4 ms·

It actually puts compute power in perspective for me quite nicely, as GigaHashes per second (GH/s) is the most common metric in mining pools. My core i5 laptop

by indescions_2017 9y ago

It actually puts compute power in perspective for me quite nicely, as GigaHashes per second (GH/s) is the most common metric in mining pools. My core i5 laptop gets around 10MH/s. A gaming desktop with GTX1050 pushes above 100MH/s. Compare that to a state-of-the-art Antminer at ~11Th/s using 1.1kW. Estimating a large pool size of ~250 Ph/s. And the Alto's rough payout calculation of about a billionth of a penny for 2017 looks right! Any chance ethereum and zcash mining are up next for that poor old Alto that just wants to retire and dream of electric sheep?

kens 9y ago
If I understand etherium and zcash mining, they use algorithms designed to require a lot of RAM so it is ASIC-resistant. (I.e. they want mining to be practical on a PC, not requiring custom hardware.) Unfortunately for the Alto, the gigabytes of data required for mining won't fit into the 512kB memory. Even swapping to the hard disk won't work, since that only holds 2.5MB. Thus, while Bitcoin would have been possible in the 1970s, etherium and zcash wouldn't have been.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- miahi 9y ago
  Not only lots of RAM but lots of very fast RAM. This is what makes it ASIC-resistant for now (it's not hard to attach a huge RAM to an ASIC, but going for hundreds of GB/s is really expensive). So unfortunately it's GPUs for now.
  - xj9 9y ago
    \> unfortunately i think you are missing the point. the idea is to prevent ASICs from taking over. if you could build one that could mine ETH or zcash, it would be a failure from their perspective.
    - miahi 9y ago
      It's unfortunate because the GPU prices and availability right now are going nuts. I wanted to buy a GTX 1070 and it's out of stock with weeks of waiting on preorders on most European websites, with price increases of 40-50% in the last 30 days.
      - ven_bug_trap 9y ago
        In the short term it may seem more unfortunate, but the problem with expensive ASICs is that they make centralisation far easier, by making it less feasible for ordinary people to do the mining.
        Klathmon 9y ago
        The people behind sia coin believe differently [0] and after reading that I'm more inclined to believe them. The short version is that since "commodity" hardware can mine many things, you can't gauge how much power there could possibly be. Someone with 100,000 GPUs could turn their whole system to your coin and have over 50% of the hashing power for a day, then go back to whatever else the day after. With ASICs, the devices can't be used for anything other than that specific coin, so to "save up" your hashing power to sneak in a day that you can get majority hashing power would be stupid. You'd have to be giving up the income from them while you waited. The article explains it much better than I can, I really recommend it. [0] https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi=43997fdbccfc https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi...
        kens 9y ago
        What's stopping a government agency from "saving up" their hashing power so they could get majority control over Bitcoin if they needed to? Seriously, if you were the NSA, wouldn't this be a sensible thing to spend a few million dollars on? And they could use their mining hardware now, hidden through pools, so it would almost pay for itself. (Yes, I know I'm getting into tinfoil hat territory.)
- paulmd 9y ago
  > Thus, while Bitcoin would have been possible in the 1970s, etherium and zcash wouldn't have been. Not with current DAG sizes, but if this system had been available in the 70s it wouldn't have the current DAG sizes. If you assume a DAG that numbers in tens/hundreds of kbyes then it would have been workable.
le-mark 9y ago
$2500 BTC makes spending a lot of money on asics reasonable, because if prices hold, you can earn back a large spend in 6 months or so. Finding the asics to purchase becomes the problem.
deleted 9y ago
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kybernetikos 9y ago
> It actually puts compute power in perspective for me quite nicely Apparently doing it manually is about 0.67 hashes per day http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and... so it's still nearly 200,000x faster than a human with pencil and paper.

kens 9y ago

If I understand etherium and zcash mining, they use algorithms designed to require a lot of RAM so it is ASIC-resistant. (I.e. they want mining to be practical on a PC, not requiring custom hardware.) Unfortunately for the Alto, the gigabytes of data required for mining won't fit into the 512kB memory. Even swapping to the hard disk won't work, since that only holds 2.5MB. Thus, while Bitcoin would have been possible in the 1970s, etherium and zcash wouldn't have been.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
miahi 9y ago
Not only lots of RAM but lots of very fast RAM. This is what makes it ASIC-resistant for now (it's not hard to attach a huge RAM to an ASIC, but going for hundreds of GB/s is really expensive). So unfortunately it's GPUs for now.
- xj9 9y ago
  \> unfortunately i think you are missing the point. the idea is to prevent ASICs from taking over. if you could build one that could mine ETH or zcash, it would be a failure from their perspective.
  - miahi 9y ago
    It's unfortunate because the GPU prices and availability right now are going nuts. I wanted to buy a GTX 1070 and it's out of stock with weeks of waiting on preorders on most European websites, with price increases of 40-50% in the last 30 days.
    - ven_bug_trap 9y ago
      In the short term it may seem more unfortunate, but the problem with expensive ASICs is that they make centralisation far easier, by making it less feasible for ordinary people to do the mining.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        The people behind sia coin believe differently [0] and after reading that I'm more inclined to believe them. The short version is that since "commodity" hardware can mine many things, you can't gauge how much power there could possibly be. Someone with 100,000 GPUs could turn their whole system to your coin and have over 50% of the hashing power for a day, then go back to whatever else the day after. With ASICs, the devices can't be used for anything other than that specific coin, so to "save up" your hashing power to sneak in a day that you can get majority hashing power would be stupid. You'd have to be giving up the income from them while you waited. The article explains it much better than I can, I really recommend it. [0] https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi=43997fdbccfc https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi...
        kens 9y ago
        What's stopping a government agency from "saving up" their hashing power so they could get majority control over Bitcoin if they needed to? Seriously, if you were the NSA, wouldn't this be a sensible thing to spend a few million dollars on? And they could use their mining hardware now, hidden through pools, so it would almost pay for itself. (Yes, I know I'm getting into tinfoil hat territory.)
paulmd 9y ago
> Thus, while Bitcoin would have been possible in the 1970s, etherium and zcash wouldn't have been. Not with current DAG sizes, but if this system had been available in the 70s it wouldn't have the current DAG sizes. If you assume a DAG that numbers in tens/hundreds of kbyes then it would have been workable.

le-mark 9y ago

$2500 BTC makes spending a lot of money on asics reasonable, because if prices hold, you can earn back a large spend in 6 months or so. Finding the asics to purchase becomes the problem.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kybernetikos 9y ago

> It actually puts compute power in perspective for me quite nicely Apparently doing it manually is about 0.67 hashes per day http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and... so it's still nearly 200,000x faster than a human with pencil and paper.