Cryptocurrency Mining is at the heart of the distributed consensus algorithm, which enforces the consistency of transactions. Cryptocurrency first mining equipment has been developed by a wide range of enthusiasts, ranging from entrepreneurs to technology enthusiasts to emerging entrepreneurs. Over the years, mining has been consolidated and is now operating mainly in mining centers. Custom ASIC (ASIC) technology nodes that aggressively optimize energy efficiency to unprecedented levels. The system is becoming more vertically integrated, with individual companies having one or more data centers, designing chips and maintaining hardware. Bitcoin data centers have been developed to areas where the cost of data is lowest, including land, construction, energy, taxes, and regulations.
Just as an investor needs to know everything about a company before buying shares, an investor or a Bitcoin user should also know that the basics of bitcoin mining make the best decisions. The extraction of bitcoins is one of the most important processes of the infrastructure. However, it can be very technical and many investors have not fully understood the decision to invest.
As you extract more raw materials, these mines are less exploited and used.
For example, during the California gold rush, it was possible to extract gold from the ground by panning, a process that uses a “gold plate” to separate gold from riverbeds. Although you can still do it today, you can buy it from the world. Similarly, bitcoin mining started with small-scale amateurs running mining software from their computers. It has become an industrial-scale mining operation by large mining companies as we see today.
The difficulty in resolving the exploitation of bitcoin, as well as the lack of new blocks and the consequence, the rewards of the miner’s blocks, led to a miners’ arms race to increase their hash capacity. This technology has been used to speed bitcoins.
Mining CPU: Modest beginnings (2008-2010)
A CPU or central processing unit is the central execution center of a computer. It is the part of a computer that acts according to the running software. CPU mining is the oldest form of bitcoin mining, since CPUs are widely used in PCs.
The first CPU was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto, the original developer of Bitcoin, and allowed the Bitcoin pioneers to maintain the network.
Due to the availability of CPUs, many users have started running nodes and extracting bitcoins on their computers.
GPU Mining: Your Hashrate looks good (2010-2012)
In October 2010, Bitcoin mining software for GPU was launched on the Internet. It has been optimized quickly for multiple open source applications. Normally, this software would implement the Bitcoin protocol and the voltage / temperature / error control of the GPU in Java or Python and the main Nonce search algorithm as a single OpenCL file, hidden by the installed native runtimes. GPUs proved to be more accessible to Bitcoin enthusiasts than FPGAs and the required FPGA tools. After investing in a GPU-based mining platform, there is a brand in cash, a natural tendency to scale. Efforts to scale the hash achieved by GPUs have reached the limits of consumer computing in new ways. Powered by a highly efficient power supply, it was developed into a public procurement standard where five GPUs were hung on a low-cost AMD motherboard with minimal DRAM, connected by five PCI Express expansion cables to reduce the cost of the motherboard, and all the GPUs were powered by a highly efficient power supply.
Due to intense competition, CPUs have been quickly overshadowed by Bitcoin. They reviewed GPUs. These chips, also known as graphics processing units, were made to represent video effects. They were ubiquitous in computers because they were needed to display 3D graphics and visual effects. GPUs are designed for the repetitive work required for graphics processing, and not for executive decision making.
Compared to CPUs, GPUs are faster to handle large amounts of data and perform the same process. Bitcoin mining requires repeated hash calculations to find a solution. Therefore, GPUs were more suitable for mining than for CPUs. The first open source program to enable GPU mining was launched in October 2010. This opens the door to bitcoin mining with its GPUs.
The processor is typically a removable component that attaches to the main PC board of the computer or under the motherboard under a large metal heat sink with a fan that partially cool it. The GPU or graphics processing unit is part of the video processing system of a computer. A typical function of a GPU is to render 3D graphics and visual effects so that the processor does not have to.
Field-Programmable Gate Array: Scaling mining power
In June 2011, the first implementations of Free Source Bitcoin FPGA Miners were performed. FPGAs are generally good for handling the SHA-256’s constant and bitwise operations, but not for 32-bit addition operations. The typical FPGA replicates and implements multiple SHA-256 hash functions. In a full implementation, module
• Has created a Bitcoin Miners outdoor graphics processor with five GPUs attached to the motherboards and connected via PCI Express extension cables, as well as a single high-performance power supply.
• Homebrew 69-GPU Mining Data Center. Observe the sufficient power wiring (left) and the cooling system, which consists of housing fans and an air duct (right).
FPGA enabled for more scalable bitcoin mining
The introduction of FPGAs in bitcoin mining marks a transition from hardware that can be used for large consumer applications to specialized hardware to extract bitcoins faster. FPGA stands for Field-Programmable Gate Array. It is an integrated circuit chip that can be configured by the user after manufacture. Its features can be used for other purposes. In addition to Bitcoin applications, FPGAs have been used in applications as diverse as signal processing, medical imaging, and more.
