
Bitcoin Mining Hardware Accelerator with Optimized Message Datapath - based2
http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20180089642.PGNR.&OS=dn%2F20180089642&RS=DN%2F20180089642
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makomk
Some complicated pipelining optimization that claims to reduce the critical
path of each pipeline stage, increasing the clock speed and/or decreasing the
required voltage for a given clock speed, written in impenetrable patentese.

The easiest pipeline optimisation, which is basically free hardware-wise and
is documented in the academic literature for years, is to move the computation
of W + K + H to the previous pipeline stage, reducing the critical path. This
is a trivial win because all the data is available already and H can be
discarded afterwards, which also has the nice bonus of mapping more
efficiently to certain FPGA hardware. It sounds like Intel have taken this and
expanded on it to move even more things into earlier and later stages of the
pipeline.

Or, as Intel puts it, "The precomputed (H.sub.i+K.sub.i+W.sub.i) may be stored
in the 32-bit register 402 dedicated for H.sub.i. This optimization reduces
the critical path for the computation of E.sub.i+1 by one CSA or approximately
three logic gates." I implemented this back in 2011 in some open source FPGA
mining code, and it was an old trick even back then. They don't seem to be
citing any prior art, which is a bit dubious.

~~~
DoctorOetker
I take it you understand the specific optimization.

Is there a reason they keep talking about a '32-bit' this and that? or should
that be '32 byte' as that would be 256 bits?

~~~
makomk
SHA-256 operates almost entirely on 32-bit values, because it's designed to be
efficient to compute on general-purpose CPUs without special hardware support.
The SHA-256 state consists of 8 32-bit integers, of which 2 are updated each
round. (SHA-512 uses 64-bit integers instead for some reason.)

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ShaneCurran
I wouldn’t read too much into this. Intel have very generous employee “patent
creation” bonuses that encourage them to constantly file patents, ca. $2500
per patent IIRC.

That being said, it’s still interesting seeing Intel encouraging and embracing
crypto ASIC design.

~~~
vernie
Is that incentive per application or per grant?

~~~
ggg9990
It differs by company, but is not that easily gameable. (I’ve tried many times
and succeeded only once in filing an application that was completely trash).
The company’s patent lawyers ultimately decide what they will and won’t file,
and they are more time constrained than budget constrained).

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thecompilr
Intel encourages employees to file all sorts of crappy patents, but I don't
see it as a bad or evil practice, but rather as a defensive strategy. Meaning
that they don't really enforce patent usage on others, instead they need to
have a trove of own patents as defense against patent trolls.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
Except if they go out of business at some point, and all those patents end up
in the hands of trolls.

~~~
Viper007Bond
I don't see Intel going out of business any time soon...

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jacquesm
As usual the patent gets awarded to the party that doesn't have a product or
even a proof of concept while the market has already moved on and has been
selling the product for years.

~~~
monochromatic
>As usual

Is that what usually happens? Really?

~~~
jacquesm
Most patents that I come across read as landgrabs, not as companies that
actually have working prototypes, proofs of concept or any plans to produce
those.

The patent system is seriously broken.

~~~
monochromatic
If the market has been selling the claimed product for years, why would anyone
waste the money on a patent application?

~~~
jacquesm
Being late never stopped anybody from filing for a patent.

I've been sued by patent trolls that somehow got a patent on live streaming
video to the browser way past where we were doing it in public. Others have
been on the receiving end of similar lawsuits. Fortunately our efforts were
very well documented so we managed to get rid of them but it was quite
annoying that such a patent ever got granted. Especially because I made a
conscious decision _not_ to patent it myself because I felt it was a trivial
thing and the time was simply ripe for doing it.

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fipple
Kind of pointless since all Bitcoin hardware is made by Chinese companies who
don’t give two shits about patents.

~~~
gruez
bitmain certainly cares enough about asicboost to oppose a bitcoin extension
that would break asicboost (segwit).

~~~
mrb
Stop spreading this conspiracy theory stuff (which is very popular on
/r/Bitcoin)

Bitmain's own pools—AntPool and BTC.com—were voting for (not against) Segwit
through nVersion flags in July 2017

Although Bitmain have had criticism about segwit, they are overall «publicly
on record as historically supporting it» source:
[https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-
sme...](https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear-
campaigns/)

They signed this pro-segwit letter:
[https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-
con...](https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-
consensus-266d475a61ff)

~~~
rustlecrowez
Yeah... Im not sure how you can twist the available information into
attempting to say bitmain is PRO segwit.

Anyone in the space knows they are not. But please try to confuse newcomers to
the space by continuing this nonsense

~~~
dannyw
No, you’re spreading opinionated propaganda, and a political witchhunt. And I
don’t think this is appropriate for HN.

/r/bitcoin is heavily censored and is an echo chamber. It is no way
representative of the bitcoin community.

Go to any in person Meetup and you know the majority of old bitcoin era and
experts are not on /r/bitcoin’s side, and wanted the block size raised a year
ago. I’d suggest diversifying your news sources because /r/Bitcoin is more
biased than Breitbart.

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cornholio
Tried to read the claims and realized again that patents are unreadable to an
engineer and completely useless for any useful advancement of the field.

Clearly, somebody was working on a mining chip design and took advantage of
the patent incentives these companies offer employees to build a warchest. The
lawyers then took the description they provided and turned into this steaming
pile of technolegal jargon.

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XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
They filed ~2 years too late as far as I can tell.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Isn't it first-to-file now?

~~~
shemnon42
(a) it is first /inventor/ to file. You cannot patent stuff you (for various
values of you) didn't invent. (b) it is still subject to prior art
disclosures.

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sb1752
Interesting this was filed in September 2016

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based2
src: [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intel-beantragt-
Pate...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intel-beantragt-Patent-auf-
Bitcoin-Mining-Chip-4009695.html)

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pwg
Title change required.

Look at the linked page, it says: "United States Patent _Application_ ".

The linked doc is an "application". It is _not_ yet a patent. It very likely
has not even been looked at from a patent-ability standpoint.

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the title from “Intel patents Bitcoin mining hardware
accelerator”.

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XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
If this is actually enforced my money would be on a hardfork changing to a
PoW.

