Chapter 670 Silk Road

GPU, or graphics processor, is created to handle complex graphics calculations. It is the "heart" of the graphics card, which is equivalent to the role of the CPU in the computer.

Like the CPU, the GPU is also designed to complete computing tasks, but its function is more specific than that of the CPU, and it has far more cores than the CPU, so its parallel floating-point computing ability is far behind that of the CPU.

GPU was born for video games, but in recent years, with the continuous development of GPU technology, it is no longer limited to the field of graphics rendering, but has begun to go to supercomputers, medical imaging, fluid dynamics, seismic exploration and other fields that require a large amount of data computing. These fields have a common The feature is that a large number of the same operations need to be carried out on massive data.

Taking drawing a graphic as an example, the CPU mechanism causes it to draw only one pixel and one pixel (single core), or 2-4 (multi-core) at the same time, while the GPU mechanism is equivalent to directly having a seal-like nozzle array, which can be drawn directly at one time.

The advantage of GPU lies in its strong parallel computing ability.

Almost eight months after the birth of Bitcoin, the difficulty began to continue, and the benefits of using the CPU for mining began to gradually decrease, and the electricity bill often accounted for almost half of the cost.

At this time, some people began to discuss the use of graphics card technology for mining in the forum, because long ago, in the field of medical research, some people used graphics card arrays for protein folding distributed computing and brute force password cracking computing tasks.

The essence of "mining" is actually a crack of a specific algorithm, which is basically a large number of repetitive calculations. And this is the advantages of the GPU, which is completely inferior to the GPU.

As a result, some technical miners began to devote themselves to the use of graphics cards for mining.

Since there is no precedent before, if you want to mine with a graphics card, you must write your own matching mining program.

The first miner to use graphics cards for mining was ArtForz, one of the volunteer developers of Bitcoin software, after a period of software writing and debugging. He successfully realized mining in his own home.

It turns out that the computing power of mining with graphics cards is several times higher than that of the CPU.

Soon, more and more people began to invest in the arms of graphics card mining.

At the beginning. This mining method is only spread in a small area, and everyone will develop it for their own interests. It has not been made public.

It was not until more than two months later that the first OpenGL mining program was officially announced in the open source community.

The era of graphics card mining has officially begun.

Miners who originally invested a lot of money to buy CPU hardware for mining suddenly suffered huge losses. Some of them sold their previous mining equipment and then withdrew from the mining field, while others continued to buy new equipment and continue their own mining business.

Entering the era of graphics card mining, the computing power of the Bitcoin network has once again made a new leap. At this time, if you want to implement a 51% attack, it is several orders of magnitude more difficult than before, and the probability is minimal.

During this period. Something also happened that made Lin Hong completely fade out of the development, maintenance and upgrading of Bitcoin software.

One of the most influential things is that a Bitcoin network black market called "Silk Road" began to appear on the Internet.

In the design idea of Bitcoin, one of the important characteristics is complete anonymity, and you don't need to publish any relevant information when using Bitcoin. There is no need to transfer and pay Bitcoin at all.

This feature is respected by everyone. After all, no one wants others to have the right to access their private property at any time.

There has always been a black market for drugs, arms, and other illegal transactions in the world. Although all governments are cracking down, demand is king. The more forbidden it is, the more profitable it is. If there is a profit, there are people who are willing to take risks.

In the traditional black market, people prefer to use cash to trade directly, because no one is willing to bear the risk of their accounts being frozen by banks and the government. That's why gangsters often carry a suitcase of cash when trading in police and gangster films.

And the emergence of Bitcoin just solves this payment problem.

After the emergence of Bitcoin, its secrecy and security have been recognized by many people. Many people have expressed their willingness to accept the payment of Bitcoin. They would rather exchange Bitcoin back to local currency, because after such a transfer, the funds are equivalent to being whitewashed. No one knows where the money comes from. Come on.

The "Silk Road" emerged from this background.

"Silk Road" is a drug and arms trading website, on which drugs and arms are clearly priced and only accept Bitcoin payments.

Just like the EBAY website, there are already ten arms dealers and several drug suppliers who have opened stores on it, setting up special customer service to answer customers' questions.

As small as pistols, head shakes/dice, rockets, ice/poison and other items, there are all kinds of them.

Of course, if you want to access this website, you can't access it directly using a browser. You must also know how to use encryption software such as a bit messenger as a proxy to access.

The above suppliers are very humane and more thoughtful than the services of ordinary e-commerce websites. They accept orders from all over the world. As long as they place an order, no matter where in the world, they are responsible for logistics delivery to ensure safe arrival. Of course, the postage needs to be paid by the customer himself.

Lin Hong was not surprised by the emergence of the "Silk Road". When he designed Bitcoin, he had expected this to happen.

This is not caused by the emergence of Bitcoin. The black market has always existed. Since ancient times, even if there is no Bitcoin, they have other ways to pay. There is no difference in using cash and using Bitcoin in essence.

Of course, Lin Hong can't deny the emergence of Bitcoin, which facilitates these illegal crimes and makes it more difficult for law enforcement officers to solve cases.

But there is nothing we can do about it. Everything is multifaceted. Lin Hong invented Bitcoin to open the Pandora's magic box, or the gate of heaven. It remains to be tested by time.

Of course, Lin Hong is not completely inaction. He will continue to observe secretly and guide the development direction of Bitcoin at the right time, so as to make it move in a positive direction as much as possible. RS