asciilifeform: indiancandy1: and the item we were talking about, was this: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/mf3_compare.jpg

asciilifeform: decimation: the noise doesn't matter, rng outputs logic-level signal

asciilifeform: decimation: this was what i told ben_vulpes at c3

asciilifeform: now, if you have a -very- well-behaved os, you could sample it as rs232 anyway. but then you discover (see old mircea_popescu article where we stepped on this caltrop!) that you end up losing bytes that match 'control' section of ascii table

asciilifeform: i.e. a pin that changes level when it wants.

asciilifeform: decimation: that dongle is just the thing for, e.g., pogo - but the rng is not a rs232 device...

asciilifeform: and who holds soldering iron like this, l0l!

asciilifeform: (after i explained, in agonizing detail, why this will not work...)

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: what does the knob do ?

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=17-05-2015#1134108 << they don't need to turn sharp corners, in our hypothetical machine ☝︎☟︎

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=17-05-2015#1134106 << they did exist, 'field emission display' (essentially a crt with one electron gun - of cold cathode type - per subpixel!) ☝︎

asciilifeform: jurov: if going to tubes, one ought to stop thinking in terms of gates and start considering how much computation can be carried out by one flying electron... ☟︎

asciilifeform: ogy had not advanced as quickly as it did in the first half of the 1960s, the Compactron idea might have been developed further, with even more tubes in a single envelope...'

asciilifeform: 'What GE did was combine multiple common tube types into "fat" tubes—as many as four in a single glass envelope, all heated from the same filament. The idea was to reduce the amount of power required to heat the tubes and the space they required on the circuit board, as well as the associated costs of multiple sockets. In a very crude way, GE was applying the concept of integrated circuits to tubes, and if solid-state technl

asciilifeform: probably 'sheep's skin not worth the tanning' if tradeoff is taken to this extreme.

asciilifeform: keeping the number of parts at a minimum.

asciilifeform: and when using exotic/handmade logic, you will probably take the opposite approach from a si designer - maximally 'un-unroll' the loops.

asciilifeform: on traditional principles of valve logic.

asciilifeform: the whole point, here, is to avoid the statal spittoon dragged in by the use of si microfabrication.

asciilifeform: because they needed a si fab

asciilifeform: while we're doing peculiar miners, one might also consider another lost technology, the 'integrated'... vacuum flask.

asciilifeform: ecl miners probably live on the same planet as gallium arsenide, etc. miners.

asciilifeform: (assembling these into a circuit with 'weakest link' still permitting these speeds, is 'an exercise for the alert reader') ☟︎

asciilifeform: my symbolics lisp mach., interestingly, has a board with a good number of ecl discretes. turned out, this was the framebuffer. it was the only way to crunch ~200MHz at the time

asciilifeform: jurov: ecl (emitter-coupled logic) is a supposedly-obsolete way to build logical circuits (on any particular semiconductor chemistry) where a transistor is kept near switching point at all times, gaining speed at the expense of economy

asciilifeform: http://ummr.altervista.org/scansTEKECL.jpg << these (or, more realistically, modern) ECL discretes would probably outperform a modern integrated miner, were they to be built into a (washing-machine-sized) one...

asciilifeform: mod6: this is not the problem. the real issue is distinguishing disk-cache ram from process ram

asciilifeform: (would have been best to measure only the bitcoind process)

asciilifeform: mod6: the most interesting chart is memory/time

asciilifeform: consider posting the charts

asciilifeform: mod6: did you have a 'thermonuke' node going at the time of these events ?

asciilifeform: trinque, danielpbarron: this is interesting enough that it oughta go in the mailinglist