On Friday, July 04, 2014 8:21:42 PM Jorge Timón wrote: > On 7/4/14, kjj <bitcoin-de...@jerviss.org> wrote: > > I suspect that there exist no algorithms which cannot be done better in > > an application-specific device than in a general purpose computer. And > > if there is such a thing, then it must necessarily perform best on one > > specific platform, making that platform the de facto application > > specific device. > > > > I'm not sure how one would go about proving or disproving that, but it > > seems very likely to be true. > > I assumed this was obvious and self-evident for anyone who knows what > a Turing machine is, but judging from the number of smart people > wasting their time on the pursue of the "anti-ASIC" myth (also known > as pow wankery) it seems I was wrong. > Anything you can do with software you can do with hardware and > viceversa (you can even do it with ropes and fire in Minecraft!!) > Does this really need any proof? > I think it's the hard-pow cultists who have to provide a counterexample.
Really, if people want to pursue a goal anything like this, they should be looking for "ASIC already widely owned" as the property rather than "anti- ASIC". Thus, a sufficiently memory-hard PoW would really be "RAM is the ASIC". Whether it's possible to make this or not, is another question. And then we get back to "is is really a desirable property to have people capable of mining who have not given any indication of interest?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open source business process management suite built on Java and Eclipse Turn processes into business applications with Bonita BPM Community Edition Quickly connect people, data, and systems into organized workflows Winner of BOSSIE, CODIE, OW2 and Gartner awards http://p.sf.net/sfu/Bonitasoft _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
