Official site: https://github.com/mbevand/silentarmy
SILENTARMY is a free open source Zcash miner for Linux with multi-GPU and Stratum support. It is written in OpenCL and has been tested on AMD/Nvidia/Intel GPUs, Xeon Phi, and more.
After compiling SILENTARMY, list the available OpenCL devices:
$ silentarmy --list
Start mining with two GPUs (ID 2 and ID 5) on a pool:
$ silentarmy --use 2,5 -c stratum+tcp://us1-zcash.flypool.org:3333 -u t1cVviFvgJinQ4w3C2m2CfRxgP5DnHYaoFC
When run without options, SILENTARMY mines with the first OpenCL device, using my donation address, on flypool:
$ silentarmy
Connecting to us1-zcash.flypool.org:3333
Stratum server sent us the first job
Mining on 1 device
Total 0.0 sol/s [dev0 0.0] 0 shares
Total 43.9 sol/s [dev0 43.9] 0 shares
Total 46.9 sol/s [dev0 46.9] 0 shares
Total 44.9 sol/s [dev0 44.9] 1 share
[...]
Usage:
$ silentarmy --help
Usage: silentarmy [options]
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-v, --verbose verbose mode (may be repeated for more verbosity)
--debug enable debug mode (for developers only)
--list list available OpenCL devices by ID (GPUs...)
--use=LIST use specified GPU device IDs to mine, for example to
use the first three: 0,1,2 (default: 0)
--instances=N run N instances of Equihash per GPU (default: 2)
-c POOL, --connect=POOL
connect to POOL, for example:
stratum+tcp://example.com:1234
-u USER, --user=USER username for connecting to the pool
-p PWD, --pwd=PWD password for connecting to the pool
SILENTARMY also provides a command line Equihash solver (sa-solver)
implementing the CLI API described in the
Zcash open source miner challenge.
To solve a specific block header and print the encoded solution on stdout, run
the following command (this header is from
mainnet block #3400
and should result in 1 Equihash solution):
$ sa-solver -i 04000000e54c27544050668f272ec3b460e1cde745c6b21239a81dae637fde4704000000844bc0c55696ef9920eeda11c1eb41b0c2e7324b46cc2e7aa0c2aa7736448d7a000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000068241a587e7e061d250e000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
If the option -i is not specified, sa-solver solves a 140-byte header of all
zero bytes. The option --nonces <nr> instructs the program to try multiple
nonces, each time incrementing the nonce by 1. So a convenient way to run a
quick test/benchmark is simply:
$ sa-solver --nonces 100
Note: due to BLAKE2b optimizations in my implementation, if the header is specified it must be 140 bytes and its last 12 bytes must be zero.
Use the verbose (-v) and very verbose (-v -v) options to show the solutions
and statistics in progressively more and more details.
- 102.0 sol/s with one R9 Nano
- 72.0 sol/s with one RX 480 8GB
- 64.0 sol/s with one GTX 1070
Note: the silentarmy miner automatically achieves this performance level,
however the sa-solver command-line solver by design runs only 1 instance
of the Equihash proof-of-work algorithm causing it to slightly underperform by
5-10%. One must manually run 2 instances of sa-solver (eg. in 2 terminal
consoles) to achieve the same performance level as the silentarmy miner.
SILENTARMY has only one build dependency: an OpenCL implementation. And it
has only one runtime dependency: Python 3.3 or later (needed to support the
use of the yield from syntax.)
When running on AMD GPUs, install the AMD APP SDK (OpenCL implementation) and either:
- the AMDGPU-PRO driver (amdgpu.ko, for newer GPUs), or
- the Radeon Software Crimson Edition driver (fglrx.ko, for older GPUs)
When running on Nvidia GPUs, install the Nvidia OpenCL development files, and their binary driver.
Instructions are provided below for a few Linux versions.
-
Download the AMDGPU-PRO Driver (as of 30 Oct 2016, the latest version is 16.40)
-
Extract it:
$ tar xf amdgpu-pro-16.40-348864.tar.xz -
Install (non-root, will use sudo access automatically):
$ ./amdgpu-pro-install -
Add yourself to the video group if not already a member:
$ sudo gpasswd -a $(whoami) video -
Reboot
-
Download the AMD APP SDK (as of 27 Oct 2016, the latest version is 3.0)
-
Extract it:
$ tar xf AMD-APP-SDKInstaller-v3.0.130.136-GA-linux64.tar.bz2 -
Install system-wide by running as root (accept all the default options):
$ sudo ./AMD-APP-SDK-v3.0.130.136-GA-linux64.sh -
Install compiler dependencies in order to compile SILENTARMY:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
-
Install the official Ubuntu package:
$ sudo apt-get install fglrx(as of 30 Oct 2016, the latest version is 2:15.201-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) -
Follow steps 5-9 above.
