ASICS for Bitcoin/Ethereum?
26 Jan 2019 13:15:50 UTC
Topic 218021
(moderation:
Are ASICS good for E@H? There are many 'farms' simply throwing them away, mostly due the losses. I was thinking maybe they could be used here... What do you know?
ASIC aka "mining board chips"
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ASIC aka "mining board chips" are USELESS except for their original programmed purpose and can not be used for any BOINC project.
ASIC = Application Specific Integrated Circuit
An Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC /ˈeɪsɪk/) is an integrated circuit (IC) customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficiency bitcoin miner is an ASIC. Application-specific standard products (ASSPs) are intermediate between ASICs and industry standard integrated circuits like the 7400 series or the 4000 series.[1]
John wrote:Are ASICS good for
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Dr Who Fan is right BUT if you can get a good one cheap enough they may be worth it if mining ever comes back into vogue again. Right now it costs more in electricity to make a coin then the coin is worth, but in the future who knows what the price will be. Unless that is if you have access to free electricity then you just have to be very careful what you put your money in, Bitcoin for example has come down from a high in the above $10KUS range to the low $3kUS range right now.
mikey wrote:... but in the
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As an economist would say : Bitcoin is approaching its ultimate value. :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Mike Hewson wrote:mikey
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LOL!!
Hi, thank for that link Dr.
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Hi, thank for that link Dr. WHO. It was a rookie question ha ha but I really hoped some sort of tuning could be made.
@ Mike H. - we have to stick to the topic (which is not the BTC's value), not move away from it. Maybe you'll introduce us that "economist"! LOL
Mea culpa ..... :-) To be
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Mea culpa ..... :-)
To be specific a mining ASIC does one thing very well and that is to calculate the output of a hash function from given inputs. Most of an E@H work unit is spent doing Fourier transforms from given inputs. A miner wants to find an output beginning & ending in several zeroes given an input added to a random value. At E@H we look for regularities in data streams. Quite different tasks.
A hash function is simultaneously a mathematical beauty and a horror. Inputs nearby in some parameter space lead to wildly separated outputs. Suppose there was only one gold deposit/mine ever on the planet, but a hash function had taken each gold atom and put it somewhere else on the planet's surface. Adjacent gold atoms become separated in a particular way that is repeatable, but there is no way ( known ) of predicting their separation. You have to laboriously go through the hash function to find out. A miner just throws darts in the hope of hitting the right gold atom mixed up with non-gold atoms. Plus there is a time limit to the job, a matter of mere minutes to be the first to find a particular solution. A cruel business really.
Comparing that to the Fourier Transform just doesn't work. Fourier is 'nice' and 'linear', the mappings of adjacent points are also adjacent points. You get continuity, differentiability etc.
You can get ASICs for Fourier transforms which would be of no assistance in BTC mining. You could use the mining ASICs for other hash related operations though.
Again, from our friend the economist : in a gold rush, sell spades ! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Mike Hewson wrote:... from
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I thought he said, "In a coin rush, sell ASICs." :-)
Cheers,
Gary.