Future of Grin Mining

[Doogevol]

Some thoughts about the future of Grin mining:

• for how many decades can we make reasonable assumptions and inference?
• What was the expected multi chip graphrate for c34+? Was there any controversy when more experts where involved in the early days?
• if CPUs have more than 75% die-space used for SRAM (512MB+) would they become power-efficient c32 miners or is still something missing?
• what would be the other use-cases for CPUs with huge SRAM c32 mining would compete with?
• do huge SRAM devices maybe already exist for some special purpose?
• is there an interest to forbid big SRAM devices to keep power to the ruler?
• is there inner complexity in c32+, that prevent proper assumptions about algorithm and machines used to mine?
• May there be other technology for mining grin?
• (for example) Miners based on NRAM technology.
• (for example) physical multiplexed graph-models where closed graphs have an attribute like conducting current.)
• (for example) could it be possible to find solutions by brute force verification?

[tromp]

@Doogevol

• for how many decades can we make reasonable assumptions and inference?

SRAM hasn’t changed much in several decades, so I guess several decades more.

@Doogevol

• What was the expected multi chip graphrate for c34+? Was there any controversy when more experts where involved in the early days?

There were no expectations, only hopes. There was controversy about the hardware becoming obsolete and the uncertainty of ASIC availability. This was dealt with by no longer obsoleting graph sizes from C32 onwards.

@Doogevol

• if CPUs have more than 75% die-space used for SRAM (512MB+) would they become power-efficient c32 miners or is still something missing?

Each core would need to be able to access the entire SRAM, and to do so at the individual bit level. The latter aspect would need to be designed in, or could be emulated with atomic bitset instructions at the word level, but presumably at some loss in efficiency.

@Doogevol

• what would be the other use-cases for CPUs with huge SRAM c32 mining would compete with?

Perhaps there are other applications dominated by random access to large data sets; although normally programmers try to work around them to make programs “cache friendly”.

@Doogevol

• do huge SRAM devices maybe already exist for some special purpose?

Have you heard of wafer scale integration? See the Wafer-scale integration - Wikipedia

@Doogevol

• is there an interest to forbid big SRAM devices to keep power to the ruler?

No; SRAM size is constrained die size which is in turn is constrained by reticle size and yield.

@Doogevol

• is there inner complexity in c32+, that prevent proper assumptions about algorithm and machines used to mine?

The lean miner is about as simple as it gets: https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo/blob/master/doc/simplesolve

@Doogevol

• May there be other technology for mining grin?

Who knows? May there be other technology for mining bitcoin?

@Doogevol

• (for example) Miners based on NRAM technology.

According to Nano-RAM - Wikipedia that competes not with SRAM but with other nonvolatile memories.

@Doogevol

• (for example) could it be possible to find solutions by brute force verification?

You mean by brute force enumeration of all possible 42-subsets of edges? (2^32 choose 42) = 273297632825084404598054484868481024425629982655167111117619656626245913112251997500993075175804346891407198618675974136225096725318235540049122409884614993703965568742315043925090075293838962101483013522920868615181281701190851860834002052890129275779043084264832079870442459862838280094824993256326451886540385118808639658200791330142256228306213928960

Good luck!

[coolwhip]

@tromp

You mean by brute force enumeration of all possible 42-subsets of edges? (2^32 choose 42) = 273297632825084404598054484868481024425629982655167111117619656626245913112251997500993075175804346891407198618675974136225096725318235540049122409884614993703965568742315043925090075293838962101483013522920868615181281701190851860834002052890129275779043084264832079870442459862838280094824993256326451886540385118808639658200791330142256228306213928960

Good luck!

Challenge accepted. I’ll report back in 20 trillion years with the solution.

[tromp]

@coolwhip

Challenge accepted. I’ll report back in 20 trillion years with the solution.

Try a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years…

[Doogevol]

Glad that I did not ask if we can replace SRAM by Shimano. joking

[Mattczt]

@tromp

trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion

That’s what the USD printer said.