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The Evolution of Bitcoin Hardware [pdf]
- doots 9y agoMichael Bedford Taylor misrepresents the most important aspect of these "ASIC clouds" and the bitcoin algorithm; the puzzle of the algorithm is incredibly simple. Every implementation of a Bitcoin miner simply generates a bunch of random guesses to the hash equation. On page 60, graph (a) Professor Taylor uses distorted manipulative log charts for finance. The chart on page 61 is the most insanely manipulative chart I could ever imagine to represent the history and progression of Bitcoin mining in relation to hardware speed. Try charting watts per block over time. ROI in BTC for a core i5 over time newly minted coins per user over time Michael also doesn't understand or chooses to misinform the reader and the journal about "computational demand scaling with the number of users" The Bitcoin network grows increasingly inefficient with any additional computer hash power added, and as more users use it, it clogs due to limited bandwidth and inefficiencies of the algorithm. Additional hardware speed does nothing to scale with network growth, actually the complete opposite occurs as it requires more (energy, computer resources) to do the same thing (transactions) per second for less (rewards per user). The result of all these aspects point towards a system of rules that exploits new, uninformed users to benefit "early adopters". Sad but not surprising to realize this guy is a professor at the University of Washington. Is Michael Bedford Taylor promoting something here through intentional misdirection and omission of basic facts to manipulate readers? Would Professor Michael Bedford Taylor be under a conflict of interest if he sells Bitcoins?
- godelmachine 9y agoPages 60 & 61? I count only 9 pages.
- pjc50 9y agoThe pages have embedded numbers implying it's an excerpt from a magazine.
- yorwba 9y agoUsing log charts is appropriate for data that spans multiple orders of magnitude. I don't know why you complain about distortion, unless you think the data itself is wrong?
- posterboy 9y agoThe built-in increase of difficulty proportional to new blocks is well known
- doots 9y agoTo who? This is an academic article, making that assumption would be negligent.
- tw1010 9y agoAmazing what innovations naturally spring out from nothing once the incentives are in place.
- heavenlyblue 9y agoInnovations?
- heavenlyblue 9y agoThere's absolutely 0 innovation in creating new hardware for Bitcoin mining: the only thing that stop us from having it is the economies of scale. Please stop mistaking one for another.
- tw1010 9y agoI think bias is making you more unfair than you need to be.
- ceejayoz 9y agoYou could support that by pointing out what you feel the actual innovations involved in Bitcoin hardware are.
- brighton36 9y agoFaith routing, amongst those who are underserved or disenchanted with incumbent faith routing providers.
- ceejayoz 9y agoCould you elaborate on that? I've never heard the term and Googling isn't being helpful. https://www.google.com/search?q="faith+routing"+bitcoin https://www.google.com/search?q="faith+routing"+bitcoin https://www.google.com/search?q="faith+routing"+cryptocurrency https://www.google.com/search?q="faith+routing"+cryptocurren...
- 9y ago
- lnsru 9y agoNice history of money printing machines. Very nice and very easy FPGA application back then, just 2 sha256 pipes. Is there something worth pursuing nowadays for FPGAs? Machine learning?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- simias 9y agoFPGAs are worth it for anything that's too fast for software and is too niche for an ASIC. In my experience they are very popular for "pro tools" which are too specialized and don't have a large enough volume to justify creating an ASIC and are so expensive that the price of the BoM is not really a concern. For instance I work on products that do a lot of video processing on FPGAs (way too high bandwidth for software, too specialized for an ASIC). Now if you look at consumer electronics you obviously won't find many FPGAs. Too expensive, too power hungry, too costly and at large scales ASICs are a better match.
- abakker 9y agoBernie Meyers of IBM once told me that he believed FPGA would be the future of Moore's law. he felt strongly that they provided a performance and flexibility tradeoff that made them ideal for using in virtually all servers as coprocessors for certain functions. The fact that the FPGA code can be audited was a plus as well.
- jacquesm 9y agoYou can audit the FPGA code but good luck auditing the bitstream and those tools are all closed. Even for a small FPGA this would be quite a task.
- simias 9y agoI'm curious about what Intel will do now that they own Altera. Maybe they'll be able to push FPGA technology into mainstream CPUs.
- k__ 9y agoHow long will it take till I can buy GPUs again?
- dpc_pw 9y agoGPUs are no longer used for Bitcoin mining. The recent GPU shortage is caused by the raise of thousands of little altcoins. It's obviously unsustainable, and it's going to end in a big crash, and all these GPUs will flood the market. It's hard to predict when it's going to happen (I'm guessing this year), but if you're patient you will be able to buy GPUs very cheaply.
- rdl 9y agoI wouldn't consider Ethereum to be "a little altcoin". While there may be a correction in the market, I don't think it will be "bitcoin vs. everything else"; at this point it would probably be all cryptocurrencies, or something more specific (individual coins, or classes, but probably not "scrypt-based coins as a class")