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lfm (OP)
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August 09, 2010, 06:46:46 AM |
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The VIA C7 is a little x86 type CPU sorta intended to compete with the Intel Nano I think except it has some special builtin crypto features including SHA256 instructions.
So I hacked up Satoshi's code and got it to do the mining using the buil;tin instructions. It went from 293 Khash/s to 1590 Khash/s.
This on a motherboard with the cpu included costing $65 (you can prolly find it for less too). It should be real good on power consumption too.
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jgarzik
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August 09, 2010, 06:56:12 AM |
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Jeff Garzik, Bloq CEO, former bitcoin core dev team; opinions are my own.
Visit bloq.com / metronome.io
Donations / tip jar: 1BrufViLKnSWtuWGkryPsKsxonV2NQ7Tcj
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Ground Loop
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August 09, 2010, 07:58:33 AM |
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Nice work!
I'd be very curious to know the system power consumption while mining.
It's not hard to imagine that 10 VIA C7's would consume much less power than some of the 10,000 khash/s server-class machines generating heat.
Someone looking to invest in a super-node might find a unique hardware building block in your work.
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Bitcoin accepted here: 1HrAmQk9EuH3Ak6ugsw3qi3g23DG6YUNPq
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lfm (OP)
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August 09, 2010, 08:34:11 AM
Last edit: August 09, 2010, 08:47:17 AM by lfm |
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I'd be very curious to know the system power consumption while mining.
It's not hard to imagine that 10 VIA C7's would consume much less power than some of the 10,000 khash/s server-class machines generating heat.
Someone looking to invest in a super-node might find a unique hardware building block in your work.
It seems to run on 27 watts. Thats including 1 gB ram and actually two hard drives and keyboard and mouse but not including the monitor. Not sure off hand what the power supply is but I think its just a cheap one, not an ultra-efficient one. It is running at 1.8 GHz. By comparison I have a couple quad core intel systems that take 135 to 200 watts. The 27 watts is measured from the UPS LED display (geek squad 1500). When not running anything special (idle loop) the UPS watt meter goes right to zero watts! I guess is like less than 1 watt (it displays 1 watt increments) although I'm not certain of the accuracy. The UPS is probably using more to keep the UPS battery charged than the computer is using on idle. |
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teknohog
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August 09, 2010, 01:36:26 PM |
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The VIA C7 is a little x86 type CPU sorta intended to compete with the Intel Nano I think except it has some special builtin crypto features including SHA256 instructions.
So I hacked up Satoshi's code and got it to do the mining using the buil;tin instructions. It went from 293 Khash/s to 1590 Khash/s.
Nice work! Just to clear up a confusion, you probably mean Intel Atom. However, there is a Via Nano, which implements x86-64 and there are other notable improvements over the 32-bit C7. So it is probably a more interesting option if you are buying a new system. Of course, Via Nano also has the crypto engine, likely improved as well. |
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lfm (OP)
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August 09, 2010, 05:32:40 PM |
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The VIA C7 is a little x86 type CPU sorta intended to compete with the Intel Nano I think except it has some special builtin crypto features including SHA256 instructions.
So I hacked up Satoshi's code and got it to do the mining using the buil;tin instructions. It went from 293 Khash/s to 1590 Khash/s.
Nice work! Just to clear up a confusion, you probably mean Intel Atom. However, there is a Via Nano, which implements x86-64 and there are other notable improvements over the 32-bit C7. So it is probably a more interesting option if you are buying a new system. Of course, Via Nano also has the crypto engine, likely improved as well. Yes, the Atom, blush. I looked for a Nano in a comparable motherboard package but couldn't find one in the places I looked. It may be more expensive too. I have the Biostar VIOTECH 3100+. |
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throughput
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August 10, 2010, 09:19:23 AM |
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BTW, anybody having enough skill may contribute to the open sourced hardware design
for parallel bitcoin mining on a single core, that will be the most cost-effective solution.
After all, there are only 64 rounds in SHA-256, that can be perfectly pipelined on a hardware, as my imagination suggests.
And there may be several such pipelines on a core...
Sorry, I'm not an hardware design expert after all.
