Difference between revisions of "Bitcoin and Litecoin Comparison"
From Litecoin Wiki
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For [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work proof of work], Bitcoin uses the highly parallelizable SHA256 hash function, and therefore Bitcoin mining is a GPU-friendly task. Litecoin uses [http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html scrypt] instead of SHA256 for proof of work. The scrypt hash function uses SHA256 as a subroutine, but it also depends on fast access to large amounts of memory rather than depending just on fast arithmetic operations, so it is more difficult to run many instances of scrypt in parallel by using the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit ALUs] of a modern graphics card. This also implies that the manufacturing cost of specialized scrypt hardware (ASIC) will be significantly more expensive than SHA256 ASIC. Since modern graphics cards have plenty of RAM, they do prove useful for Litecoin mining, though the improvement over CPUs is less significant than it was for Bitcoin mining (about 10x speedup instead of 20x speedup when comparing Radeon 5870 GPU to quad-core CPU, see [[Mining hardware comparison|Litecoin hardware comparison]] and {https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison Bitcoin hardware comparison]). | For [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work proof of work], Bitcoin uses the highly parallelizable SHA256 hash function, and therefore Bitcoin mining is a GPU-friendly task. Litecoin uses [http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html scrypt] instead of SHA256 for proof of work. The scrypt hash function uses SHA256 as a subroutine, but it also depends on fast access to large amounts of memory rather than depending just on fast arithmetic operations, so it is more difficult to run many instances of scrypt in parallel by using the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit ALUs] of a modern graphics card. This also implies that the manufacturing cost of specialized scrypt hardware (ASIC) will be significantly more expensive than SHA256 ASIC. Since modern graphics cards have plenty of RAM, they do prove useful for Litecoin mining, though the improvement over CPUs is less significant than it was for Bitcoin mining (about 10x speedup instead of 20x speedup when comparing Radeon 5870 GPU to quad-core CPU, see [[Mining hardware comparison|Litecoin hardware comparison]] and {https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison Bitcoin hardware comparison]). | ||
| − | The particular scrypt parameters that Litecoin uses (N=1024,p=1,r=1) let non-mining users who run the full client (and therefore need to verify the blocks) multitask in their operating system without affecting the responsiveness, while still reducing the advantage of ASIC by a 10-fold estimate (according to Colin Percival, the creator of scrypt, see | + | The particular scrypt parameters that Litecoin uses (N=1024,p=1,r=1) let non-mining users who run the full client (and therefore need to verify the blocks) multitask in their operating system without affecting the responsiveness, while still reducing the advantage of ASIC by a 10-fold estimate (according to Colin Percival, the creator of scrypt, see [http://bitbin.it/7bmKZqTx]). |
| − | See also: | + | See also: {http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/400/why-cant-one-implement-bcrypt-in-cuda bcrypt in Cuda?], {https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU Why a GPU mines faster than a CPU], {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt bcrypt] (scrypt predecessor) |
===Pros=== | ===Pros=== | ||
