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Former Member
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Using older Bitcoin Hardware for WCG Support

Has there been any thought about the feasibility of using older bitcoin "mining hardware" to work with WCG efforts. As the difficulty of mining increases, more and more useable hardware will be thrown into drawers, landfills, etc. Can WCG develop and app that could use this reasonable powerful hardware for the WCG efforts?

Thanks!

Ken
[Mar 29, 2014 3:54:28 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Falconet
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Re: Using older Bitcoin Hardware for WCG Support

I don't think Bitcoin hardware can work with any of WCG's (or any project's) because they are only made to crunch a certain algorithm. Which is useless for anything else other than number crunching (I think).

So I doubt this is possible.
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[Mar 29, 2014 6:14:05 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
KWSN - A Shrubbery
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Re: Using older Bitcoin Hardware for WCG Support

Possible if someone re-compiles the code to work on those platforms.

Very highly unlikely that it will happen due to the amount of effort that would be spent.

Even if this were done, the likelihood of those machines being used for WCG is very small. They were designed and purchased to make money. Running them takes energy which costs money.

Not that miners are not charitable, it's just that these machines are not the answer.
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[Mar 29, 2014 6:22:58 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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Re: Using older Bitcoin Hardware for WCG Support

Some of us live in apartments with utilities included and some of the older miners are effectively becoming obsolete and cheap with the level of difficulty raising. I know I wouldn't have any problem at all dedicating one or two of my miners if it would work. Just a thought...
[Mar 29, 2014 8:16:49 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
twilyth
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Re: Using older Bitcoin Hardware for WCG Support

From what I know of bitcoin mining, most of the newer machines (less than a couple years old) are all ASIC miners, so by definition these are optimized for solving the math involved in bitcoin mining. Any dedicated integrated circuit almost certainly wouldn't be adaptable to WCG crunching. In fact, if I understand how these machines work, they actually can't do anything but bitcoin mining.

If you mean the older machines that were GPU based, you have pretty much the same problem. While they could be used for WCG - as we know from the previous cancer project, these too are fairly specialized rigs that aren't adaptable to the type of general purpose computing we do on WCG.

If WCG ever manages to deliver another GPU based project however, they might well be adaptable to that, but unless or until that happens, only CPU part of the hardware will usable for WCG. And since in most cases all of the performance of those machines comes from their GPUs rather than CPUs, I don't think most of them would provide much in terms of performance on WCG.
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Re: Using older Bitcoin Hardware for WCG Support

I have to doubt that at some point another gpu project will come to the wcg, its just a matter of time, and then you can use those as well.
If your talking about ASIC miners, nope they cant do anything other than mine bitcoins.
Possibly you 'could' reuse fpga boards but its not really something that I can see happening as it not really worth it.
[Mar 29, 2014 8:58:14 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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