Will bitcoin ASIC mining lead to litecoin or namecoin adoption ?

[someguy123]

It seems to me if GPU or FPGA will be useless mining bitcoin that they might look at mining on alt chains provided there is some return rather than selling the cards. Can you mine alt coins with an ASIC ? It seems if theres a change in the algo they are useless ?

but namecoin isnt a change in algo last time i checked, it was just a seperate chain

Yeah, NMC uses the same algorithm as bitcoin, the only difference is that it has a different use to bitcoin (i.e. buying .bit's)

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[2112]

Scrypt, and therefore Litecoin, is highly resistant to GPU, FPGA and ASIC acceleration because of its high memory requirements.

I don't buy this argument.

Quote from scrypt.c:

const int scrypt_scratchpad_size = 131583;
char scratchpad[scrypt_scratchpad_size];

Quote from XC6LX150 data sheet:

Total Block RAM (kb) = 4824

converting bits to bytes I'm getting 617472, which would make litecoin hasher easily fit into the popular Spartan-6 chip already in hands of many miners.

[bulanula]

Scrypt, and therefore Litecoin, is highly resistant to GPU, FPGA and ASIC acceleration because of its high memory requirements.

I don't buy this argument.

Quote from scrypt.c:

const int scrypt_scratchpad_size = 131583;
char scratchpad[scrypt_scratchpad_size];

Quote from XC6LX150 data sheet:

Total Block RAM (kb) = 4824

converting bits to bytes I'm getting 617472, which would make litecoin hasher easily fit into the popular Spartan-6 chip already in hands of many miners.

Reality is people are probably mining with FPGA on LTC already but they are not telling the rest of us.

Just like SC crew were GPU mining LTC and not telling. Of course, the first LTC GPU miner was ArtForz loser just like with BTC he reaped all the profits and raped the rest of us stupidotos.

[smoothie]

Scrypt, and therefore Litecoin, is highly resistant to GPU, FPGA and ASIC acceleration because of its high memory requirements.

I don't buy this argument.

Quote from scrypt.c:

const int scrypt_scratchpad_size = 131583;
char scratchpad[scrypt_scratchpad_size];

Quote from XC6LX150 data sheet:

Total Block RAM (kb) = 4824

converting bits to bytes I'm getting 617472, which would make litecoin hasher easily fit into the popular Spartan-6 chip already in hands of many miners.

Reality is people are probably mining with FPGA on LTC already but they are not telling the rest of us.

Just like SC crew were GPU mining LTC and not telling. Of course, the first LTC GPU miner was ArtForz loser just like with BTC he reaped all the profits and raped the rest of us stupidotos.

Bro...seriously...you are the only "stupidoto" around here!!

[pooler]

Scrypt, and therefore Litecoin, is highly resistant to GPU, FPGA and ASIC acceleration because of its high memory requirements.

I don't buy this argument.

Quote from scrypt.c:

const int scrypt_scratchpad_size = 131583;
char scratchpad[scrypt_scratchpad_size];

Quote from XC6LX150 data sheet:

Total Block RAM (kb) = 4824

converting bits to bytes I'm getting 617472, which would make litecoin hasher easily fit into the popular Spartan-6 chip already in hands of many miners.

I don't have much experience with FPGAs, but two questions come to mind.

1. How fast is this RAM? Is it fast enough to compete with the L2 cache of modern CPUs?

2. GPUs manage to compensate the lack of local memory by means of massive parallelization, but a lot of global memory is required to do this. If I'm not mistaken, this global memory usually consists of GDDR5 SDRAM, which is still relatively fast. Would it be profitable to make an FPGA with that much quality SDRAM, or would it be cheaper to just get a GPU instead?

[Litecoin]

Scrypt, and therefore Litecoin, is highly resistant to GPU, FPGA and ASIC acceleration because of its high memory requirements.

I don't buy this argument.

Quote from scrypt.c:

const int scrypt_scratchpad_size = 131583;
char scratchpad[scrypt_scratchpad_size];

Quote from XC6LX150 data sheet:

Total Block RAM (kb) = 4824

converting bits to bytes I'm getting 617472, which would make litecoin hasher easily fit into the popular Spartan-6 chip already in hands of many miners.

I don't have much experience with FPGAs, but two questions come to mind.

