I've noticed people seem to jump on and off of crypto in cycles, much like many traditional industries based on market demand and the evolution of crypto based hardware, be it mining hardware all the way to hardware wallets. I'm sure with the rollout of the Antminer L3+, that LTC(Litecoin) will see a large boom, much like we are seeing with ETH(Etherium) though perhaps not as steep. The purpose of this post is to perhaps take a look at what people within the Crypto community see on the horizon with relation to hardware utilized today and how it can be not only improved but even leapfrogged given the speed we seem to be advancing. This post is NOT a miners vs gamers post, please have such discussions in the numerous other posts already out there.
Currently manufacturers are seemingly FINALLY realising the potential that exists within the mining community for customers, especially when it comes to hardware that has been designed from the ground up for miners and not just a repurposed off the shelf part. This is clearly going on with both AMD and Nvidia while I write this post as both have announced "mining" specific sku's that should be coming to the market very soon. In my opinion though they have looked at the current supply issues and tried to come up with a solution that is quite lacking in forethought. What is meant by this, is the reason that GPU and CPU(less so) mining are so popular is the very reason that almost anyone can do it, in a word DECENTRALIZATION. A cheaper GPU based solution for miners does sound appealing at first, but when you start to do a deep dive on it, is it really such a panacea...? Very limited warranty, lack of video outputs does make it cheaper to produce but also kills the resale potential that is part of the GPU mining equation not to mention for those only mining on a card or two, they won't be able to game on it. This is one of the largest problems with FPGA's and ASIC's, when they are outdated, they are discarded, should we really be so enthusiastic to move to an extremely obvious state of planned obsolescence...? As we have watched and seen bitcoin grow and move from CPU thru GPU and now firmly only profitable with ASIC, the granddaddy of crypto has become less and less decentralized with at times, certain players within that space controlling 40+% of the hashrate. This is the main reason that I see ASIC resistant algos continuing to come to market in the future and that the community as a whole gets behind projects like ETH, XMR, ZEN, ZCASH etc. The people in the community have taken the power back from Governments and Central banks, though we need diligence to maintain the foothold we have now. I would appreciate your opinions on what you see as the future of the hardware side of crypto-mining. I will list a few items below please add to the list or comment on it, I would really appreciate the feedback.
Motherboards, we are starting to see motherboard manufacturers come out with boards that have 12 or 13 PCi-E slots specifically for GPU miners. Given the available PCi-E lanes on current generation CPU's do you see this being sufficient or will they offer other versions with huge numbers of PCi-E slots...? AMD's Thread Ripper CPU is a top end CPU(likely $1200USD +), which is not what is usually associated with miners as they try to use the cheapest systems that will work. It throws a wrench into that equation though as a single Thread Ripper CPU is sporting a whopping 64 PCi-E lanes. If one could run a 32 or 64 GPU rig off of a single motherboard and CPU is that a direction miners will be heading? I see people mention they don't want to run more then X number of GPU's per rig because if the rig goes down then X number of GPU's go down, most of those people are not running 1 X gpu rigs so I'm assuming there will be a balance somewhere between the possible extremes. Thoughts...?
GPU's, mentioned above both AMD and Nvidia are supposedly coming out with mining specific sku's which seem to lack the resale/gaming value currently associated with GPU mining as they are said to lack the video ports required to use as a video card. I can see large miners like Genesis-Mining interested in the new parts but for the smaller miner, the home miner, would you be interested in mining specific cards given the aforementioned drawbacks...? Remember that the GPU crunch we are in at the moment is a temporary problem, think about a month or two from now, or post Vega release etc...
Power Supplies, It seems we have two camps in this section, the people using consumer grade computer PSU's and those using server style PSU's. We have started seeing the advent of some cheaper no-name chinese brands coming out with consumer power supplies that are geared towards GPU mining as the issues miners have with consumer PSU's get worked out. One such example is they seem to be limiting the molex and sata cables to having 2 X connectors per cable, this is likely in response to people plugging in 3 or 4 risers into a single sata power cable and creating a fire hazard. Do you foresee mainstream brands such as Corsair, EVGA, etc also coming out with mining specific PSU's...? On the server PSU side, all the crypto mining taking place today wouldn't put a dent in that market, the opportunities and innovations in this space seem to be in the breakout boards, cabling and cooling solutions being brought to market...
Cases, from repurposed milk crates to wire shelving units, wood or aluminum open air cases to enclosed wind tunnel server style cases like Greymatter. The choices seem endless, but are we moving or progressing from one style to another...? Open air cases are very popular for those just getting into GPU mining, they allow easy access provide a lot of airflow are cheaper than some other options. Problem being as one moves from a hobby miner to a more industrial scale server style case popularity seems to be on the rise. Server style cases offer the benefits of being much easier to control where the heat is output, rather than heating up the entire room, you have a hot side and a cold side, if you have your exhaust fan on the hot side not only are you evacuating the hot air but produce a draft of fresh cooler air from the cold side. Though server cases seem to be more expensive for a prebuilt, if you do the work/modifications yourself, a server case can be cheaper than an purchased open air case. Where do you see cases for crypto heading in the future...?
Risers, splitters, odds and ends. While I'm sure there are many other categories that could be covered I think the remaining can likely be loosely grouped into this section for simplicity. PCI-E risers used to be huge ribbon cable affairs, which had the unfortunately common effect of severely blocking airflow, back when cards ran HOT. With the advent of USB risers this issue has been mostly resolved, though I can see in the near future a possible improvement over the current form. Many miners tend to use a 90 degree USB dongle to attach the USB cable to the 1X riser card that goes in the motherboard. I can see in the future that the people making the riser PCB's will simply turn the usb connector 90 degrees so it doesn't need a dongle. I am well aware that not everyone uses the 90 degree dongles but for server style cases specifically it tends to cut down the amount of clutter. Another interesting item that is becoming more abundant are PCi-E splitters, and items like M.2 cards that allow you to run a PCi-E riser off of an M.2 slot. I can't wrap up this post without mentioning the SRR or Simple Rig Resetter from Simplemining.net. What the SRR does is briefly mentioned below, more details are available at the website, I understand people with 1 or 2 GPU's may not see the value in this device but talk to anyone who is mining on a larger scale if such a device would be worthwhile and they'll prob already own one or more of them.
"Main Features of SimpleRigResetter
- It can manage up to 8 PC rigs + extra 240 rigs with 10 extension packs
- It will automatically RESET freezed/crashed rig
- Supports Windows and Linux rigs
- Windows Tool will allow you to manage all rigs from it (see video)
- Basic web interface: check status of each rig (is it ON or OFF), turn rig ON, OFF or RESET
- We use optical transistors so each rig is isolated for safety !
- There is no power limit (watts) for rigs as we don't transfer power but only short power pins !"
Well, I hope to have provided some context for feedback, I think it would be hard to explain to someone not in the crypto space how uniquely situated we are as a community to guide the direction of the future of monetary systems worldwide. Please comment, I'd like to hear your opinions, or provide me some feedback if you think my view is skewed...
Good article.