Can these (and other, similar, dual-use devices) mine both BTC and LTC simultaneously? Or is the user (or perhaps mining software) supposed to pick one at a time to mine?
Quote from first page and from the website:
Hash Rate: Dual Mode: 40KH/s LTC, 500MH/s BTC, or LTC Mode: 70KH/s LTC, BTC Off
Thanks, I missed that on their Web site. But on the first page of this thread, there's no performance info from the OP. I reviewed all posts by the OP, in fact, and he doesn't mention the specs in any of them.
Another poster posted the theoretical stats of the chip they're using:
BTC mode up to 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate, with 2.4W/GHash
LTC mode up to 60K/s LTC Hash Rate
Due-Coin mode up to 1.75G/s BTC Hash Rate + 60K/s LTC Hash Rate, or up to 2.25G/s BTC Hash
Rate + 38K LTC Hash Rate
So two things jump out at me:
First, why is there such a difference between the theoretical stats and the quoted performance, particularly on BTC? And why is the BTC-only mode eliminated?
Second, what software would be able to use this gizmo to dual-mine simultaneously? On their site, they say "Customized Windows software with GUI" but they also mention Linux; and their screenshots are of a command-line miner. Depending on how the software is implemented, it may not be able to run on unusual hardware like a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone. Custom-developed miners are sometimes less efficient than dedicated software like cgminer or bfgminer, so we could be giving up precious hashes. Definitely need more info on this front.
We developed a special version cgminer for dualminer. The customization is mainly because cgminer on github doesn't support dual mine mode. The latest version of cgminer even removed scrypt support, :-(. Also we are keeping a eye on bfgminer. We may release a bfgminer for dualminer. Currently only a customized cgminer is developed. As long as we start mass shipping, we will release cgminer that works on Linux. At that time, Beaglebone or PI can be used to control/manage dualminer usb.