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GPU is the graphics processing unit, which is born to process complex graphics calculations, it is the "heart" of the graphics card, which is equivalent to the role of the CPU in the computer. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Like the CPU, the GPU is also designed to complete the computing task, but its role is more specific than the CPU, and the number of cores far exceeds the CPU, so its parallel floating-point operation ability is far beyond the CPU to catch up.

GPUs were 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 move towards supercomputers, medical imaging, fluid mechanics, seismic exploration and other fields that require a large amount of data computing.

For example, the mechanism of the CPU leads to the fact that it can only be drawn one pixel at a time, or 2-4 at the same time, while the mechanism of the GPU is equivalent to directly having a printhead array like a seal, and the drawing can be completed directly at one time.

The advantage of GPUs lies in their superior parallel computing capabilities.

Almost eight months after the birth of Bitcoin, the difficulty began to increase, and the income from mining with CPU began to gradually decrease, and often electricity accounted for almost half of the cost.

At this time, some people began to discuss the use of graphics card technology for mining on 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 on a specific algorithm, which is basically a large number of repeated calculations, and this is the strength of GPU, in this regard, CPU is completely inferior to GPU.

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

Since there has never been a precedent before, it is necessary to use a graphics card for mining. You have to write your own mining program.

The first miner to use a graphics card for mining was A

tfo

z。 He himself is one of the volunteer developers of the Bitcoin software, and after a period of software writing and debugging, he has successfully implemented mining in his own home.

It turns out. The computing power of mining with a graphics card is several times greater than that of a CPU.

Soon, more and more people began to devote themselves to graphics card mining.

In the beginning, this mining method was only circulating on a small scale. Even if it was developed, it was not disclosed for their own benefit.

It wasn't until more than two months later that the first OpenGL mining program was officially announced on the open source community.

The era of graphics card mining has officially begun.

Miners who had invested a lot of money in CPU hardware for mining suddenly suffered huge losses, some of them sold their previous mining equipment and quit the mining field, while others continued to purchase new equipment and continue their 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 carry out another 51% attack, it is already several orders of magnitude more difficult than before, and the probability is very small.

During this time. Something else is happening. Let Lin Hong completely fade out of the development, maintenance and upgrade of Bitcoin software.

One of the most impactful events was the beginning of a black market on the Bitcoin network called Silk Road.

In the design of Bitcoin. One of the important features is complete anonymity, you don't have to publish any information about yourself when using Bitcoin, and you don't need to transfer and pay Bitcoin.

This is admired by everyone, after all, no one wants others to have access to their private property at any time.

There has always been a black market for drugs, arms, and other illegal transactions in the world

FU is a strong blow, but demand is king, the more forbidden things are, the more profitable they are, and there are people who are willing to take risks for them.

In the traditional black market, people prefer to trade directly with cash, because no one wants to bear the burden of their account being sold by the bank and zhèng

The danger of fu freezing, which is why, in jing gangster movies, gangsters and drug lords often have to carry a suitcase of cash when they make transactions.

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 Bitcoin payments, and they would rather exchange Bitcoin back to their local currency, because after such a transfer, the funds are equivalent to being laundered, and no one knows where the money comes from.

It is in this context that the "Silk Road" came into being.

Silk Road is a drug and arms trading website where prices are clearly marked and only bitcoin is accepted.

Just like the eBay website, there are already more than 10 arms dealers and several drug suppliers who have set up stores on it, and set up special customer service to answer customer questions.

As small as a pistol and shaking your head

pills, as large as rocket artillery, ice

Poisons and other items are available on it.

Of course, in order to access this website, it is not possible to access it directly with a browser, but also to know how to use encryption software such as BitMessenger as a proxy to access it.

The above suppliers are very human, more attentive than ordinary e-commerce sites, they accept orders from all over the world, as long as the order is placed, no matter where in the world, they are responsible for the logistics and delivery, to ensure the 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", which he had anticipated when he designed Bitcoin.

It's not because of the advent of Bitcoin that this is the case, the black market has always existed, and it has been the case since ancient times, even without Bitcoin, they have other ways to pay, and using cash and using Bitcoin are essentially no different at all.

Of course, Lin Hong cannot deny that the emergence of Bitcoin has facilitated these illegal and criminal acts, increasing the difficulty for law enforcement officers to solve cases.

However, there is no way to do it, everything has many sides, and whether Lin Hong's invention of Bitcoin opened a Pandora's box or the gate of heaven remains to be tested by time.

Of course, Lin Hong is not completely inactive, he will continue to observe in secret, and at the right time to guide the development direction of Bitcoin, try to make it move in a positive direction.