What does this mean?
0: GSF 0 - ticket value confirmed 0xf0/16 after 5000 nonces
This is the code showing the testing of the ticket mask value set.
It's normally only 3 or 4 messages over the entire run, on a normal bitcoin pool so I left it in.
The ticket mask is the difficulty of work the chip returns over USB to cgminer.
A ticket mask of zero means return all 1 diff nonces.
A ticket mask of 0xf0 means return all 16 diff nonces.
It's using a CDF[Erlang] calculation to determine when enough nonces returned correctly means the ticket mask is working.
As per the code:
// ticket values, diff descending. List values rather than calc them
// end comments are how long (at 25 task/sec = 100 1diff nonce/sec) testing should take
// and chance of failure,
// though it will retry MAX_TICKET_CHECK times so shouldn't give up in the
// exceedingly rare occasion where it fails once due to bad luck
// limit to max diff of 16 to ensure enough nonces are coming back to identify
// status changes/issues with a single asic
static struct TICKET_INFO ticket_1397[] =
{
{ 16, 0xf0, 5000, 16.9, 15.9 }, // 800s Erlang=4.6x10-5 <- 16+ nonces
{ 8, 0xe0, 1250, 8.9, 7.9 }, // 100s Erlang=6.0x10-5
{ 4, 0xc0, 450, 4.9, 3.9 }, // 18s Erlang=3.9x10-6
{ 2, 0x80, 150, 2.9, 1.9 }, // 3.0s Erlang=5.4x10-7
{ 1, 0x00, 50, 1.9, 0.0 }, // 0.5s Erlang=1.5x10-7 <- all nonces
{ 0 }
};
i.e. how many nonces returned gives a good idea that the ticket mask is actually working correctly.
i.e. at 5000 nonces at 16 diff (mask 0x0f) it's about a 1 in 21739 chance of it always returning correct nonces but the mask isn't working correctly,
but if in the rare case that happens, it will try again anyway