News Cryptominers Target AMD Ryzen CPUs for Their Big L3 Caches

[TerryLaze]

"Mining" as I understand it was originally designed to be an incentive to provide the processing power needed to process transactions on the blockchain.

Yup, and that would mean that there are plenty of transactions going on because otherwise there would be nothing to mine/validate.
While there are plenty of companies and even small businesses that accept bitcoins, you should really look at it more like gold, there is a lot of trading going on with it but for the most part you have to exchange it for money if you want to use it.

 

[msroadkill612]

@Gahl1k "How many CPUs can you stack on a single motherboard? The cost of a decent motherboard with quality VRM, a high-end CPU and a solid cooler vs. a single GPU isn't worth it. "

Could not the same platform also host gpuS & concurrently mine some other crypto coin which doesnt use much l3 cache?

 

[lazyabum]

Video Game Arcades & Internet Gaming Cafes are starting to look like a great investment again, Two Decades after Big Tech made them obsolete.

 

[renz496]

Eh, it's nothing to be worried about. How many CPUs can you stack on a single motherboard? The cost of a decent motherboard with quality VRM, a high-end CPU and a solid cooler vs. a single GPU isn't worth it. Besides it's a huge waste of space. This will fall flat like CHIA coin.

they will just going to make a single board where you can install 16 CPU on them. this activity are being fueled by greed. they will try everything even a useless one.

 

[King_V]

"Dude, it says caches. It doesn't say cashes."

Thank you, I'll show myself out now.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Sure, and Chia was supposed to do the same thing but for storage and we see how well that worked out.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Yup, and that would mean that there are plenty of transactions going on because otherwise there would be nothing to mine/validate.

Not necessarily. The amount of transactions, or having having any transactions at all, doesn't make much difference in mining. Even if the blocks are empty (i.e. there are no transactions) they still get mined in the same way and at the same rate as if they were full. The miner doesn't collect any transaction fees (because there are none), but they still get the block reward which is usually the vast majority of the payment anyway.

I think it's a common misconception that mining difficulty is tied to the number of transactions, when in reality the two things are essentially unrelated.

 

[Rabid Mining]

How long before all we have left is our phones?

Not long as it has been going on for a few years.

 

[Rabid Mining]

Eh, it's nothing to be worried about. How many CPUs can you stack on a single motherboard? The cost of a decent motherboard with quality VRM, a high-end CPU and a solid cooler vs. a single GPU isn't worth it. Besides it's a huge waste of space. This will fall flat like CHIA coin.

Think you missed the point to build a complete CPU mining rig with a 3900x is the same price as a AIB 3070 GPU at MSRP you only need a b450, b550, or x470 MB to run a CPU miner I run at 3.6gh at 1 volt OC settings for a average power consumption of 97w per rig the stock cooler that comes with the 3900x the wraith prism cooler is 100% fine even on the 3950x as well as the 5950x CPU which those 2 dont come with but used as an example.

 

[Rabid Mining]

Yes but how many miners are cashing out ? and to what ?

How much is the crypto being used as a currency?

I would want the ability to buy things in Crypto because it's supposed to be a currency.

"Mining" as I understand it was originally designed to be an incentive to provide the processing power needed to process transactions on the blockchain. It seems to me that it is being used more as a interest generator, a way to make it sound fun and active.

"Proof of stake" I have no clue about at all but it does seem to indicate that "mining" was probably unnecessary all along.

I want no restrictions on crypto and think governments should stay out of it. I believe it should fail based on it's own inherent valuelessness rather than some likely misguided and heavy handed government action.

I am open to the possibility that the various cryptos have a lot going on in China where the inflation, government policy, corruption and lack of transparency might make an alternative money much more practical. (but that is literally "Chinatown" as Jack Nicholson would say)

I use crypto.com everything I mine can easily be loaded into a prepaid VISA card with no monthly fees and 2% cashback back into crypto after every purchase I use my mining to purchase GPUs, Gas, CPUs, anything I want really so it is 100% used as a currency.

 

[Rabid Mining]

I bought five Ryzens in the past 15-months (one of them got trashed when I tried to remove the cooling fan so I had to buy another one) so I'm done buying any for a while.

