How to properly mine ZCash day 1?

Why would you 8x4? No “moderate” CPU has 32 threads.

I mis-interpreted intel’s website as “per core” because it said “on a core” in its definition of threads. Thanks.

I am very doubtful there are going to be any optimizations that are going to make 16GB DDR3 1333 MHz RAM per CPU w/ 8 thread CPU obsolete by launch. I would not expect more than a 4x loss in efficiency per dollar spent compared to the upper 15% or so of miners, assuming AWS EC2 is not a clear way to go. My reasons for thinking this are:

  1. The developers are biased towards CPUs, and I can’t see that they are planning to optimized for GPUs.

  2. There’s no easily-available algorithm let alone code for optimizing GPUs for Equihash. If and when it becomes available, then you can get it. But I would not wait a month and miss out on a time when people are NOT using the GPUs efficiently. We don’t have to run fast, we just have to run faster than each other.

  3. If bandwidth is the limit, and GPU method is not made available, then the RAM+CPU cost per B.W. seems 3x more to get double results (DDR3 system verses DDR4).

  4. If memory is the limit and the CPU can somehow make use of 32 GB with only 8 threads, despite the developer’s goal of requiring 1 thread per GB, then 16 GB has loses only half.

Launch is supposedly only a month or two away, although a 3 month delay would seem normal because they have have not declared it is likely.

The number of CPU cores is the factor that influences how much simultaneous processing can be done - and then only if other I/O considerations permit those cores to be kept busy. It is typical for modern motherboards to provide multiple memory channels but I’m unaware of whether or not operating systems load-balance their processes across these channels as readily (or at all) as they do across cores.

The current (z6 release) Equihash parameters within zcashd are causing its memory usage to peak around 470MB but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to have two mining threads per GB of memory. Providing that this processing can be balanced (and segregated) between multiple memory channels, I suspect the most efficient use of resources will be to have one mining thread per memory channel.

Bump for new users to see thread

If someone can help me get going with Mining next week I can benchmark it on a new 16-core (32 thread) dual Xeon with 128 GB.

They are likely going to release z9 today which will fix the network bug. Once that rolls out you should be able to follow the Public Alpha Guide

To get mining, if you get stuck drop by here for help.

You can post your results in this thread Z8 Speeds & Feeds - #15 by daira

In order to be properly setup for mining, since my computer sits behind a modem/router using NAT, do I need to configure the modem/router to forward port 18233 to the mining computer ? Thanks

You dont need to open port on your router to mine.

Note that the URL for the Public Alpha Guide is now Home · zcash/zcash Wiki · GitHub ; the URL that Shawn posted is no longer valid.

I’m open to thoughts on mining using power8?

Did anyone mine bitcoin on PowerPC? Were there endian issues there? Or maybe that’s a non-issue for Power8…

Zcash currently requires a little-endian system. (Bitcoin added big-endian support recently, mainly in Big endian support by laanwj · Pull Request #5510 · bitcoin/bitcoin · GitHub .) It is possible to run Linux on Power systems in little-endian mode: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-power-little-endian-faq-trs/

I’ve ordered Ubuntu and also Mint cinnamon versions of Linux. The compile instructions don’t say anything about the Mint version. Can I assume it would be the same as in Ubuntu?

I have not personally had luck with Mint.
I would stick to Ubuntu, the developers use Ubuntu so it is a safe bet (especially since they are still working out software bugs)

1 Like

Just sayin… Ordering Linux install discs is doin’ it the hard way.

Ok, why is it the hard way, what would have been easier?

1 Like

I think he means you can download Ubuntu 16, for free from Download Ubuntu Desktop | Download | Ubuntu

I use a tablet and my phone when away working. I get bored at night and order things, I knew it was free but this way it’s waiting for me when I get home. Upgrading to ssd storage and adding 8gbs of ram gonna try out out this Linux Os fresh on new drive. Hey any body know what the consequences of running to much ram would be?

No consequences for too much RAM, if you have a 4 core PC then be sure to have at least 4GB RAM to mine. But keep in mind that compiling the miner and running a JoinSplit (protect/encrypted coins) operation can take up to 8GB

1 Like

My main desktop is the Debian Edition of Mint. I was not able to compile Zcash on it without significant dependency problems, although that was an earlier version of Zcash and I haven’t tried recently. If you already have Mint then try the Debian/Ubuntu instructions, but it’s not the distribution I would choose if setting up a VM or new hardware to run Zcash.