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From: Matt Corallo <lf-lists@mattcorallo.com>
To: Sergio Demian Lerner <sergio.d.lerner@gmail.com>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>,
	Tier Nolan <tier.nolan@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Making AsicBoost irrelevant
Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 22:59:52 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <573267E8.9050209@mattcorallo.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAKzdR-ou2FYjjxmRBLARhvfhHO-46weiMc2Q2f+GZf1E_JUEAg@mail.gmail.com>

Replies inline.

On 05/10/16 21:43, Sergio Demian Lerner via bitcoin-dev wrote:
-snip-

> But some ASIC companies already have cores that are better (on power,
> cost, rate, temperature, etc.) than competing companies ASICs. Why do
> you think a 10% improvement from AsicBoost is different from many of
> other improvements they already have (secretly) added? Maybe we (?)
> should only allow ASICs that have a 100% open source designs?

One is patented and requires paying a license fee to a group, or more
likely, ends up with it being impossible to import hardware from other
jurisdictions into the US/western world. The other requires more
investment in R&D, and over the long run, there is no guaranteed
advantage to such groups.

> If we change the protocol then the message to the ecosystem is that ASIC
> optimizations should be kept secret.

To some extent, this is the case, but there is a strong difference
between a guaranteed advantage enforced by the legal system and one that
is true due to intellectual superiority. In the long run, I am confident
the second will not remain the case. For example, AsicBoost was
independently discovered by at least two companies/individuals within a
year or two.

> It is fair to change the protocol
> because we don't like that certain ASIC manufacturer has better chips,
> if the chips are sold in the market and anyone can buy them? And what
> about using approximate adders (30% improvement), or dual rail
> asynchronous adders (also more than 10% improvement) ? How do we repair
> those?

As far as I'm aware neither of these are patented. Is this not the case?

> Disclaimer: I have stake in AsicBoost, but I'm not sure about this.
>  
> 
> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 5:27 PM, Tier Nolan via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>> wrote:
> 
>     The various chunks in the double SHA256 are
> 
>     Chunk 1: 64 bytes
>     version
>     previous_block_digest
>     merkle_root[31:4]
> 
>     Chunk 2: 64 bytes
>     merkle_root[3:0]
>     nonce
>     timestamp
>     target
> 
>     Chunk 3: 64 bytes
>     digest from first sha pass
> 
>     Their improvement requires that all data in Chunk 2 is identical
>     except for the nonce.  With 4 bytes, the birthday paradox means
>     collisions can be found reasonable easily.
> 
>     If hard forks are allowed, then moving more of the merkle root into
>     the 2nd chunk would make things harder.  The timestamp and target
>     could be moved into chunk 1.  This increases the merkle root to 12
>     bytes in the 2nd chunk.  Finding collisions would be made much more
>     difficult.
> 
>     If ASIC limitations mean that the nonce must stay where it is, this
>     would mean that the merkle root would be split into two pieces.
> 
>     On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 7:57 PM, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev
>     <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
>     <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>> wrote:
> 
>         As part of the hard-fork proposed in the HK agreement(1) we'd
>         like to make the
>         patented AsicBoost optimisation useless, and hopefully make
>         further similar
>         optimizations useless as well.
> 
>         What's the best way to do this? Ideally this would be SPV
>         compatible, but if it
>         requires changes from SPV clients that's ok too. Also the fix
>         this should be
>         compatible with existing mining hardware.
> 
> 
>         1)
>         https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-consensus-266d475a61ff
> 
>         2)
>         http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-April/012596.html
> 
>         --
>         https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
>         <http://petertodd.org>
> 
>         _______________________________________________
>         bitcoin-dev mailing list
>         bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
>         <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
>         https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
> 
> 
> 
>     _______________________________________________
>     bitcoin-dev mailing list
>     bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
>     <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
>     https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
> 


  reply	other threads:[~2016-05-10 22:59 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 39+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2016-05-10 18:57 [bitcoin-dev] Making AsicBoost irrelevant Peter Todd
2016-05-10 20:27 ` Tier Nolan
2016-05-10 21:35   ` Matt Corallo
2016-05-10 21:43   ` Sergio Demian Lerner
2016-05-10 22:59     ` Matt Corallo [this message]
2016-05-11 12:20     ` Sergio Demian Lerner
2016-05-11 13:08       ` Marek Palatinus
2016-05-11 21:01         ` Matt Corallo
2016-05-11 22:16           ` Simon Liu
2016-05-11 22:50             ` Peter Todd
2016-05-11 14:28       ` Luke Dashjr
2016-05-11 16:24         ` Timo Hanke
2016-05-11 18:28           ` Timo Hanke
2016-05-11 22:49             ` Timo Hanke
2016-05-12  2:27     ` Tom Harding
2016-05-12  2:31       ` Allen Piscitello
2016-05-12  2:33       ` Peter Todd
2016-05-12  4:01         ` Tom Harding
2016-05-10 21:49 ` Marco Pontello
2016-05-10 22:17 ` Sergio Demian Lerner
2016-05-10 22:27   ` Chris Riley
2016-05-11  3:14 ` Timo Hanke
2016-05-11  9:21   ` Jannes Faber
2016-05-11 10:36     ` Henning Kopp
2016-05-11 10:47       ` Jannes Faber
2016-05-11 22:42         ` Timo Hanke
2016-05-11 22:58           ` Gregory Maxwell
2016-05-12  7:29             ` Tom
2016-05-12 11:05           ` Jorge Timón
2016-05-11 14:07   ` Jorge Timón
2016-05-11 14:18     ` Sergio Demian Lerner
2016-05-11 14:30       ` Jannes Faber
2016-05-11 20:50   ` Matt Corallo
2016-05-11 22:00     ` James Hilliard
2016-05-11 23:01   ` Peter Todd
2016-05-12  0:02     ` Gregory Maxwell
2016-05-12  1:23       ` Russell O'Connor
2016-05-12  1:58         ` Peter Todd
2016-05-12  1:58         ` Matt Corallo

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