1. How fast is this RAM? Is it fast enough to compete with the L2 cache of modern CPUs?

2. GPUs manage to compensate the lack of local memory by means of massive parallelization, but a lot of global memory is required to do this. If I'm not mistaken, this global memory usually consists of GDDR5 SDRAM, which is still relatively fast. Would it be profitable to make an FPGA with that much quality SDRAM, or would it be cheaper to just get a GPU instead?

Pooler, I wouldn't say that it requires a lot of global memory to get it working.
My 69XX cards are pulling 500KH/s each, these settings are used for 512MB buffer. "(lookup_gap 2) (gpu_thread_concurrency 8192.)" It will use +500MB of Dedicated VRAM when running.
Now, I was trying to get Reaper running on my laptop. I had to lower the worksize to 64, gpu_thread_concurreny to 768 and increase lookup_gap to 8 to get my HD 4670 Mobility running. Its working now and pulling 40-50KH/s and its only using 12MB of VRAM. Yes, only 12MB and I think it can run on less than that. Also that poor card has very low memory bandwidth, 25GB/s.
I more than sure that modified FPGA's can mine litecoins and we don't need super fast bandwith and huge amount of global memory.

~R.H~

[2112]

1. How fast is this RAM? Is it fast enough to compete with the L2 cache of modern CPUs?

First of all Spartan-6 by itself isn't something that would compete with modern CPU. This is a 45nm device targeted to be cheap and power-efficient.

The absolute maximum for clock is 1080MHz, but only a fraction of the device can run at this speed because the chip doesn't have the heath spreader.

Internal block RAM is a dual-ported SRAM rated at 320MHz zero-wait-state access. When people synthesize soft-CPUs on Xilinx FPGAs they use it as L1 cache or simply there's no cache and the whole RAM is 536kB that is on chip.

2. GPUs manage to compensate the lack of local memory by means of massive parallelization, but a lot of global memory is required to do this. If I'm not mistaken, this global memory usually consists of GDDR5 SDRAM, which is still relatively fast. Would it be profitable to make an FPGA with that much quality SDRAM, or would it be cheaper to just get a GPU instead?

Spartan-6 LX150 has 4 memory controller blocks that can control single-chip external DRAM (DDR, DDR2, DDR3, and LPDDR) up to 800Mtps.

But currently only ztex (and maybe Enterpoint) make boards that have external DRAM chips, and those aren't the boards in the hands of most miners.

Besides, emulating CPU or GPU in FPGA isn't the architectural road to take the advantage of the famed power efficiency of the FPGAs. Those devices achieve their optimum efficiency at relatively low clock speeds by doing maximum usefull work per clock and minimizing the on-chip logical resources that aren't used.

[pooler]

Scrypt, and therefore Litecoin, is highly resistant to GPU, FPGA and ASIC acceleration because of its high memory requirements.

I wouldn't say "highly" in absolute terms, but I do think it is much more ASIC-resistant (in terms of cost-effectiveness) than SHA-256.

In practice, an SHA-256 ASIC needs no memory at all. The non-negligible memory requirements of scrypt, on the contrary, make CPUs and GPUs more similar to an ideal scrypt ASIC, because fewer of their components are "useless" when it comes to hashing.
The simple fact that a scrypt ASIC would need to resemble more closely a CPU by having relatively large amounts (N * 128 kB) of random-access memory would, logically, make it more expensive than a zero-memory SHA-256 ASIC achieving the same speedup over existing CPUs.

[doobadoo]

The adoption of ASIC by bitcoin miners will push GPU and fpga miners somewhere else. My thinking is it will be litecoin because namecoin is merge mined.

Protip: Buy/Mine all the  litecoins you can before October.

I'll have something to roll my pumpkin futures profit into!  I've been buying steadily and watching the price rise.  It think it should peak around November or December...

[bitcoinfrenzy]

this may be a really stupid question, but what is ASIC mining and why is it important?

[smoothie]

this may be a really stupid question, but what is ASIC mining and why is it important?

application specific integrated circuit

[bitcoinfrenzy]

ok thanks,  but what does it mean in practical terms?  why is everyone talking about it?  what effects will it have on the bitcoin world?  thanks in advance!

[Explodicle]

ok thanks,  but what does it mean in practical terms?  why is everyone talking about it?  what effects will it have on the bitcoin world?  thanks in advance!

CPU : GPU :: GPU : FPGA :: FPGA : ASIC

As the market matures, mining will progress towards more and more specialized hardware. This will allow for a greater hashrate given the same price.

