Updated Ethminer 0.9.41 Nvidia CUDA Version for Windows

9 Sep
2015

new-ethminer-cuda-updated

The developer of the Ethminer fork with Nvidia CUDA support (source) Genoil has released another update and we have compiled a new Windows binary of ethminer with CUDA support. Do note that this Windows binary release is compiled with VS2013 for windows 64-bit and is for CUDA 6.5. The latest version comes with some optimizations and a new command line option cuda-schedule to experiment with that replaces the old cuda-turbo, also note that you may need to manually specify the number of GPUs to use if you have multiple video cards using the cuda-devices command line parameter if the miner fires only on one device by default. Additionally to get better performance you can try adding the following command line parameters to the ethminer:

For OpenCL: --cl-global-work 16384
For CUDA: --cuda-grid-size 8192 --cuda-block-size 128 --cuda-schedule auto

--cuda-schedule Set the schedule mode for CUDA threads waiting for CUDA devices to finish work. Default is sync. Possible values for mode are:
auto – Uses a heuristic based on the number of active CUDA contexts in the process C and the number of logical processors in the system P. If C > P, then yield else spin.
spin – Instruct CUDA to actively spin when waiting for results from the device.
yield – Instruct CUDA to yield its thread when waiting for results from the device.
sync – Instruct CUDA to block the CPU thread on a synchronization primitive when waiting for the results from the device.

It seems that the auto mode for cuda-schedule works best for us providing maybe a bit lower maximum hashrate, but a more stable one than the sync that may produce higher maxes, but also lower. You are free to experiment what will work best on your mining configuration however. The Ethminer CUDA fork should work on Compute 2.0 or newer GPUs, but the performance on older GPUs can be worse, also don’t forget that you can run Ethminer in OpenCL mode as well on Nvidia-based video cards and not only on AMD if you are having trouble with the CUDA support or the hashrate you get is lower as compared to OpenCL.

– Download the updated Ethminer CUDA fork compiled for Windows and ready to be used…

Updated Windows Binary of the ccMiner 1.5.66-git Fork by SP for Maxwell

9 Sep
2015

ccminer-1-5-66-sp-mod

Yet another update in the form of a new Windows binary release compiled from the latest Git source code of the ccMiner 1.5.66-git SP-MOD fork by SP optimized for the latest Maxwell-based video cards (source). This binary release includes some fixes and more hashrate improvements for the lyra2REv2 algorithm, so if mining VertCoin (VTC) you will want to update to the latest release for maximum performance. Do note that the SP-MOD fork of ccMiner is designed for Nvidia Maxwell GPUs such as the already available GTX 750, 750 Ti as well as the newer GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan X. The Windows binary release we have made available here is with support for Compute 5.0 and Compute 5.2 GPUs or with other words only for Maxwell-based Nvidia video cards compiled with CUDA 6.5 and VS2013.

– To download the latest ccMiner for Maxwell version 1.5.66-git by SP for Windows OS…

First Open Source Ethereum Mining Pool Released

9 Sep
2015

ethpool-core-source-code

Etherchain have released an open source implementation of pooled mining for Ethereum. Do note however that this software is not a complete mining pool as it only takes care of work distribution and share validation; valid shares are stored into a local database (LevelDB). Reward calculation and payments are not yet implemented, but it should be possible to integrate this software some of the existing open source mining pools. The current implementation is in Go and it might not be the most effective one, apparently the pool is able to process ~600 workers at 30% CPU utilization (1 core) and 70MB RAM usage. The pool has been tested successfully with both the go Ethereum client (geth) and the cpp Ethereum client (eth) as a backend. And while it may not be a complete implementation with full functionality and web-based interface it is still a good starting point for anyone interested in running a mining pool for Ethereum without having to start from scratch.

– For more information about the first open source Ethereum mining pool and the source code…

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