[HH] Bitcoin mining hardware

[Kurt Keville]

It would be interesting to see if this ends up delivering us a commodity processor dedicated to Double Precision math... that would be a game changer in HPC no doubt... bitcoin seems to require that level of precision... I wonder if you can implement it with the mixed precision method... hmm...
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/PHP_developer_intro#Precision

On Apr 16, 2013, at 10:09 PM, Tom Metro wrote:

> Bitcoin has been all over the news this past week. I think the main
> trigger was some significant price swings on the exchange rate. Then
> there were follow-on stories talking about how mining activities are
> using $150,000 in electricity every day.
> 
> Even if you don't care about alternative currencies, you may find the
> hardware used to enable "mining" for coins to be of interest. Here's a
> story talking about said hardware:
> 
> http://gizmodo.com/5994446/digital-drills-the-monster-machines-that-mine-bitcoin
> 
> The basic idea with Bitcoin is that you have a computer do some
> intensive computational work, specifically compute hashes:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Bitcoin_mining
> 
>  The mining process or proof-of-work process involves scanning for a
>  value that when hashed with SHA-256, the hash begins with a number of
>  zero bits. The average work required is exponential in the number of
>  zero bits required, but can always be verified by executing a single
>  hash.
> 
> And your reward for doing the work is you get a coin, which can be
> exchanged for goods and services, or for US dollars on an exchange.
> 
> A clever part of the design is that it self-adjusts for the ever
> increasing capabilities of the available hardware:
> 
>  To compensate for increasing hardware speed and varying interest in
>  running nodes over time, the proof-of-work difficulty is determined by
>  a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour. If
>  they're generated too fast, the difficulty increases.
> 
> And this has led to:
> 
>  Today, bitcoin mining is a competitive field. An arms race has been
>  observed through the various hashing technologies that are used to
>  mine bitcoins and confirm transactions: High-end GPUs (Graphical
>  Processing Units) common in many gaming computers, FPGAs (Field
>  Programmable Gate Arrays) and ASICs (Application-specific integrated
>  circuits) all have been used. The newest addition, ASICS, are built
>  into specialized servers that can cost nearly $3000 USD a unit.
> 
> Also listen to:
> http://www.grc.com/sn/past/2011.htm#287
> 
> for Steve Gibson's explanation of how the algorithm works.
> 
> In any case, the competition and the cost of power is driving miners to
> FPGAs and ASICs. Pretty amazing that this made up currency scheme has
> been profitable enough to justify the development of ASICs.
> 
> I have to assume that with this degree of profit motive, there must be
> criminal organizations using zombie bot networks to do mining. When the
> cost of the hardware and electricity is free, you clearly have an advantage.
> 
> The Gizmodo article has some interesting pictures showing racks of
> open-frame computers, from CPU-era to GPU-era to FPGAs and finally
> ASICs. They describe on ASIC solution (quoting Gizmodo):
> 
>  Meet the Avalon ASIC. ... Inside its unassuming grey case is an army
>  of specialty chips that promise 65 gigahashes per second. This is
>  $6,800 equipment...that, properly utilized, stands to be worth much
>  more.
>  [...]
>  And while Avalon started the revolution, others are not far behind.
>  Companies like ASICMiner, Butterfly Labs, and bASIC all offer similar
>  systems--some that boast even more power--but none of those have
>  managed to ship.
>  [...]
>  The Butterfly Labs BitForce Mini Rig SC, a 1,500 GHz/s machine. It's
>  about 30 times more powerful than then current Avalon ASICs, or would
>  be if it ever exists...
>  [...]
>  Bitcoin has always favored early adopters, bold ones especially.
>  Because mining difficulty increases to compensate for increased power,
>  all advantages are temporary. But it doesn't increase dynamically.
>  Instead it hops up once every 14 days, so advantages can be leveraged.
>  The first Avalon ASIC to be put to use paid for itself in a mere nine
>  days, but every additional unit follows will have more and more ground
>  to make up.
> 
> The treatment of the tech in this article is a bit superficial. It would
> have been nice if they described in more detail what was depicted in
> each photo. But probably a decent overview of the hardware, if you only
> have a casual interest in Bitcoins.
> 
> A concluding thought:
> 
>  Ultimately, ASIC devices are the last great innovation in Bitcoin
>  mining; once you've specialized down to the chipset, there's nowhere
>  left to turn for a 100-fold computing power increase. And in that way,
>  we're seeing the beginning of the end of the gold rush, just as
>  Bitcoin fever reaches a fever-pitch.
> 
> That's kind of a defeatists view, and doesn't seem to acknowledge Moores
> law. Over time the ASICs will shrink and you'll see more hashing engines
> per chip.
> 
> How about Quantium computing?
> 
> More likely, the next innovation will come not from hardware but from
> mathematics - finding an algorithmically more efficient way of arriving
> at the same result.
> 
> -Tom
> 
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