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Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

thegenesisblock.com

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Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

#11

Post by ambiate »

ASICs are going to rid a large amount of pools. GPU mining and FPGA mining will fade out, because the value returned will be so minimal compared to these monsters. There is a finite amount of bitcoins released for a set amount of time. The power consumed/bitcoin return ratio on GPUs/FPGAs as the difficulty rises due to the ASICs will just leave people frustrated.

GPU mining had one benefit. Once you gave up, you could at least resell the video card or play games. ASICs are basically trash. The FPGAs can be recycled on ebay.

For those uninitiated: Assume I am on an i7 2600k and you are on a Pentium 2 clocked at a fine 200mhz. If we are mining in the same pool (just us), I will probably do 99.99% of the processing, and receive that return. You probably spent more power than me with your outdated technology, and only received 0.000001% of the payout.

Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

#12

Post by viraptor »

cgi_man wrote: post #10
CrunchyJams wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what kind of faster miners are you referring to? ASIC is the best available technology

The chip technology is an older process using 110nm technology. There are already several companies working on 40nm technology which will be more power efficient and be significantly faster per chip.

110nm is old news. Butterfly labs do 65 nm and KnC does 28 nm. I guess 110 was a test run really, or they lacked access to plants that could do smaller chips.

Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

#13

Post by jeffasinger »

cgi_man wrote: post #3
ihsw wrote: post #2

The flood of newly minted BTC will likely cause exchange rates to crater. Hopefully the increase in available BTC will stabilize prices as individuals/small groups will have to expend more capital to influence prices in their favor. The next six months are probably going to be a little crazy, hopefully it'll drive BTC out of the hands of speculators and into the hands of actual users of the currency.

The creation rate of BTC is fixed every 10 minutes. More ASIC power does not equal more BTC.

Not quite. The difficulty is set to average that a new block is found approximately every 10minutes. However, if lots of capacity is added all at once, the difficulty might not change for several days, and blocks will be generated at a faster rate during that time, as it is only updated every 2016 blocks.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

#15

Post by wmf »

trothamel wrote: post #9
rorrr2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will keep making money, just slower.

Will the amount of money they make pay for the power they consume?

No, but somebody who has free power may be willing to buy your obsolete used ASICs cheap.

Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

#17

Post by ambiate »

rheide wrote: post #14

Would a quantum computer be able to solve these kind of problems instantly?

The difficulty would rise to compensate for the advent of quantum computing. The danger of quantum computing in bitcoin is holding the 51%+ computing power and being able to forge transactions in the 'books'.

Source: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/6062/what-effects...

Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

#18

Post by cgi_man »

jeffasinger wrote: post #13
cgi_man wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creation rate of BTC is fixed every 10 minutes. More ASIC power does not equal more BTC.

Not quite. The difficulty is set to average that a new block is found approximately every 10minutes. However, if lots of capacity is added all at once, the difficulty might not change for several days, and blocks will be generated at a faster rate during that time, as it is only updated every 2016 blocks. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

Somewhat splitting hairs... it's adjusted to 10 minute blocks, and there's also a huge variability in how frequently they are discovered. Even if the average was 10 min, there are blocks found within the same minute, or with 30+ minute gaps.

Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%

#19

Post by cgi_man »

viraptor wrote: post #12
cgi_man wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chip technology is an older process using 110nm technology. There are already several companies working on 40nm technology which will be more power efficient and be significantly faster per chip.

110nm is old news. Butterfly labs do 65 nm and KnC does 28 nm. I guess 110 was a test run really, or they lacked access to plants that could do smaller chips.

The avalon chips the author is describing in the article are 110nm I believe.
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