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matja / bitcoin-tool

Tool for converting Bitcoin keys and addresses
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Is it possible to adapt bitcoin-tool for GPU computing? #45

Open PsyShark opened 4 years ago

PsyShark commented 4 years ago

Is it possible to adapt bitcoin-tool for GPU computing (Nvidia and AMD)?

hamnaz commented 3 years ago

Is it possible to adapt bitcoin-tool for GPU computing ?

matja commented 3 years ago

It is possible to use a GPU for batch operations, it would make it far more complex. I haven't planned any work on it so far.

For single inputs, I imagine using a GPU would be far slower because of the compute-shader/library initialisation overheads.

I'm assuming GPU support is being suggested to accelerate operations, can you describe the typical operation (command line?) of needing better performance, so to require a GPU?

Bit of background why GPU was not considered so far: I intended the project to be a minimal+correct+safe implementation of transforming bitcoin addresses and keys in C, with as few external dependencies as possible, so that it could be used on as many platforms as possible, including embedded devices (thinking of microcontrollers).

I think an OpenCL implementation would be best for portability, and to make it modular so that it can be easily enabled/disabled at build time so the project can still meet its goals.