Sorry to hear I go over that in my videos actually gotta make sure the CPU is warm when removing the cooler also I never use the pre applied thermal paste always wipe it off and add your own. Once warm shut down unclip the cooler slightly twist while the CPU is in the socket to break the bond between the cooler and the CPU if you pull straight off you can rip your CPU apart with the ryzens as you found out.

 

[vern72]

if you pull straight off you can rip your CPU apart with the ryzens as you found out.

Fortunately, I only bent the pins on the CPU but it enough to render it useless.

 

[trongod05]

Chia coin fell flat on its face for a different reason. This was to be expected. Also, a 3900X + 150$ mobo + 8GB RAM stick + 550W PSU + 128GB SSD = $800, the price of a 3070, with a hash limiter. Trust me, it won't fall flat like Chia. It will do just fine

I agree that it will do just fine. It will give the people that do have a Ryzen CPU the chance to make a few extra bucks with their unused CPU time. I have 2 myself and already have them mining while I'm not using my PC's.

 

[xxxbabyxxx]

How long before all we have left is our phones?

there are phone cryptomining applications out there, even the decent phone coolers are running out of stock XD

 

[InvalidError]

Yup, and that would mean that there are plenty of transactions going on because otherwise there would be nothing to mine/validate.

Doesn't matter how many actual transactions are being made: the simple fact that you solved a block to be added to the chain (successfully mined a block) is a transaction in and of itself even if your block doesn't contain records of any other transactions. That is how crypto gets minted early on when no transactions are being made with it, block with nothing else in them other than staking that block for hypothetical future use.

 

[avg9956]

I wonder just how scalable is CPU mining compared to GPU mining.
Isn't it 1 PSU: 1 Mobo: 1 CPU
Are miners really willing to bleed stocks dry of all 3 components?
This would be very severe.

There's no such thing as "CPU risers" unlike for GPUs afaik.
There's also no mechanism or plug that I am familiar with that can split the power connectors from a PSU to different motherboards.
I can image the B tier motherboards from AMD possibly being out of stock though because they're decent enough to wield Ryzen 3000 and 5000 CPUs for RTM mining.
This might force even budget builders to go for a higher tiered motherboard.

Ironically, I'm mining RTM myself too on my chia rig
But I'm not willing to scale it at an industrial level. It just doesn't make sense...
Your ROI would have to factor in the cost of the PSU, Mobo, CPU which will take slightly more than a year given RTM's current price
And there's other tokens in the PoW realm that still content with RTM, such as RVN, Flux, Ergo, etc.
Let's just hope RTM doesn't expand as deep as ethereum did in defi.

 

[InvalidError]

I wonder just how scalable is CPU mining compared to GPU mining.
Isn't it 1 PSU: 1 Mobo: 1 CPU
Are miners really willing to bleed stocks dry of all 3 components?

You aren't looking at it in the correct terms...
GPU-mining:

• $300 PSU
• $100 CPU
• $150 motherboard
• $50 RAM
• $30 boot drive
• $6000 - $20 000 GPUs ($1000-3000 a pop, x6-7)

CPU-mining high-cache crypto:

• $70-100 PSU (you could also hack a $300 PSU to power 4-6 boards)
• $700-1000 CPU
• $150-250 motherboard
• $80 RAM (maybe, no idea how memory-intensive cache cryptos are)
• $30 boot drive
• cheapest GPU possible

Beyond that, it only depends on time to ROI. You can build entire cache-crypto system for cheaper than a single "mid-range" GPU.

 

[avg9956]

I did not mention Ram, boot drive and GPU because I don't think RTM will cause a shortage to them.
It's also possible that RTM can develop their ghost rider algorithm to harness iGPUs making GPUs unnecessary and cutting the cost off the miner and helps reduce its impact on GPU shortage.

RTM is not memory intensive, you can get away with a pair of 8GB RAM to mine RTM.

• $80 RAM (maybe, no idea how memory-intensive cache cryptos are)

From my memory consumption, surprisingly its Chia that's consuming more memory to run a full node, about 2.7GB + 950 MB if you count the Chia GUI app as well.
Running the RTM miner only uses 10MB of memory.

