Mining Ethereum With AMD Threadrippers Paired With Four RX Vega 64 GPUs

[leipero]

Where Bitcoin's algorithms scale with number of miners (i.e. more miners = more difficult to mine), Ethereum apparently does not (or not enough), so they need to increase manually the mining difficulty with these "Ice Age" or "difficulty time bomb" events.

This defeats the purpose of x-coin, the whole concept behind bitcoin for example is "limited amount concept" (similar to gold standard), and that in essence gives it value, if what you say is true, then Ethereum is no different to the papper money (practically valueless) with only one difference, printing is not controled by government by but private entity (?), I mean who chooses the dificulity to begin with? That will (or should in perfect world) give negative value to Ethereum.

This whole nonsense since bitcoin looks like classical pyramid scheme to me.

[starshipeleven]

This defeats the purpose of x-coin, the whole concept behind bitcoin for example is "limited amount concept" (similar to gold standard), and that in essence gives it value, if what you say is true, then Ethereum is no different to the papper money (practically valueless) with only one difference, printing is not controled by government by but private entity (?).

Huh? All currencies have no intrinsic value, "gold standard" was total facade bullshit, as gold price itself varies (and varied) significantly over time as it is just a ware bought and sold on the open market.

The main selling point of cryptocurrencies is that they aren't controlled by a government nor their value is tied to a nation's economy like with current money.
Their printing is not controlled by "a private entity". It is controlled by an algorithm running inside the miner's software, and that is regarded as more stable and far less tamperable than any single private entity, as to change this algorithm the majority of the miners need to agree on that change.

And we all know that agreeing with each other to do something is not something the human race does easily on large scales.

I mean who chooses the dificulity to begin with? That will (or should in perfect world) give negative value to Ethereum.

The difficulty is a mathematical formula inside the cryptomining software, depending on some factors it makes mining harder or easier.

Changing this would mean forking the block chain (transaction log) and this needs a majority of the miners to agree on the change.

This whole nonsense since bitcoin looks like classical pyramid scheme to me.

I'm not seeing the pyramid. I mean a pyramid scheme requires a hierarchy where the ones at the top get a share of the profits made by the ones under them.

Cryptocurrency is a mostly P2P network where each member makes his own profits.

[starshipeleven]

you are talking about speculation profit instead of miner profit. a miner who sell every coin every month do not get money based on speculation.

I'm talking about what most miners with GPUs actually are into. They mine for profit, and profit means staying with younger cryptocurrencies where the value increase of the coin allows them to make more money.

I am 100% sure cheating like this is impossible because the one who put 20* the time of money on a mining-rig get the same statistical chance of earning a ETH coin than the one who build 20 mining rigs with only 1*time the money.

And this is supposed to deter big miners from making large mining rigs and having large deposits and large mining chances, therefore screwing smaller miners, in what way?

Because that's the point, I still don't see how you can realistically prevent people with money from just outbuying smaller miners. They can either make big rigs with large deposits, or many small ones with small deposits (and multiple accounts/wallets).

if you are fine with buy a used card you can make a good deal by just buying the miner cards on ebay after they are used to mine

Used hardware = no warranty.
Mining hardware = gaming cards stressed 24/7 for 3-6 months (gaming cards are not designed for 24/7 usage) in unknown airflow conditions at unknown temps, with unknown BIOS modifications.

Used mining hardware currently on sale = same price it should have had when new.

Sorry but I have problems with this.

Since mining craze started I'm using exclusively NVIDIA stuff in rigs I build for customers, as for the same price I get so much better NVIDIA cards that it isn't even funny.

also Gamers can Dual-use their systems by mining in the idle-time they do not play.

Most people doesn't even grasp the concept of cryptocurrencies and still thinks the paper money is backed by gold reserves, or that gold standard makes sense at all and would solve problems.

Designing a system around this concept is retarded.

the only feature what is only on paper is: "prove of stake" as a power-saving feature.

all other features what protect little-gamers who dual-use do mining in the idle time are there right now.

Like proof of space or proof of bandwidth to make sure the software works best on gaming PCs.

Yeah, because a server or any high-ish end system does not have space nor bandwith.

Only feature that might make it different from a crappy Bitcoin ripoff is PoS, and that is still on paper.

[leipero]

Huh? All currencies have no intrinsic value, "gold standard" was total facade bullshit, as gold price itself varies (and varied) significantly over time as it is just a ware bought and sold on the open market.

