Bitcoin miner for GIMPS...
 

Just got the following ad from Memory Ten.

Assuming that the GIMPS software existed for it, how much might this baby produce (LL, TF) on a per-day basis? :smile:




[CENTER][B][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=6][COLOR=#404040][FONT=Helvetica]1.3THs...whoa, that's fast![/FONT][/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]


[CENTER][B][FONT=Times New Roman][COLOR=#808080][FONT=Helvetica]New Visionman Prospector 1300 hashes stratum using 28nm technology[/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]



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[COLOR=#606060][COLOR=black]Now check out the price:[/COLOR]

[SPOILER]$3,200.00[/SPOILER] :shock:

[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]Next question: would something like this be worth writing specialized software for?[/COLOR]

Rodrigo

If it would work at all.

ASIC's are designed and made ONLY for mining whatever, they are useless(can't) for anything else.

That's too bad. :sad:

Does the inability have to do with the hardware itself? (Meaning, there would be no way to, umm, repurpose the machine.)

Rodrigo

Perhaps you would benefit from googling the acronym "ASIC"- Application Specific Integrated Circuit. Kracker meant what he said with the ONLY.

Perhaps you mean to ask "how fast could we build an ASIC for Prime95?" That is a fair question, though cost prohibits it as anything beyond a what-if.

[QUOTE=Rodrigo;374663]That's too bad. :sad:

Does the inability have to do with the hardware itself? (Meaning, there would be no way to, umm, repurpose the machine.)

Rodrigo[/QUOTE]
Exactly. It is hardware which is special designed to do SHA256 hashing. Like a hard-wired GPU. Thousands of small registers which can add and shift, and nothing else, and there is no way to make them doing something else without using hammer and pliers. Of course, this need an OS interface to put something in and extract the results, but that's all. Inside of the box, it can only do SHA hashing. When bitcoin is gone (if ever), you can use the machine as a rusty ornament for your garden. There may be possible to make an asic for TF (in fact is quite easy! no big memory requirement, hardware sieving (shift and set bit) etc. But convincing any asic in any way to make DP calculus (LL testing) is a HARD job even for the most advanced design houses in the world (I mean the guys who build asics for a living, like xilinx, altera, etc)

Thanks for the scoop, VBCurtis and LaurV.

Would it be fair to say that, because of the way this machine is designed, there isn't even any way to guesstimate how many GHz-days/day it would throughput -- if it could? (Sort of like asking, say, at how many MPH a thermostat could propel a hockey puck.) And (therefore) that such a question would be meaningless? These are the suggestions I take from the responses.

Rodrigo

I think the best comparison we can do is to look at Bitcoin mining speeds on GPUs and compare that to TF speeds on GPUs. The Radeon HD 7970 has benchmarks for both [URL="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#Graphics_cards"]Bitcoin[/URL] and [URL="http://www.mersenne.ca/mfaktc.php?show=466&sort=ghdpd"]TF[/URL], so I'll use that. It gets about 700 MHash/sec and about 400 GHz-days/day. So if we were to assume (probably wrong) that an ASIC for TF (as others have said, this would have to be different hardware from a SHA256 ASIC) could have the same difference, that ASIC would be (1300 GH/0.7 GH=) 1,857 times faster, or 742.8 THz-days/day. The whole of GIMPS currently is at ~77 THz-days/day (GPUto72 is around 15 THz of that). If we had [I]one[/I] of those monsters going for us (guessing it's 50 times faster than our current TF abilities), we could probably TF to about 79 bits instead of 73/74, which would find around 7.5% more factors.

There are all sorts of reasons why this is probably wrong...I said [I]best[/I] comparison, not [I]good[/I] comparison. To actually know, we'd probably need some experts in ASIC design and TF algorithms to design and/or actually create some ASICs for us.

And you'd need a whole other ASIC for LL, where you'd probably not get nearly as much of a speed improvement. But, since it could be applied to the longer test, instead of the diminishing returns you get in TF, it could be more useful to GIMPS.

[QUOTE=Rodrigo;374669]Thanks for the scoop, VBCurtis and LaurV.

Would it be fair to say that, because of the way this machine is designed, there isn't even any way to guesstimate how many GHz-days/day it would throughput -- if it could? (Sort of like asking, say, at how many MPH a thermostat could propel a hockey puck.) And (therefore) that such a question would be meaningless? These are the suggestions I take from the responses.

Rodrigo[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I think you're right. But that doesn't mean we can't wildly speculate anyway!

Any comparison is useless. These things are not even remotely comparable. Don't even try. A SHA ASIC simply cannot ever be repurposed to do anything except SHA. Don't confuse this with an FPGA or a CPU or a GPU. It is none of these things and can't be made to emulate one either.

Actually the thing that caught my attention was the 2-horse-power rating with only air cooling at 55dB. How is that possible?

That chart covers it pretty well, thanks! Amazing what sorts of things people put together for the 'Net.

[QUOTE=Mini-Geek;374682]But that doesn't mean we can't wildly speculate anyway![/QUOTE]

That's what makes it fun! :grin:

Rodrigo

[QUOTE=retina;374692]Any comparison is useless. These things are not even remotely comparable. Don't even try. A SHA ASIC simply cannot ever be repurposed to do anything except SHA. Don't confuse this with an FPGA or a CPU or a GPU. It is none of these things and can't be made to emulate one either.

Actually the thing that caught my attention was the 2-horse-power rating with only air cooling at 55dB. How is that possible?[/QUOTE]

One does wonder. Always in order to heed the warning at the very top of the chart on the page that Mini-Geek linked to:

[QUOTE]
[B][B]Note that products which have not shipped, especially by new vendors, may be scams! Be sure to research any of these intensely before giving them any money.[/B] [/B]
[/QUOTE]

Maybe this vendor has been in operation for a while, but anyway it's not something I'd jump into without asking around first.

Another item that suggests "proceed with caution" is the disclaimer on the [URL="http://www.visionman.com/product_info_2.php?products_id=9310"]product page[/URL]:


[QUOTE] [LIST][*]Due to the highly-specialized nature of these machines, they are [B]non-cancellable[/B] and [B]non-returnable[/B].[/LIST][/QUOTE]

Rodrigo

It would certainly be cool if there was an ASIC for trial factoring or Lucas-Lehmer tests. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see any custom GIMPS hardware anytime soon because there is no monetary incentive for developing it. People don't earn money crunching for GIMPS as they would mining Bitcoins.