unit and feeds them into the logic unit, which writes a result into the memory unit.
Where is the calculation of the memory unit? Its just a place where data (and commands) come in and out.

[Omikifuse]

I'm currently looking at the possibilities for floppy mining, promising results so far!

Floppy mining? you mean floppy disk? what about USB drive mining then...

[icet208]

wow..does floppy disk`s exist anymore? interesting results

[Flashman]

No they are super, super rare, fortunately I have a small cache that I preserved for my great grandchildren. I can let one or two go at the special price of 10 BTC per drive, but that's cutting my own throat. Also available, disks at only 1 BTC each.

[3192a712e2fc58159499bc082]

A friend of mine knows a guy who knows a guy who used to mine using just a pick and a shovel.

[activebiz]

Sound like a new idea. U have to use a new algo for it

[DiamondCardz]

Guys, all those floppy miner command prompts are just them messing with ya. It's impossible to mine with memory - including RAM. It's just a way to store things, there is no computational power in RAM, Floppy Disks, Hard Drives etc.

[Flashman]

Untrue, the original ST-506 HDD controller interface had a z80 in it

I think those mine at about 0.3 Kilohash.

[Flashman]

Hmmmmm....
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=568740

Start looking for the "good" HDDs with ARMs, we gots code for them already

[Puffy23]

I see a lot of snark, with little effort into answering the OP.  While I think it's safe to say that RAM cannot actually do the processing, there is an algo that is incredibly RAM intensive while hardly touching your CPU/GPU.  The effect is that your mining power is increased by the amount of RAM rather than the speed of your CPU/GPU, essentially creating a miner you could call RAM based.

So the answer is yes.  You can mine with RAM using equihash algo.  As of now it looks like the soon to roll out Z-Cash will use this algo.

https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/blogs-media/equihash-asymmetric-proof-of-work-based-generalized-birthday-problem.pdf

"Our solution is practical and ready to deploy: a reference implementation of a proof-of-work requiring 700 MB of RAM runs in 30 seconds on a 1.8 GHz CPU, increases the computations by the factor of 1000 if memory is halved, and presents a proof of just 120 bytes long."

[jackg]

I doubt its possible, but worth a good discussion.

Would or is it possible to mine with RAM?
I understand how mining works, and understand what RAM is.

I'm just saying, I could go buy a shit load of ram and off-load it onto a dedi or two cheaper than these damn GFX cards. xD

You can do hard drive mining? I'm sure if yu can get ram drives to work in a similar way to flash drives (if that is possilbe) then it is possible to do this.
You may aswell get flash drives (SSDs/SD cards) or HDDs and do the storage/hard drive mining instead.
It'd definitely be more profitable and probably easier and cheaper to deploy.

[CoinBreader]

I'm currently looking at the possibilities for floppy mining, promising results so far!

it a 5 or 3 inch ? ? got some 3" ill start a farm