Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2015 10:33:21 +0100
From: denis bider <pwhashing@...isbider.com>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Bandwidth hardened algorithms?

Sounds plausible to me, and probably better than what the current crop of crypto currencies are using.

In this design, is a 32 GiB ROM really needed? On the one hand, this excludes lots of users; and on the other, if an algorithm requires this much to be secure, then it's not going to be secure in 2 years.

Why wouldn't, say, 4 GiB be sufficient?


-----Original Message----- 
From: Bill Cox 
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 12:44 
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net 
Subject: Re: [PHC] Bandwidth hardened algorithms? 


I think this bandwidth-hardened CPU-Hash-thingy has good potential: 

Miner/Strong client algorithm:

- Fill a 32 GiB "ROM" with 4 MiB hashes generated using Yescrypt, and t_cost > 1.  Seeds for each hash block are just the block numbers.
- Generate a 16 Kib block seeded from a digest of a crypto-currency block-chain header + nonce.
- Use two strong hash values generated from this 4 KiB block to index two unpredictable areas of ROM.
- Hash the 4 KiB block with 4 KiB from each ROM area, using Yescrypt's second loop (like Lyra2's "wandering phase").
- If result hash < target threshold, you "solved" the block-chain header

For 2-round Yescrypt, mining will fill most computer's memory bandwidth, and will be bandwidth-limited.  Any ROM blocks left out of memory will have to be recomputed, and we can tune the speed of this operation by choosing t_cost > 1.  A target runtime of say 1ms would be reasonable.  A miner with all 32 GiB of 4 KiB memory blocks would be able to initialize memory in 8 seconds.  After that, nonces could be tested for solving the block at a rate of many tens of thousands per second on a typical recent CPU.

An ASIC based miner trying to cheat by recomputing ROM as needed on the fly will have no more than about a 10X advantage at best, due to Yescrypt's small memory reads, multiplication-chain compute-time hardening, and 4 MiB of required on-chip memory.  Computing 2 such blocks will take the ASIC at least 0.2 ms, limiting it's hash rate per core (each of which has a 4 MiB RAM) to only 5,000 per second, far lower than a CPU based miner.

If using a distributed ROM attack, the ASIC network would have to transmit 8 KiB per hash between ASICs, which is identical to the data transmitted from DRAM to the CPU.  The extra complexity and expense of the routing network will make this ASIC attack less cost effective than using CPUs.

The only ASIC attack I see that works is the one where each ASIC has it's own dedicated 32 GiB ROM.  The total bandwidth to this memory may be higher in the ASIC than a typical CPU, enabling perhaps up to a 10X cost/nonce benefit.  For example, the Sony Playstation 4 has a 176 GiB/s memory read bandwidth, and cost $400.  However, it only has 8 GiB of memory.  An ASIC miner is sure to perform less well than this at bandwidth/dollar.  Also, rumor has it that the 8 GiB GDDR5 chips at least used to cost $11 each, or $88 total.  Maybe it has come down in cost, but at that price, 32 GiB would be about $350 by itself.

For low-end systems, verification is maybe a few ms, and uses only 4 MiB of memory.

Bill
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