The main selling point of cryptocurrencies is that they aren't controlled by a government nor their value is tied to a nation's economy like with current money.
Their printing is not controlled by "a private entity". It is controlled by an algorithm running inside the miner's software, and that is regarded as more stable and far less tamperable than any single private entity, as to change this algorithm the majority of the miners need to agree on that change.

And we all know that agreeing with each other to do something is not something the human race does easily on large scales.

The difficulty is a mathematical formula inside the cryptomining software, depending on some factors it makes mining harder or easier.

Changing this would mean forking the block chain (transaction log) and this needs a majority of the miners to agree on the change.

I'm not seeing the pyramid. I mean a pyramid scheme requires a hierarchy where the ones at the top get a share of the profits made by the ones under them.

Cryptocurrency is a mostly P2P network where each member makes his own profits.

Well, bitcoin was closest to "gold standard", Ethereum is even closer (if dificulity part of what you wrote is true) then. If self-interest is in question, agreeing with each other is actually the strong point of human race, look at criminals (drug dealers, bankers, politicians) for example, they usually agree on ways how to scxxw ordinary people, there's almost no racism, sexism or anything among criminal circles, durring wars and stuff, criminals of opposing sides have no problem to cooperate and make deals.

But what factors exaclty? I assume it is open (source) forumula, and everyone could know it?

Naturally, people who started the project are on the top in hierarchy, they should have (had) advantage in start, in fact, if formula is made based on "how many people/accounts mine at the time", and if dificulity increases with numbers, then it is fair to assume that people involved in creation have/had big advantage and already "high stocks" in it. If that is the case there are tons of ways to manipulate value of "coins" and make trade benefits by prior knowledge, so in that case it would be "segmented pyramid scheme", where you don't have classic hierarchy, but few segments: Top (creators), middle (traders) and bottom (miners), or middle-bottom (traders/miners), top are always winners, and at level of traders you have winners and losers (especially if not miners, but classical traders). The difference is that miners would never profit or lose at the same level as (investor) traders, so that's why I would put them on the bottom of hierarchy, because "big miners" invest a lot in the equipement, while traders with good timing (info) can invest tons of money and make X amount of times profit (and ofc. lost).

Plus I am not sure how it is advantage of the curency if it's not controlled by government, it could be outlawed, if you can't buy or exchange your "coin" it basically have no value, gold have multiple values, even papper have value, coins do not, can't finish my post now...

[aht0]

Well, bitcoin was closest to "gold standard", Ethereum is even closer (if dificulity part of what you wrote is true) then. If self-interest is in question, agreeing with each other is actually the strong point of human race, look at criminals (drug dealers, bankers, politicians) for example, they usually agree on ways how to scxxw ordinary people, there's almost no racism, sexism or anything among criminal circles, durring wars and stuff, criminals of opposing sides have no problem to cooperate and make deals.

Uhm.. Criminals in prisons do band up according to skin color, religious preferences, sexual divergences etc. In Eastern European prisons, for example IF you are pedophile or convicted for participating in a group rape, you are automatically way lower in hierarchy. Also "status" is a matter of your years in a prison. "Politicals" (political prisoners/dissidents etc) have/had different status compared to real criminals (recidivists).
Hierarchy is there and it's way more pronounced. Even racism is there. Whites do not want to be in a same cell with "tshurkas" (derogative Russian term for "non-whites" (mostly central-Asians and Caucasian Islamics)) because they may not survive there for long. Same goes for vice versa.Maybe it's different in Western European/U.S prisons.

[leipero]

Uhm.. Criminals in prisons do band up according to skin color, religious preferences, sexual divergences etc. In Eastern European prisons, for example IF you are pedophile or convicted for participating in a group rape, you are automatically way lower in hierarchy. Also "status" is a matter of your years in a prison. "Politicals" (political prisoners/dissidents etc) have/had different status compared to real criminals (recidivists).
Hierarchy is there and it's way more pronounced. Even racism is there. Whites do not want to be in a same cell with "tshurkas" (derogative Russian term for "non-whites" (mostly central-Asians and Caucasian Islamics)) because they may not survive there for long. Same goes for vice versa.Maybe it's different in Western European/U.S prisons.

That's only in movies, besides those are "street criminals" or "small fish", I'm talking about big ones (the type of people who have no problem if as an result of their actions milions could die). But let's not talk about criminals, they for sure do not deserve to be talked about, I was just giving example . Plus I never went in prison, and we should avoid judgement based on movies.