-
Install the OpenCL development files and the latest driver:
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-opencl-dev nvidia-361 -
Either reboot, or load the kernel driver:
$ modprobe nvidia_361 -
Install compiler dependencies in order to compile SILENTARMY:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
- Install the silentarmy AUR package.
Compiling SILENTARMY is easy:
$ make
You may need to specify the paths to the locations of your OpenCL C headers and libOpenCL.so if the compiler does not find them, eg.:
$ make OPENCL_HEADERS=/usr/local/cuda-8.0/targets/x86_64-linux/include LIBOPENCL=/usr/local/cuda-8.0/targets/x86_64-linux/lib
Self-testing the command-line solver (solves 100 all-zero 140-byte blocks with their nonces varying from 0 to 99):
$ make test
For more testing run sa-solver --nonces 10000. It should finds 18681
solutions which is less than 1% off the theoretical expected average number of
solutions of 1.88 per Equihash run at (n,k)=(200,9).
For installing, just copy silentarmy and sa-solver to the same directory.
The silentarmy Python script is actually mostly a lighteight Stratum
implementation and job dispatcher that sends Equihash work items to 1 or more
instances of sa-solver --mining which initializes the solver in a special
"mining mode" so it can be controled via stdin/stdout. By default 2 instances
of sa-solver are launched for each GPU (this can be changed with the
silentarmy --instances N option.) 2 instances per GPU usually results in the
best performance.
The sa-solver binary invokes the OpenCL kernel which contains the core of the
Equihash algorithm. My implementation uses two hash tables to avoid having to
sort the (Xi,i) pairs:
- Round 0 (BLAKE2b) fills up table #0
- Round 1 reads table #0, identifies collisions, XORs the Xi's, stores the results in table #1
- Round 2 reads table #1 and fills up table #0 (reusing it)
- Round 3 reads table #0 and fills up table #1 (also reusing it)
- ...
- Round 8 (last round) reads table #1 and fills up table #0.
Only the non-zero parts of Xi are stored in the hash table, so fewer and fewer
bytes are needed to store Xi as we progress toward round 8. For a description
of the layout of the hash table, see the comment at the top of input.cl.
Also the code implements the notion of "encoded reference to inputs" which I--apparently like most authors of Equihash solvers--independently discovered as a neat trick to save having to read/write so much data. Instead of saving lists of inputs that double in size every round, SILENTARMY re-uses the fact they were stored in the previous hash table, and saves a reference to the two previous inputs, encoded as a (row,slot0,slot1) where (row,slot0) and (row,slot1) themselves are each a reference to 2 previous inputs, and so on, until round 0 where the inputs are just the 21-bit values.
A BLAKE2b optimization implemented by SILENTARMY requires the last 12 bytes of the nonce/header to be zero. When set to a fixed value like zero, not only the code does not need to implement the "sigma" permutations, but many 64-bit additions in the BLAKE2b mix() function can be pre-computed automatically by the OpenCL compiler.
Managing invalid solutions (duplicate inputs) is done in multiple places:
- Any time a XOR results in an all-zero value, this work item is discarded
as it is statistically very unlikely that the XOR of 256 or fewer inputs
is zero. This check is implemented at the end of
xor_and_store() - When the final hash table produced at round 8 has many elements
that collide in the same row (because bits 160-179 are identical, and
almost certainly bits 180-199), this is also discarded as a likely invalid
solution because this is statistically guaranteed to be all inputs repeated
at least once. This check is implemented in
kernel_sols()(seelikely_invalids.) - When input references are expanded on-GPU by
expand_refs(), the code checks if the last (512th) input is repeated at least once. - Finally when the GPU returns potential solutions, the CPU also checks for
invalid solutions with duplicate inputs. This check is implemented in
verify_sol().
Finally, SILENTARMY makes many optimization assumptions and currently only supports Equihash parameters 200,9.
Marc Bevand -- http://zorinaq.com
Donations welcome: t1cVviFvgJinQ4w3C2m2CfRxgP5DnHYaoFC
I would like to thank these persons for their contributions to SILENTARMY, in alphabetical order:
- eXtremal
- kenshirothefist
- lhl
- nerdralph
- poiuty
- solardiz
The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2016 Marc Bevand
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.