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sgtstein
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August 10, 2010, 02:53:34 PM |
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An update to anyone following this. I have the code from lfm and paid him the bounty I put out there. Excellent work that I couldn't do at the time. No I'm stepping through the code to find any other optimizations and check the generation. I have the same board as lfm but am only seeing ~700kh/s. Could be the OS(Gentoo w/ custom kernel) but I am doubtful. I will be installing with xubuntu and seeing if that makes a difference.
Also, I will upload the source to my server as soon as I can.
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omegadraconis
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August 15, 2010, 03:25:48 AM |
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I was wondering if there was any update to this as I have a c7 cpu and would like to use this to crunch a few extra khashes on the machine. Is the code working properly? What motherboards are you two running?
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lfm (OP)
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August 15, 2010, 03:38:30 AM |
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I was wondering if there was any update to this as I have a c7 cpu and would like to use this to crunch a few extra khashes on the machine. Is the code working properly? What motherboards are you two running?
It hasn't actually generated any blocks for me yet, so I'm not absolutely certain its working right. I have the Biostar VIOTECH 3100+ motherboard. |
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aceat64
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August 15, 2010, 05:16:22 AM |
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I was wondering if there was any update to this as I have a c7 cpu and would like to use this to crunch a few extra khashes on the machine. Is the code working properly? What motherboards are you two running?
It hasn't actually generated any blocks for me yet, so I'm not absolutely certain its working right. I have the Biostar VIOTECH 3100+ motherboard. Have you tried pairing it with another node with no block chain to see if you can generate "block #2"? |
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sgtstein
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August 15, 2010, 11:56:54 AM |
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I haven't had mine running constantly but haven't generated anything either. The code is available http://75.149.150.33/bc-c7.tar.gz. |
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lfm (OP)
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August 18, 2010, 06:37:29 PM |
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I was wondering if there was any update to this as I have a c7 cpu and would like to use this to crunch a few extra khashes on the machine. Is the code working properly? What motherboards are you two running?
It hasn't actually generated any blocks for me yet, so I'm not absolutely certain its working right. I have the Biostar VIOTECH 3100+ motherboard. Have you tried pairing it with another node with no block chain to see if you can generate "block #2"? Ya, I am doing that now. There are some problems with the posed code. It doesn't produce acceptable block hashes ye. The speed should still be the same when I get it working right I think. |
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lfm (OP)
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August 21, 2010, 05:05:34 AM |
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I was wondering if there was any update to this as I have a c7 cpu and would like to use this to crunch a few extra khashes on the machine. Is the code working properly? What motherboards are you two running?
I just got the VIA-C7 code running in bitcoin 0.3.10 today. I think sgtstein will be putting it up in a public download site real soon now. If you can't wait I guess I can send you a copy. Just ask. It is verified to generate blocks in a closed 2 node new chain system but I haven't had any luck generating blocks in the public chain yet. |
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BioMike
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August 23, 2010, 05:39:07 AM |
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Just a question. I Have a VIA Epia MII with a C3 processor (with padlock). Will this also work on that? Or is this nothing to bother with? |
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teknohog
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October 21, 2010, 08:14:15 PM |
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Is the C7 code still available somewhere? The above IP address does not work. I am getting a Via Nano system, and this would be interesting for playing around and learning (an old version is fine), even though there are much better hardware choices for serious mining. |
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sgtstein
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October 22, 2010, 01:31:47 AM |
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I can find the link and post it up again.
Edit: The link works again. Something changed on my host but is just fine now.
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lfm (OP)
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October 22, 2010, 05:24:03 AM |
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Is the C7 code still available somewhere? The above IP address does not work. I am getting a Via Nano system, and this would be interesting for playing around and learning (an old version is fine), even though there are much better hardware choices for serious mining. you can try http://www3.telus.net/millerlf/bitcoin-c7.tar.gz too. Have fun. |
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lfm (OP)
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October 22, 2010, 05:25:59 AM |
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Is the C7 code still available somewhere? The above IP address does not work. I am getting a Via Nano system, and this would be interesting for playing around and learning (an old version is fine), even though there are much better hardware choices for serious mining. BTW if you are getting a nano it supports more than the C7 with respect to breaking up the hash operations into separate steps. The C7 code should work but you can do better with the nano. |
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