CPU is general purpose
GPU is for several specific applications (mostly games)
FPGA is for even fewer applications, great at crypto
ASIC models will be made specifically with Bitcoin in mind

Bitcoin ASICs are controversial because at first one company will have a temporary monopoly on their manufacture. Expect a big boost in hash rate, and more people complaining about that monopoly until more manufacturers enter the market. Since this makes CPU even MORE obsolete, expect fewer botnet miners and more professional miners with lower profits - which in the long run goes to zero.

Really it sucks for miners but is great for users.

[bitcoinfrenzy]

ok thanks,  but what does it mean in practical terms?  why is everyone talking about it?  what effects will it have on the bitcoin world?  thanks in advance!

CPU : GPU :: GPU : FPGA :: FPGA : ASIC

As the market matures, mining will progress towards more and more specialized hardware. This will allow for a greater hashrate given the same price.

CPU is general purpose
GPU is for several specific applications (mostly games)
FPGA is for even fewer applications, great at crypto
ASIC models will be made specifically with Bitcoin in mind

Bitcoin ASICs are controversial because at first one company will have a temporary monopoly on their manufacture. Expect a big boost in hash rate, and more people complaining about that monopoly until more manufacturers enter the market. Since this makes CPU even MORE obsolete, expect fewer botnet miners and more professional miners with lower profits - which in the long run goes to zero.

Really it sucks for miners but is great for users.

Ok, thanks.  Very informative.  Why is it good for users to have a boost in hash rate?  Also, I still don't understand what ASIC is, it's better hardware that's designed specifically for mining bitcoins?  It involves better software too or no?  What makes ASIC so much better?  How much faster will it be at mining?  Is there some place where I can read lay discussion of this issue, I'm not that technically advanced.  Thanks!

[pooler]

Why is it good for users to have a boost in hash rate?

A higher global hash rate usually means a more secure network (assuming the hardware is not used against the network, of course).

Also, I still don't understand what ASIC is, it's better hardware that's designed specifically for mining bitcoins?

Yes. It is much faster and more power-efficient.

It involves better software too or no?

No, it's a purely hardware thing.

How much faster will it be at mining?  Is there some place where I can read lay discussion of this issue, I'm not that technically advanced.  Thanks!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87934.0

[bitcoinfrenzy]

Thanks, very helpful!

Does anyone know if the USB coffee warmer thing will work with macs?

[smoothie]

Thanks, very helpful!

Does anyone know if the USB coffee warmer thing will work with macs?

Does anyone know when the ASICS being produced will hit the market approximately?

Are they being pre ordered now?

[Bitcoin Oz]

Thanks, very helpful!

Does anyone know if the USB coffee warmer thing will work with macs?

Does anyone know when the ASICS being produced will hit the market approximately?

Are they being pre ordered now?

Apparently they are supposed to start shipping in october. There is a preorder form on bfl site.

I havent mined since you could do so with a cpu 

[smoothie]

Thanks, very helpful!

Does anyone know if the USB coffee warmer thing will work with macs?

Does anyone know when the ASICS being produced will hit the market approximately?

Are they being pre ordered now?

Apparently they are supposed to start shipping in october. There is a preorder form on bfl site.

I havent mined since you could do so with a cpu 

So this is my prediction, that when early November rolls around and many of the ASICS have been delivered and put to mining bitcoins and with all the market fluctuations that will happen with this being an election year around the same time I suspect the difficulty of bitcoin will rise dramatically. Price is a variable because it could rise before in anticipation of the difficulty rising.

Should be an interesting second half of 2012 in the financial markets as well as the commodities and cryptocurrency markets.

[Bitcoin Oz]

Thanks, very helpful!

Does anyone know if the USB coffee warmer thing will work with macs?

Does anyone know when the ASICS being produced will hit the market approximately?

Are they being pre ordered now?

Apparently they are supposed to start shipping in october. There is a preorder form on bfl site.

I havent mined since you could do so with a cpu 

So this is my prediction, that when early November rolls around and many of the ASICS have been delivered and put to mining bitcoins and with all the market fluctuations that will happen with this being an election year around the same time I suspect the difficulty of bitcoin will rise dramatically. Price is a variable because it could rise before in anticipation of the difficulty rising.

Should be an interesting second half of 2012 in the financial markets as well as the commodities and cryptocurrency markets.

At least your coffee will be warm. Dont know about your wallet