Criptomoneda Chia causa alza de precios en SSD

Fuente

Zhiye Lu de Tom's Hardware wrote: Hard drive manufacturers aren't the only ones profiting from the hype around Chia, an upcoming cryptocurrency that's mined on storage devices instead of GPUs. A new report from DigiTimes reveals that Adata has seen a 500% increase in SSD orders since the start of this month, and an industry analyst firm says that the new rush on storage devices is spreading outside of Asia. This all comes while SSD prices are already on the rise due to an ongoing SSD controller shortage.

Unlike other cryptocoins like Bitcoin and Ethereum, Chia farming is based around storage space, leading to an uncontrolled demand for large hard drives and SSDs. The cryptocurrency isn't tradeable until May 3, but it has already caused a surge in demand for high-capacity hard drives and SSDs in Asia.

Adata told DigiTimes that, as a result of Chia mining, the company's high-capacity SSD orders rose between 400% to 500% over the previous month. The vendor is working diligently to restock its inventory to satisfy the increased demand for storage devices. One of Adata's strategies involves retaining more than three months of chip inventory to prepare for the ramp-up in SSD orders.

This is exceedingly worrisome, though, as storage industry beancounter Trendfocus reports that it's seeing signs the rush for storage devices for Chia mining is spilling outside of China, meaning the shortages could already be spreading. This new rush on SSD storage is especially concerning given that some SSD controller vendors, like Phison, are already increasing the prices of SSD controllers because of a pandemic-spurred shortage of components. This new and unexpected SSD demand will only exacerbate the issue.

Chia farming is a two-step process. First, you have to create the plot and then you cultivate that plot. The plotting process is where all the magic happens — 'cultivating' a Chia farm mostly consists of letting the plot sit on your storage device, taking up space. That's where Chia's Proof of Space mining comes into play.

It takes around 1.6TB to 1.8TB of writes to successfully build a 101.4GiB plot. While you can plot on a hard drive, SSDs are preferred due to their higher sustained write speeds. As a result, it takes less time to plot, but will likely kill your SSD before its rated life span. Once the plot is complete, it could then be moved to an HDD. But let's go back to the plotting process.

As an example, Adata's XPG SX8100 4TB SSD is rated for 2,560 TBW. On paper, the SSD should be good for creating up to 1,422 plots. The drive retails for $499.99, so we're roughly looking at $0.35 per plot, which isn't a bad deal, depending on Chia's eventual valuation. It can take several hours just to generate one Chia plot, but it's also possible to do multiple plots simultaneously — perhaps ten or more. That could potentially burn through the rated lifespan of the 4TB drive in a matter of months!

The current storage shortages are largely confined to Asia, but the shortage could spread as the Chia cryptocurrency continues to gain steam, not to mention after its official listing for trading on May 3, 2021. At present, the Chia network lists over 950PiB of plots, which would require around 240,000 4TB drives, and the space allocated to the cryptocurrency has been steadily climbing over the past few weeks

Básicamente, esta cripto se minea realizando en tu ssd una cantidad horrible de escrituras para obtener una prueba de trabajo, que luego puedes mover a un disco duro normal. Sin embargo, recordemos que los SSD tienen una cantidad limitada de escrituras, así que esta minear esta cripto inevitablemente va a matar tu ssd en un par de meses, lo que ha traído consigo que los mineros estén comprando ssd por montones, causando aumentos de precios. Por lo pronto, el fabricante de ssd Galax ya salio a decir que usar sus productos para minear Chia viola la garantía de uso adecuado . Asi que si planeaban comprar un SSD en estas semanas, adelantense, que posiblemente venga una escasez de productos y aumento de precios como los de GPU.

En opinión personal: odio las criptomonedas, no aportan nada tangible, solo especulación, y consumen recursos como si fuera una plaga de langostas. Espero pronto sean reguladas o prohibidas por los gobiernos de todo el mundo.

Desde hace un par de semanas están los rumores de que el siguiente objetivo de los mineros son los SSD. Falta ver si las monedas con prueba de trabajo basado en escrituras despegan.

Es preocupante, en otro post que estoy preparando hablaré más a fondo sobre el odio a las criptomonedas, pero mientras diré que a estos mineros poco les importa el medio ambiente, se cargarían al planeta entero si eso les diera algunos miles de dólares.

Uff, no tardaran nada en aumentar el precio de las rams entonces... ya que sin duda debe ser más factible realizar esas operaciones en discos virtuales en ram.

¡ARRRRRGH con una chingada! Quien fue el HDP que se le ocurrió esta mamada, TSMC va a poner una planta en ARizona, pero esas plantas no se contruyen de la noche a la mañana, y si mal no me acuerdo vi en un videillo de youtuber tecnologico que a razón de lo mismo, se prevee que la sequia de chips dure al menos 6 meses más por que todos, ya sea TSMC, Globafoundries o los otros están retrasadisimos en las entregas de pedidos por la pandemia.
En serio, muchos creían que el 2020 fue una patada en la espinilla, pero el 2021 está resultando una verdadera patada en los huevos

Esto de la mineria esta llegando a niveles estupidos. Ahora literalmente destruyen los equipos de almacenamiento para "obtener dinero".

Neta, en vez de seguir haciendo este tipo de pendejadas.. hubieran creado un sistema de crypto monedas que hace procesos para hacer simulaciones del cancer y/ o procesos de simulacion de medicinas o incluso procesar casos como el de SETI.