 

[InvalidError]

It's also possible that RTM can develop their ghost rider algorithm to harness iGPUs making GPUs unnecessary and cutting the cost off the miner and helps reduce its impact on GPU shortage.

If RTM likes CPUs with huge caches, then the best CPUs for it would be the Ryzen 5900/5950 (and their upcoming 3D variants) which have no IGP. That is why I mentioned "cheapest GPU possible" in my list.

 

[avg9956]

Anything can be possible with changes in the algorithm.
Just recently its now possible to mine RTM with GPUs
It would be the best of interest for the devs of the algo to be flexible to adapt to new changes for an iGPU if and when it is deemed necessary (like a severe shortage of CPUs with huge caches).

 

[InvalidError]

It would be the best of interest for the devs of the algo to be flexible to adapt to new changes for an iGPU if and when it is deemed necessary (like a severe shortage of CPUs with huge caches).

The whole point of designing an algorithm that favors huge caches is to prevent the use of substitutes as much as possible. Bitcoin was compute-intensive with almost no memory requirements so it scaled extremely well in ASIC form factor and ASICs obliterated all other means of mining BTC. To "solve" this, we got the memory-hard algorithms which do a large amount of randomized memory IOs to make the DRAM interface the main bottleneck, which restored CPU mining for a while, then that became dominated by GPUs and is now getting taken over by ASICs as well with ASICs providing 5-10X the MH/s per watt and dollar.

Humongous caches are the next iteration to ASIC resistance, mainly because SRAM consumes lots of die area so ASIC mining won't be able to scale quite as favorably against CPUs and GPUs.

 

[avg9956]

The whole point of designing an algorithm that favors huge caches is to prevent the use of substitutes as much as possible

Just my 2 cents, and I beg to differ. Don't think of this as passing a heated argument.

Why did the RTM devs made it possible to mine RTM with GPUs then? Is GPU mining not considered a "substitute" to CPU mining?
You might be thinking min cost/maxing profits which is natural, through optimizations with the algorithm to pump the highest hash rate possible.
But you also have to also consider how will the project survive if only a few rich people who can buy a ton of expensive mining hardware can easily be taken down by regulators. Its not easy to hide a mining farm since they're usually big and their electricity consumption can be traced.

One of the essential characteristics of a cryptocurrency is to be decentralized.
Also, if substitutes are prevented, then how would it be easy to support its network? How can ordinary people buy an ASIC miner to support it (given ASIC miners have risen in price)? If some big ASIC mining company gets targeted then that token's hash rate is lost and can easily be shut down by regulators. The project can die off a very fast death.

If it becomes regulated, RTM becomes no different than trying to support an international payment like Mastercard and be stuck with regulations and follow the travel rule set by the FATF.

In the case of RTM, it is ASIC resistant, which is good.

The Unique Aspects of Raptoreum
The Ghostrider protocol is primary to the platform. The purpose of this protocol is to remove the need to spend money on getting the expensive mining hardware. Because the platform is resistant to ASICs and FPGAs, Raptoreum miners are able to make use of older/redundant hardware to decentralize the mining. This allows any and every user to mine on the platform.

The Ghostrider platform is built by the Raptoreum team and discourages the use of ASIC and FPGA oriented hardware. By using the Ghostrider protocol, the users are able to leverage the idle CPU power on the system and earn rewards in RTM (ticker name).

If this is truly the vision that the Ghost rider wants to set out, I can't see why it would be in the interest of RTM devs to limit substitutes as much as possible.

I think in hindsight, the RTM devs are trying to make it as decentralized as possible in the long term, allowing other participants to easily participate and join in. Sure one can always buy the best CPU with a huge cache such as the Ryzen 5900/5950, but when we get to a point that the price of RTM has skyrocketed, people will definitely want to join the band wagon out of hype or for whatever reason, usually due to FOMO. By then, Ryzen 5900/5950 would be as expensive as top tiered GPU prices and their ROI will be much longer. People will be looking substitutes or possible ways to get in so as not to miss out, and definitely buying a Ryzen 5900/5950x by the time their price has skyrocketed won't be an option since they'd be out of stock by then. Thus, I don't think the purpose of designing an algo is to limit substitutes as it would be detrimental to the project.