PS3 PS3/Cell Cryptomining

[kozarovv]

Via: https://twitter.com/alexaltea/status/1097581774123794433?s=12
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Info

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  Given the terrible ROI these days, I'm releasing my Cell B.E. / PS3 cryptominer, along with technical blog posts focusing on high-performance code on SPUs. First part: Wide arithmetic in "narrow" ALUs.

  
  
  
  PS3/Cell Cryptomining: Wide arithmetic on SPUs​
  
  Background
  Some time ago, I implemented a cryptocurrency miner for the Cell B.E. Architecture used in the PlayStation 3 and certain servers. Specifically, the goal was implementing PoW-algorithms based on CryptoNight, described by the CryptoNote standards and used by Monero/XMR.
  
  At their current valuation, no such cryptocurrency can be profitably mined using consumer PlayStation 3 hardware and this situation is not expected to revert in the short/mid term. Furthermore, possible long-term changes are irrelevant, as newer hardware will increasingly outperform the Cell B.E., raising mining difficulty and the profitability threshold ever further.
  Consequently, I'm releasing the source code of this miner along with blog articles on technical aspects of Cell B.E. that might be of general interest (even if just for historical reasons):
  
  1. PS3/Cell Cryptomining: Wide arithmetic on SPUs.
  2. PS3/Cell Cryptomining: High-performance AES on SPUs. (TBD.)
  3. PS3/Cell Cryptomining: Memory Flow Controller. (TBD.)
  This first post describes the implementation of wide arithmetic operations on "narrow" ALUs present in the SPUs.
  
  

 

[STLcardsWS]

Movian at one time mined for Litecoin on the PS3. (to support the developer, was an option for user's)

Later removed the option, cited "not worth it" was never sure if that meant not enough people activated the option or that is was not a viable mining option for his needs.

 

[Roxanne]

I'm not a expert but I doubt that today it would be worth of it by letting the PS3 mining some Bitcoin or similar for today. Back when Movian was used it, than maybe more but this was at a a time way before 1 BTC = >1.000,- USD.

Even when the CELL processor has some power, today people are using Graphics Card and a lot of people are already claiming that Graphics Card are now too slow as well and they switched to "Special Hardware" such as "Antminer" and others now.

 

[ISAK.M]

Isn't the PS3 a little weak to be cryptomining since people literally put together like 15 GTX 1080s (Haven't seen that with RTX cards yet) to mine cryptocurrency.
The PS3 is just Cell and RSX which is 13 year old technology now. Quite a bit slower then those 15 GTX cards right?

 

[ZombieWorm]

At their current valuation, no such cryptocurrency can be profitably mined using consumer PlayStation 3 hardware and this situation is not expected to revert in the short/mid term. Furthermore, possible long-term changes are irrelevant, as newer hardware will increasingly outperform the Cell B.E., raising mining difficulty and the profitability threshold ever further.

Thank you for sharing this! I still think the cell based hardware has legs, it would need an efficient power delivery and optimised config but would love to see one on the newer algos like RandomX.

GPUs on this fork are useless so this could make them viable, of course the value of crypto assets needs to 4x to make people look at this again but I have always been fascinated with using previous technology re-purposing it.