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Optimizing monero mining through Via padlock engine and linu[...]

jahruhn posted this 8 years ago

jahruhn | 8 years ago

Hello fellow Monero users,

Just looking into what would be most cost effective. I am lucky that I have the access to free power. But I dont have much finances to build a massive system. Now the new VIA Quadcore processor looks really nice. The padlock engine accelerates SHA-1 Sha-3 Sha-384 and Sha-256 processing. Will it benfit me with mining monero? I don't know much of the monero code or what processors run best on it. Does using Linux help? The processor makes use of the Linux crypto api. Or should I try a different coin?

Thanks in advance,

Jahruhn

Replies: 2
moneromooo posted 8 years ago Replies: 1 | Weight: -76 | Link [ - ]

Monero does make use of SHA-3 [1], though I think it's AES that's the bulk of the time, so if you want to interface with hardware blocks, SHA-3 is probably not worth it. Intel processors (and possibly others too) have circuitry to perform some AES steps, so this already gives you a pretty good speedup over software implementation. Linux does help, generally. I think you misspoke when you said "The processor makes use of the Linux crypto api.". Maybe you mean there is a driver for your SHA-3 hardware module ?

[1] SHA-3 has several posisble configurations, though I think the one that Monero uses is pretty common, but don't quote me on that.

Reply to: moneromooo
luigi1111 edited 8 years ago Weight: -75 | Link [ - ]

[1] It is. This online calculator will produce the same results as cn_fast_hash (keccak-1600): https://leventozturk.com/engineering/sha3/

Wikipedia's page on SHA3 used to have the keccak variant listed in examples too. TWPTB decided we didn't need those anymore (you can find it in the history section): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-3

Historical page for your viewing pleasure: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SHA-3&oldid=676252215#Examples_of_SHA-3_and_Keccak_variants