[GTALUG] NOT: Re: From BTRFS to what?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Sep 06, 2017 at 09:06:41AM -0400, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> Wow. got into a bit of a snitfest with dhaval.giani over this one.
> 
> Now to the completely unrelated part.
> 
> I have been thinking about a project and I would like to bounce it off you.
> 
> A client came to me asking about helping him setup an Etherium mining server
> pool.
> 
> This got me thinking.
> 
> In its simplest sense the process is power in ..... ETH out.
> The biggest cost is power then cooling to get rid of all the head from the
> GPU's.
> 
> What if you glue a GPU with very little extra hardware to the back of a
> solar panel.
> Stick it out in the sun and let it calculate 8-10 hours a day.
> Put a big heat sink on the GPU and it should be able to stay cool enough
> just from air cooling

I don't think you can passively cool any GPU worth using for the job.
Better have fans at least.  And out in the sun might get pretty toasty
too and not be that good for cooling either.

> Take a few thousand of these and set them out in a sunny place and you would
> have a coin generator.
> Once the hardware is paid for then the operational cost would be close to 0
> but for some glass cleaner and rags.
> 
> They would need to be networked together but it does not have to be high
> speed.

Depends how large the work data needed for that currency is.  I got the
impression some crypto currencies required some pretty hefty sizes data
to be kept up to date.

> It could be a low power mesh to an edge that connects via something as
> simple as cell phone data.
> 
> Solar panels cost about $1/watt and there is no ongoing cost but power here
> costs about $0.08-0.16/KWH.
> On the face of it there is a 3 year payback for the power but if you add in
> 30% extra power to run cooling and the building costs for housing the mining
> pool.
> 
> Am I crazy?

Probably?  Not sure.  I am not going to try it. :)

-- 
Len Sorensen