Bitcoin Mining Hardware Accelerator with Optimized Message Datapath
appft.uspto.gov
appft.uspto.gov
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.
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?
That being said, it’s still interesting seeing Intel encouraging and embracing crypto ASIC design.
The attitude of these companies is to incentivize employees to patent whatever they come up with, whether they intend to use the idea or not.
I like the scheme where I work--there's a relatively small cash bonus (a few hundred bucks), but the inventors get a nice chunk of any income from the patent. Another slice goes to the inventor's department's budget, so they can indirectly benefit there too.
Also you are right that this system results in lots of low quality patents. I used to see at one employer chip designers cranking out 5-6 cell designs on a quarterly basis making an $10k extra a quarter. Maybe 1% of those would actually be implemented but it is worth it for the company to get every potential solution either as prior art or patented.
If your company's business model is to build and sell products, and prevent competitors from being as good, and avoid getting sued, then it's beneficial to have as many patents as possible. So Intel also aligns its employees' incentives with with its business model, by giving an incentive to create as many patents as possible.
but the whole point of patent trolling is that you're suing via a non-practicing entity, which a shell company that does nothing but hold patents, so there's nothing to sue back at.
Is that what usually happens? Really?
The patent system is seriously broken.
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.
[1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/there-bitcoin-patent-wa...
This was admitted by Greg Maxwell in the dev mailing lists, when they proposed an asicboost blocker only change, that they rescinded because they realized that it and segwit never actually stopped covert asicboost.
It was also confirmed by experts like chjj (CTO of purse.io, and Bitcoin developer) that segwit never blocked covert asicboost.
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...
They signed this pro-segwit letter: https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con...
Anyone in the space knows they are not. But please try to confuse newcomers to the space by continuing this nonsense
/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.
«Anyone in the space»
You mean anyone on /r/Bitcoin, a heavily censored subreddit controlled effectively by one person (theymos and his minions) who is openly anti-Bitmain.
That has nothing to do with patents, it's (supposedly) an advantage they had over the competition, of course they are going to defend that advantage.
Patents for mining hardware though are unenforceable overall. The problem is that lots of private mining farms exist, and nothing is stopping one from developing a chip that is in violation of many patents, but then never releasing the hardware publicly. There would be no way to tell that the patent is being violated, especially because mining is more or less anonymous in the first place.
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.
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.