However, FPGA mining has not started. As mentioned earlier, FPGAs are cheaper than ASICs on a small scale because of lower research and development costs. However, the cost of each additional unit is growing rapidly, which is costly and inefficient for large mining operations. FPGAs are best suited for small tests and ASIC prototypes, which would become the main source of energy for mines. They may be more versatile, but in large quantities, which is required by Bitcoin mining, cost and energy consumption make the operation unprofitable. In addition, because of the architecture of FPGAs, they are slower than ASICs because they can be optimized for their purpose. FGPAs also consume less energy than ASICs and energy consumption is an important decision factor for many miners. FPGAs outperformed ASICs in some areas as they were marketed faster. However, in Bitcoin’s operation, the development of ASIC was so fast that FPGAs did not provide a competitive advantage. Because of these factors, the FPGA never prevailed and we quickly entered the era of ASIC mining.
Industrialized production: ASIC Bitcoin Mining (2012 – present)
ASICMiner was created in early July 2012 after BFL began pre-ordering machines with three Chinese citizens. One of the main motivations was to prevent BFL from being the only supplier of ASIC Bitcoin and to control the blockchain. The ASICMiner approach was quite different from that of BFL; Initially, I did not want to sell hardware, but managed an ASIC datacenter that BTC had acquired for its shareholders. This approach, possibly the first cloud ASIC, was introduced to the hardware to customers and helped win the race for full deployment. As the name of BFL was not recognized, ASICMiner has collected money online via bitcointalk.org and some forums in Chinese. The company has developed a project to develop Bitcoin ASIC Miner and answers questions about the business model, technical decisions and financial reliability.
ASIC stands for “Application-Specific Integrated Circuits”. This is the source of hash strength today. The name does not really matter what the chip actually does. ASIC refers to chips designed specifically for a particular purpose. They are developed and used in various industries for machines with special functions. For Bitcoin, ASICs are chips that are specifically designed to compute hash values for extraction. Since 2016, BitMain’s Antminer S9 is the most energy-efficient mining company that can buy a Bitcoin enthusiast on the market to earn Bitcoin at home. Antminer S9 is one of the fastest bitcoin miners you can buy in 2016. Each unit can calculate 14,000,000 hashes per second with an efficiency of 10,000 Mash / J, more than double the efficiency of its predecessor S7, which appeared only 9 months ago. BitMain is not the only manufacturer of ASICs. If you are a big miner of the Bitfury group, you can put your data center in containers, a bitcoin extraction unit with a container size of 3 TEUs. The size of this unit is only suitable for professional Bitcoin miners who buy and use.
While Avalon’s ASICs hired serious Bitcoin enthusiasts, time was running out. This problem is very difficult to understand, but it is difficult to understand how to use it. Most of these companies have changed their business model and other financial difficulties due to pre-construction orders. These are just some of the crucial moments for the entire sector. There are still many uncertainties about the future of Bitcoin, the type of products and services based on blockchain or financial institutions that will be the first to make the most of technology. But one thing is clear, at this pace we should have the answer to those questions and more in no time at all.
Brief review of the mining ecosystem
• Hardware
The users use different types of hardware. The hardware specifications and performance statistics are described in detail on the Operating Hardware Comparison page.
• CPU Mining
In previous versions of the Bitcoin client, users could use their processors for mine. The arrival of GPU mining is one of the most important factors in the growth of CPU mining. The option has been removed from the Bitcoin client user interface.
• GPU Mining
GPU mining is much faster and more efficient than CPU mining. Some Bitcoin users may wonder why there are so many differences between the extraction output of a processor and that of a graphics processor. Most computers today have multi-core processors (which is almost the same as many processors in the same physical package) and some computers even have multiple processors.
• FPGA Mining
The FPGA operation is a very efficient and fast process, comparable to the mining by GPU and much higher than the mining by CPU. FPGAs typically consume very small amounts of energy with relatively high hashes, which makes them more convenient and efficient than GPU mining.
• ASIC Mining
An Application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is a chip designed and manufactured for a specific purpose. The ASICs were developed for the first time in 2013. In terms of energy consumption, they are much faster than all previous technologies and have already financed the degradation of the graphics processor.
• Mining Services (Cloud Mining)
Mining companies provide mining services with contracted services, often referred to as “mining contracts.” For example, it may have a specific mining time.
• Pools
While campaigning for a limited number of blocks, they campaigned for their mining. This has made mining a type of game to remedy the diversion of their income.
The mining of Bitcoin is an example of the new class of applications on a global scale. Today, companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google use global applications such as Siri, Facebook Live and Brain, for which the IT load of the number of users is the same as for Bitcoin. Ultimately, the total cost of ownership of the data center that performs these calculations becomes so great that it makes economic sense to build ASICs to reduce hardware costs and energy consumption. As a result of this trend, Google announced last year the creation of ASIC for the workloads of its data centers. A recent study in the ASIC cloud shows how to take advantage of the transcoding of YouTube videos. The future of the ASICs is promising and has played an important role in the development of new technologies.
