Generating Bitcoins with your video card (OpenCL/CUDA)

[laszlo]

I have a working prototype of Bitcoin generation with OpenCL.  OpenCL is similar to OpenGL but it's for doing computation, not graphics.  Other similar technologies are CUDA (NVIDIA) and DirectCompute (Microsoft).  OpenCL is Apple's version of it but it is available for Linux and Windows as well.

I posted a Mac OS X binary package in my other thread.  I will create a patch and write up instructions for each platform this week as I have time but I wanted to find out who if anyone is interested in this even.

Please reply if you're interested and what OS/Video card you have.

Supported video cards:
NVIDIA: http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_gpus.html
AMD (ATI): http://developer.amd.com/gpu/ATIStreamSDK/Pages/default.aspx#two

Just to give people an idea of the benefit..
In my development computer I have an Intel E8600 CPU which runs at 3.3ghz normally.. I have it clocked at 4.1ghz
With 2 threads running the normal way I get about 1800k iterations per second in the bitcoin miner.
With an NVIDIA 8800 GTS (G80 GPU) video card I get around 3300-3800k iterations per second (varies with tuning of the code).

I find the best total performance comes from running one CPU thread and one OpenCL thread for the GPU (which does a bunch of work in parallel).  I get about 5000k/sec total that way on my development machine.  If I use 2 CPU threads it slows down the overall results to about 3600k/sec because the CPU is tied up computing and not pumping data to the GPU fast enough.

[davidonpda]

Why would anyone not be interested?

GTS 240

Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

[fergalish]

Ubuntu 10.04, nvidia geforce 8300, AMD Athlon II 64 X2.  The GPU has only 8 cores, so it'll not do much.

[SmokeTooMuch]

Win7 Pro 64-Bit
Radeon HD4870 512MB

[m0mchil]

Win7 Pro 64-Bit
Radeon HD4350

[laszlo]

Thanks for the replies.  I have it working somewhat but it's really inefficient at the moment.  I will try to get a windows and linux version built this weekend so other people can play with it.

[allinvain]

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Nvidia Geforce 7900GS

But I'm soon going to get a ATI Radeon HD 5850

Btw, I think this is an excellent idea!

[davidonpda]

You going to open the source on this? I'd love to help.

The speed increase with multiple GPU's would be a very cost effective way to add power to the system to generate BC's

[SmokeTooMuch]

is the gpu-computing-client compatible with the normal client so the gpu-generated bitcoins will emmit into the same pool as the cpu-generated ones ?

[Xunie]

is the gpu-computing-client compatible with the normal client so the gpu-generated bitcoins will emmit into the same pool as the cpu-generated ones ?

Yes, totally.
It's just your GPU doing the work of your CPU.

[laszlo]

I ran into some technical problems while experimenting with this and didn't get much farther than the Mac OS version.  It seems that the NVIDIA CUDA 3.0 SDK for linux at least is very buggy when it comes to OpenCL.  It never quite worked right on Mac OS either, it just leaks a lot of memory (the OpenCL implementation, not bitcoin).  I will post an update if I come up with some solutions but I think the issues in the CUDA SDK will just have to be addressed by the vendor.. this stuff is all very beta right now, but I will keep my eye open for any new developments with the SDKs.  I do not have an AMD GPU so I have not been able to develop for that at all, but their support is pretty spotty right now too, almost all of the current cards are listed as experimental support.

I think this tech has a lot of potential but I think most people who are using it for anything real are rolling their own vendor specific solutions.  I would rather not pass out something that only partially works and only works for a few people.

[davidonpda]

Where did you say you posted binary in your other thread?

Would you possibly release the source for others to tinker with?

[lachesis]

While this is definitely really cool, it won't benefit anyone if you release it. After two weeks, the difficulty system will adjust and we'll be back to generating bitcoins at the same rate but using much more computer power. Although I suppose this will benefit those with fast video cards instead of just fast CPUs.

I'm one of those people, so full steam ahead!

[alystair]

Windows 7 x64 / Debian VM
GTX 260

Extremely interested to see CUDA work considering I hardly strain this card anymore

[fflaguna]

Windows 7 x64
nVidia GTX 280M

I'm computer-savvy and ready to try out the CUDA binary.

[robotmonkey]

os x
nvidia 9400M/9600M GT

[asdfman]

Unfortunately I dont have a compatible GPU on the machine Im running, but I think this is an awesome idea!!

[StinkiePhish]

OS X 10.6.4

Geforce GT 220.

Thank you!

[ultrasonicsite]

Windows XP
Geforce 8400 GS 512MB

[Ground Loop]

Windows XP SP3 32-bit
GeForce GT 240
(96 CUDA cores, 1GB)

Happy to try experimental code.