4 ms·

The flash has never been touched right? Aren’t they functionally ‘new’?

by a2tech 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago
https://www.pcgamer.com/chia-mining-can-wreck-a-512gb-ssd-in-as-little-as-6-weeks/ https://www.pcgamer.com/chia-mining-can-wreck-a-512gb-ssd-in... > Chia farming is a write-intensive activity. Speed matters, so the most common strategy is to use an SSD for creating plots, because SSDs are much faster than HDDs, and then transfer them to an HDD once completed. > Chia is a different animal, though. According to MyDrivers, mining Chia can trash a 512GB in 40 days, while a 1TB SSD lasts twice as long, and a 2TB SSD can give up the ghost in just 160 days, or barely over five months.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Does that mean that bigger disk doesn't actually increase the speed which currency is generated?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    You'd be limited by write speed.
  - qeternity 5y ago
    A bigger disk means you can store more "plots", which are the the files necessary for proof-of-storage, and thus makes it more likely that you will earn a block reward.. But in order to first generate these plots, you have to "farm" them which is a very write intensive process which is ultimately what is at focus here. The creation of these files requires so much writing that you are basically writing as fast as your CPU can, until the drive dies.
  - ahnick 5y ago
    The amount of XCH (Chia's currency) generated is a constant 64 Chia every 10 minutes. You can find this under the Chia Business Whitepaper (https://www.chia.net/assets/Chia-Business-Whitepaper-2021-02-09-v1.0.pdf https://www.chia.net/assets/Chia-Business-Whitepaper-2021-02...) in the section "Post-launch Chia Emission Schedule". If you have a bigger disk that is filled with plots, then you are increasing the security of the network and thereby increasing the odds that you will win the block reward. For example, if you had 36EiB of space filled with plots then you would be equal to the entirety of the current Netspace of the Chia Network. (https://www.chiaexplorer.com/blockchain/blocks https://www.chiaexplorer.com/blockchain/blocks) So you would win the reward half the time and the rest of the network would win the reward the other half of the time. (i.e. 32 XCH every 10 minutes) Of course, this is an absurd example, as to obtain that amount of space it would probably cost you on the order of $20 billion just to procure the equipment, but at least it should give you an idea about how disk size works in regards to Chia.
- genewitch 5y ago
  Let's say I have 1.5TB of ram, can I just do this in tmpfs? The reason this eats SSD is because they have to physically heat a chip to erase, right? Also, does anyone want to buy my server with space for 1.5TB of ram? The 425W of idle power usage became too much and I am moving to Ryzen 5950k
  - wmf 5y ago
    Yes, last I checked you need ~300GB of scratch space to plot.
humps 5y ago
Not according to this https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chia-crypto-farming-can-destroy-ssds https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chia-crypto-farming-can-de...
sithadmin 5y ago
The opposite of this. Chia is rather aggressive about issuing writes to disk and quickly chews through consumer grade SSDs' write endurance.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  There's a difference between creating new "plots" to farm and farming an existing plot. The former is very write intensive, the latter is a pure read workload.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Well, yeah, that's why you use hard drives for storing plots (waiting for the distributed lottery to draw your plot's number) while continuously generating new lottery tickets on the SSDs.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Still, one of the coin's selling points is that low-energy for farming and verifying transactions. That is kind of moot if there's an economic incentive to burn SSDs to get your hands on these eco-friendly coins.
- mangecoeur 5y ago
  For something that was supposed to be more “green” this seems like a very obvious oversight
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing "Dishonesty? In my crypto? It's more likely than you think."
    - rapind 5y ago
      Reminds me of the argument this guy was making recently https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/link-global-bitcoin-mine-alberta-1.6137731 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/link-global-bitcoin-m... > "We look at, OK, what can we do to use this in a beneficial way … I don't want to say we're in the business of methane destruction, but we're in the business of beneficial use of that potential methane-generating source. You combust it properly. You don't flare it, and you control those emissions," Jenkins said.