[aht0]

That's only in movies, besides those are "street criminals" or "small fish", I'm talking about big ones (the type of people who have no problem if as an result of their actions milions could die). But let's not talk about criminals, they for sure do not deserve to be talked about, I was just giving example . Plus I never went in prison, and we should avoid judgement based on movies.

"white-collars" who are above the law are not really any more free of racism or other sins than the "trash". Look at current U.S president if you want fast example of one. Can't call him criminal, because of his position but he has already broken bunch of laws (election campaign) and got caught lying more than once. It's a matter of interpretation. But sure as hell, you can't call him especially tolerant.

[Ignatiamus]

Nice to see, as I'm investigating into cryptocurrency mining at the moment as well… (though my focus is more on Monero)
Michael Have you ever thought about mining any kind of cryptocurrency with your "older" graphics cards? I bet that it actually'd be quite profitable for you because you've got a whole bunch of them :-)

Cheers

[Michael]

Nice to see, as I'm investigating into cryptocurrency mining at the moment as well… (though my focus is more on Monero)
Michael Have you ever thought about mining any kind of cryptocurrency with your "older" graphics cards? I bet that it actually'd be quite profitable for you because you've got a whole bunch of them :-)

Cheers

Unfortunately don't have a power budget for them.... I already need to be careful to not turn too many systems on at once, or circuits will start tripping... pretty much maxed out in that regard with current setup.

[bridgman]

Honestly, I can't even draw a line between AMDGPU and Mesa.

I'm moving this to the top because once this part becomes clear the rest should fall into place. You need to distinguish between stacks (which include both kernel and userspace drivers) and individual driver components such as the amdgpu kernel driver.

"radeon stack" - radeon kernel driver, an X driver, Mesa OpenGL, Mesa video encode/decode (everything up to CI)

"amdgpu stack" - amdgpu kernel driver, an X driver, Mesa OpenGL, Mesa Vulkan (radv), Mesa video encode/decode (VI and up)

"ROCm stack" - modified amdgpu + amdkfd kernel drivers, ROC runtime, HCC compiler, HIP porting tools, MIOpen library, DNN apps & toolchains

"AMDGPU-PRO stack" - modified amdgpu kernel driver, amdgpu X driver, AMD closed source OpenGL & Vulkan, AMD OpenCL

A few different upstreaming efforts are underway now (amdkfd and DAL/DC being the major ones) - once those are complete the differences between the stacks will be significantly reduced.

So, I read from gentoo's wiki, the kernel driver AMDGPU is the right option for GCN graphic card while radeon family are for pre-GCN, then what about the term "Radeon GCN" from https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...u-rad-49&num=1 ?

The split is actually in the middle of the GCN family for amdgpu upstream - SI + CI on radeon, VI and up on amdgpu. There is support in amdgpu for SI and CI but it is not yet enabled by default (waiting for DAL/DC upstreaming among other things).

RADV is the Vulkan driver, it's inside the Mesa tree. Is AMD releasing their own implementation now, or is Vulkan being supported in AMDGPU kernel driver?

Vulkan would never be supported in a kernel driver - the question is only between radv Vulkan in Mesa and AMD's Vulkan implementation outside Mesa. The plan is still to release AMD Vulkan in open source form (it has been available in binary since early 2016) although as radv continues to progress that leaves less room for a separate Vulkan implementation.

RadeonSI is a OpenGL library and sounds like part of of the radeon driver family, but it's not replaced by AMDGPU, so, is't a stand alone project?

radeonsi is a Gallium3D pipe driver in Mesa (which in turn is a userspace component), which supports OpenGL, video encode/decode and some basic OpenCL functionality. It is part of both radeon and amdgpu stacks, see first question, but separate from the radeon and amdgpu kernel drivers..

ROCm is a OpenCL implementation outside AMDGPU and Mesa.

ROCm is a new (in the last couple of years) compute framework supporting a variety of languages, one of which is OpenCL. It runs over the amdgpu kernel driver. The primary language is parallel C++, supported by HCC, and includes the HIP porting tool which allows "mostly-automated" porting of CUDA apps, resulting in "HIP'ified" code that can run on either CUDA or ROC.

Since I still have plenty of time to figure these thing out, I will keep digging whenever I have spare time.

Excellent