7

I'm benchmarking some Bitcoin related software and am looking for cards that are better at parallel multiplication vs parallel addition.

  • Is there any prior work that may have this information? Perhaps for mining?

  • What GPU features should I look for?

  • I read that FPGAs may offer this ability, are any available?

makerofthings7
  • 12,656
  • 11
  • 60
  • 129
  • 2
    Hmm, I think this question would work better on some SE that deals with hardware and OpenCL, rather than Bitcoin. – ThePiachu Dec 13 '12 at 08:00
  • @ThePiachu I debated about putting this question here, on Crypto, or some hardware site. – makerofthings7 Dec 13 '12 at 13:12
  • Somehow related: [comparison of actual GPU arithmetic performance vs. vendor claims](http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=bf0njpp5n6qjl_&ctype=c&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=dgemm_n&fdim_y=device:m2070ecc&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&ccm=uni&idim=platform:cuda32:cuda40:nvocl32:nvocl40&ifdim=platform&tunit=D&pit=1272772800000&uniSize=0.035&iconSize=0.5&icfg#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_y=maxspflops&fdim_y=platform:best&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=peakspflops&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=device:sb00:gtx680:hd5970:hd7970&ifdim=device&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false) – aland Dec 19 '12 at 13:44

1 Answers1

1

The simple answer is to compare the results of 2 sites for an answer. Both are coin mining hardware comparison pages, one for script, the other is for sha256. Unfortunately, there is little information for the older Nvidia cards on the scrypt mining.

  • SHA-256: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
  • Scrypt: http://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison

they also include a few other CPUs and Arm processors as well as FPGAs. With FPGA multiplication and parallel addition, the more core segments, the more likely it can do it and do it fast with out having to buffer a sum then use the sum as input back in to the equation. Spartan 6 FPGAs are a good example of fast units, and depending which one, possibly able to do multiplication as a low level logic function rather than use a math processor due to the logic cells available.

As far as GPU features go, the newer, faster and the more shader cores ( or equivalent ) the better at math the card will be.

Paul Gregoire
  • 127
  • 1
  • 7
nybbler905
  • 151
  • 4