If RandomX fails then we can look at what went wrong, which assumptions turned out incorrect, etc. Based on that information we can make a rational decision to improve RandomX or switch to e.g. SHA3.

But RandomX didn't fail so this is a pointless discussion now.

has failure been defined? to me thats another wiggly point

e.g., if an "asic" pops up that is 1.2x as efficient, did randomx fail? is it considered an asic if it can also perform general compute?

Selsta: no disrespect but having a discussion around having a plan in place for the potential failure of Rx is ideal because the alternative is we are forced to make these important decisions in the middle of a crisis

if something pops up thats n% more efficient, is it considered failure considering that the rest of the CPU market will most likely release a newer generation that will compete with the new n% asic?

Good point gingeropolous

in due time?

i don't know if there are good answers, i don't have an answer. but this is what happens on the frontiers

garth: I'm just not a fan of predefined plans that don't take into account what exactly failed.

I agree with selsta, no point in making decisions ahead of time when we don't even have any actual proof. There are many things that could explain this nonce pattern

<gingeropolous> "has failure been defined? to..." <- That's an excellent point. Efficiency is definitely the key metric here, though it would require measuring the actual power consumption in addition to the hashrare (i.e. finding someone who owns such a - hypothetical - device and is willing to provide accurate measurements)

And from there we would look at the number of devices involved, and how much of the total nethash they are replacing by 'kicking out' less efficient (and thus less profitable) devices

there are at least 3 github issues filled with pages and pages of this discussion already

no need to retread

failure is an ASIC at least 2x more efficient than CPUs

and of course, we don't know that efficiency without measuring. we might guess if fulltime miners are seeing profitability decrease non-proportional to nethash increase

if profitability decreases solely because net hashrate has increased, that only means there are more miners.

could be botnets, could be rogue datacenter admins

there are some interesting technologies worth keeping abreast of. like wafer-scale compute, and processor-in-memory

but WSC is ultra expensive, since it literally dedicates an entire silicon wafer to 1 compute device

PIM is promising as a way to reduce RAM latency, but so far only uses tiny microcontroller-class processors. not meaningful until full 64bit CPUs are used

there's no other novel architectures on the horizon that offer any meaningful advances

anybody who thinks they can gain even a 20% advantage over CPUs by shaving off unused features is dreaming

at this point more than 50% of a CPU die is cache images.idgesg.net/images/article/20…0-10-08-07.14.47-100861362-orig.jpg

you'd need to be able to turn off around 50% of a core's components to approach a 20% power savings

branch predictors, decoders, cache coherency control - they don't add up to that much

if you jettison cache coherency control then you need to dedicate cache per core instead of sharing like here

which means even more of chip power is dominated by cache power, and core power is even less significant

<hyc> failure is an ASIC at least 2x more efficient than CPUs >>> ok, so we have failure defined.

albeit the impracticality of obtaining enough data to test the definition

do we have ASIC defined in this scenario? is a custom chip that is packaged up in a device as a monero miner an ASIC if the same chip is also on the market for general compute?

while failure may have been hashed out in the pages of github issues, i dunno if asic definition has had the same attention

Actually we could define a threshold of "definitely asics", based on a single assumption about the average electricity cost for the whole network

The maximum hashrate that could be supported by the mining network is: Security Budget [$/s] * Highest known miner efficiency [H/kWh] / Electricity cost [$/kWh]

(Where Security Budget = Price [$/XMR] * Block reward [XMR/block] / Average block time [s/block])

For example, right now - assuming an maximum efficiency of 130 H/s/W (top tier Ryzen) and an electricity cost of 0.10 $/kWh - the maximum nethash that could be supported is ~5.71 GH/s (193.9% of the current nethash)

That means that if everyone had Ryzens mining at 130 H/s/W and kept mining at breakeven (0 net profit) but without mining at a loss, the network would reach ~5.71 GH/s

* everyone had *only* Ryzens mining

So if the network were to grow beyond that, that would mean: either the average electricity cost of the whole network is lower than 0.10 $/kWh; or somebody is mining at a greater efficiency than that

And from there, we could work backwards and estimate their real efficiency relative to the % of the nethash they could own

Right now, an efficiency of 105-110 H/s/W earns ~0.16 $/kWh, so they are profitable (though not by much) as long as they pay less than that in electricity

Hmmm, I wonder if that threshold was ever crossed back in the Cryptonight days... The profit margins were pretty high though, so perhaps we never got quite that far because there weren't that many asics yet

The one thing that breaks this definition is botnets though. They effectively pay 0 $/kWh, so their profitability and the maximum network size are technically "infinity"

However, if we know the total % of nethash owned by botnets, we can account for it

"failure is an ASIC at least 2x more efficient than CPUs" this is too harsh. Even some CPUs can be more than 2x efficient compared other CPUs (Ryzen 3900X vs some Intel)

which means newer CPU generations can close a 2x gap. I think Zen4 will surprise everyone.

True. Also, 0.05 $/kWh is not that far off 0.10 $/kWh - and not far off from what some mining farms/datacenters with cheap energy can get

Maybe “failure is an ASIC at least 2X my re efficient than the most efficient CPU”?

*more

Which is a fun concept because it means failure is a sliding scale that adjusts with CPU innovation

garth by that definition, Ryzen is an ASIC for Intel CPUs :D

wen zen4

September

i wonder if that'll be as borked as the ddr5

I’m actually quite excited about zen4 as a RandomX cruncher. Certainly more than any CPU in a while

I think we may also add a constraint: not for sale to the general public

if everyone can buy one, decentralization is still preserved

Hmmm being able to buy one is not enough though. If there's a single manufacturer in control of all the production, then it's still centralized

I suppose

but so far, all previous ASICs have failed to meet this criteria anyway

is Ethash still ongoing with ASICs and GPUs mining in parallel?

they haven't changed pow and they haven't deployed pos yet

From what I've seen, yes. ASICs are still waaay more profitable, but from what I've gathered so far, the number of devices manufactured is quite limited

Profitability @0.10$/kWh:

- Vega56: 450%

- Radeon VII: ~700%

- Bitmain Antminer E9: 2000%

(right now)

2000% means that you get $2 from 1 kWh before electricity?

$0.1*20?

Bitcoin Antminer S19 Pro gets 290% profitability

Ryzen 3900X, tuned to 100 h/J gets 145% profitability ($0.145 worth of XMR from each kWh)

Hmmmm, whattomine advertises a "Bitmain Antminer E9 3.00 Gh/s, 2600W" asic, but it's not on Bitmain's site anymore

Their official youtube channel still has the announcement from last year though: youtube.com/watch?v=nNFa-HKTV4Y

So I'm guessing it's discontinued

Antminer E9 is for Ethereum

This is the problem with ASICs - they're basically impossible to buy. They're either discontinued/out of stock or you have to pass through full KYC and wait for months to get one.

Yeah, that's the one with 2000% profitability I was talking about

After all these years, ASICs haven't become a commodity

Yeah

Ok, here's a real one: Innosilicon A11, 1.5GH/s 2200W innosilicon.com/html/a11-miner/index.html

19k USD on discount, lmai

lmao

1178% profitability right now, but almost a full year to recover the cost

They're definitely pricing them to squeeze the miners in case the PoS switch actually happens (as if)

they're always pricing them depending on profitability

so buyers will get 1+ year ROI

<sech1> After all these years, ASICs haven't become a commodity > wooo that’s a depressing point