The flash has never been touched right? Aren’t they functionally ‘new’?

by a2tech 5y ago

The flash has never been touched right? Aren’t they functionally ‘new’?

https://www.pcgamer.com/chia-mining-can-wreck-a-512gb-ssd-in-as-little-as-6-weeks/ https://www.pcgamer.com/chia-mining-can-wreck-a-512gb-ssd-in... > Chia farming is a write-intensive activity. Speed matters, so the most common strategy is to use an SSD for creating plots, because SSDs are much faster than HDDs, and then transfer them to an HDD once completed. > Chia is a different animal, though. According to MyDrivers, mining Chia can trash a 512GB in 40 days, while a 1TB SSD lasts twice as long, and a 2TB SSD can give up the ghost in just 160 days, or barely over five months.

Ekaros 5y ago
Does that mean that bigger disk doesn't actually increase the speed which currency is generated?
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  You'd be limited by write speed.
- qeternity 5y ago
  A bigger disk means you can store more "plots", which are the the files necessary for proof-of-storage, and thus makes it more likely that you will earn a block reward.. But in order to first generate these plots, you have to "farm" them which is a very write intensive process which is ultimately what is at focus here. The creation of these files requires so much writing that you are basically writing as fast as your CPU can, until the drive dies.
- ahnick 5y ago
  The amount of XCH (Chia's currency) generated is a constant 64 Chia every 10 minutes. You can find this under the Chia Business Whitepaper (https://www.chia.net/assets/Chia-Business-Whitepaper-2021-02-09-v1.0.pdf https://www.chia.net/assets/Chia-Business-Whitepaper-2021-02...) in the section "Post-launch Chia Emission Schedule". If you have a bigger disk that is filled with plots, then you are increasing the security of the network and thereby increasing the odds that you will win the block reward. For example, if you had 36EiB of space filled with plots then you would be equal to the entirety of the current Netspace of the Chia Network. (https://www.chiaexplorer.com/blockchain/blocks https://www.chiaexplorer.com/blockchain/blocks) So you would win the reward half the time and the rest of the network would win the reward the other half of the time. (i.e. 32 XCH every 10 minutes) Of course, this is an absurd example, as to obtain that amount of space it would probably cost you on the order of $20 billion just to procure the equipment, but at least it should give you an idea about how disk size works in regards to Chia.
genewitch 5y ago
Let's say I have 1.5TB of ram, can I just do this in tmpfs? The reason this eats SSD is because they have to physically heat a chip to erase, right? Also, does anyone want to buy my server with space for 1.5TB of ram? The 425W of idle power usage became too much and I am moving to Ryzen 5950k
- wmf 5y ago
  Yes, last I checked you need ~300GB of scratch space to plot.

humps 5y ago

Not according to this https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chia-crypto-farming-can-destroy-ssds https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chia-crypto-farming-can-de...

sithadmin 5y ago

The opposite of this. Chia is rather aggressive about issuing writes to disk and quickly chews through consumer grade SSDs' write endurance.

zozbot234 5y ago
There's a difference between creating new "plots" to farm and farming an existing plot. The former is very write intensive, the latter is a pure read workload.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Well, yeah, that's why you use hard drives for storing plots (waiting for the distributed lottery to draw your plot's number) while continuously generating new lottery tickets on the SSDs.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Still, one of the coin's selling points is that low-energy for farming and verifying transactions. That is kind of moot if there's an economic incentive to burn SSDs to get your hands on these eco-friendly coins.
mangecoeur 5y ago
For something that was supposed to be more “green” this seems like a very obvious oversight
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing "Dishonesty? In my crypto? It's more likely than you think."
  - rapind 5y ago
    Reminds me of the argument this guy was making recently https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/link-global-bitcoin-mine-alberta-1.6137731 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/link-global-bitcoin-m... > "We look at, OK, what can we do to use this in a beneficial way … I don't want to say we're in the business of methane destruction, but we're in the business of beneficial use of that potential methane-generating source. You combust it properly. You don't flare it, and you control those emissions," Jenkins said.