Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Re: A custom designed FPGA miner for LTC?
by
mtrlt
on 26/05/2013, 02:20:03 UTC
Now we're looking at the code.
This wasn't the exact file I had but maybe something has changed I don't know, it's close enough in the places that matter anyways.

Anyways for the crux of my argument, take lines 124 through 142 which consist of the bulk of the random number generator.
These are currently implemented as defines.

That isn't a random number generator.  You're looking at macros for the SHA256 rounds.  Just stop, and go read the scrypt whitepaper.  Immediately, if not sooner..  I'm not trying to be rude, it's just that an immediate read of the scrypt whitepaper will be better use of your time at this point.
Well, strictly speaking scrypt is using SHA256 as a random number generator...

In a way, yes. But Nova's proposal of doing single SHA-256 rounds in a separate core is bogus. I am not very knowledgeable on FPGAs, but I'd assume you'd at least unroll it.. which would nullify what Nova is trying to accomplish in the first place.

Anyways, it's not like SHA-256 is the difficult part in calculating LTC hashes.