DEV Community: Stephen Peterkins

DSAs, Bitcoin, and the Future of Computing

Stephen Peterkins — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 15:54:09 +0000

This blog post is inspired by the John Hennessy's Talk at io18 about the future of computing. You can get a much stronger explanation of his talk here: For more in depth converage of computer architecture history, this article proves to be quite helpful

People are quick to criticise that Bitcoin mining is taking up an immense amount of power globally (30 TW/hr). I don't know anyone who would say that this is ideal, however the Bitcoin network is highlighting an important change to how industrial compute is evolving generally in regards to energy consumption. With the rise of industrial bitcoin mining, many people have taken a very reactionary position towards these new implementations of computing architecture; denouncing it's inclusivity and perceiving it to be "centralized" and thus a negative for open access, decentralized networks. However, this is a regressive mindset which I perceive as lacking a wider analysis and understanding of the modern compute landscape. Here's why industrial Bitcoin mining showcases what the future of computing will look like, and why it's becoming increasingly necessary.

The End of Computing Axioms

I'm sure that many of you have heard that Moore's Law has been slowing down the last couple of decades. Specifically, processor-performance improvement since 2015 has fallen to only 3% per year. It used to be the case that we could expect processors to double in speed every 1.5 to 3 years, now it takes 20 years. However, this is just the most recent wall that compute innovation has been running into the last couple of years. Before that, another rule that is already much less applicable is called Dennard Scaling. The law states that as transistors get smaller their power density stays constant, so that the power use of the processor stays in proportion with the area of said processor. This meant for a long time that power wasn't a concern in chip design, power usage remained constant as it would be spread equally around the extra transistors.

This law is becoming less and less applicable in modern day chip design. As the requirements for compute power rise, we're seeing that the amount of power needed by the chip is generally increasing. Today, you're standard i86 Intel processor will actually slow it's compute power down in order not to burn out! This was unheard of some years ago, but now it's a fairly common phenomena. Generally, energy usage has become a massive issue in today's modern cloud computing systems. Everyone likes to point the finger at Bitcoin's massive usage of energy, but not a lot of people know that approximately 25% of computation done in parallel on your standard Intel chip is wasted.

It's gotten to the point where as a software developer, if you're running a program on a 64 core machine and only 1% runs sequentially (i.e. not in parallel), it's equivalent of running your program on only a 40 core system! There's a tremendous amount of wasted energy that comes along with such a costly mistake. Without even factoring in Amdahl's law to this equation, it should be clear that we're not only hitting limits with power but also with using parallelism as a trump card for performance. With these techniques becoming less effective, how are we supposed to meet the rising demands of compute power?

The Rise of Domain Specific Architecture

The solution many have come up with has been the assertion that our hardware shouldn't be attempting to do everything effectively in comparison to a machine that only does a couple of things very well. We can take a look at two examples of modern networks with an enormous demand of compute in order to showcase this.

As mentioned earlier, Bitcoin has had an huge increase in it's network usage over the past decade.
In order to compete, miners have needed to create optimized hardware to mine blocks and receive the block reward. Miners have created custom ASIC (application specific integrate circuits) that are capable of computing the Bitcoin hash algorithm (double SHA256) at extreme rates. Critics might cynically label this innovation solely inspired by the selfishness of the miners, but in the light of today's limitations to modern computing, it is one of the few solutions that allow for the Bitcoin network to handle the financial services of millions of people globally.

ASIC architecture works effectively for something simple like hashing, but what about for more complicated computation? Google's compute needs are perhaps the most complex in the world, let alone for optimizing a hashing algorithm. Most of their products have become more and more reliant on AI, thus their biggest challenge has become handling machine learning at scale. In response, Google has created the TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), which accelerates DNN (Deep Neural Network) execution using a massive array of 65,536 multiply/accumulate (MAC) units on one piece of silicon. These puppies are pump out a whopping 92 tera opterations per second, which operates at speeds up to 30x faster than modern CPUs and 15x more than GPUs, while still using less power than either of them.

Both of these designs are an example of the rise of Domain Specific Architecture as a change to computer systems that has become necessary to push the compute industry further. Due to the limitations in hardware advances, the only path left in improvement comes from limiting the scope of the hardware's operations in order to see increased performance. For blockchain networks, this are even greater incentives to increase performance to not only showcase the validity of emerging decentralized networks, but for the self-interest of those participating in the networks in the first place.

Conclusion

For many in the decentralized space, there are critics who will point to Bitcoin Mining ASICs as an attack on the very notion of a decentralized networks. From the changes we've seen over the past few years of computer architecture, any serious about improving performance of computer systems has to face the reality that domain specific architectures are a necessity. These performance gains are a necessity to meet the demand as blockchain networks continue to compete over providing the best service, and scale to meet the demand of the more than 3.2 billion people who are online. It would be impossible to meet this demand with generalized systems that don't allow for custom hardware to be created to meet demand.

Thanks for reading to the end! Make sure to follow me on Twitter @speterkins
Originally published at bearguy.io

How To Be A Blockchain Dev In 2018

Stephen Peterkins — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 05:15:45 +0000

I'm positive that you've been exposed to the hype the last couple of months; it's practically unavoidable. Crypto, blockchain, decentralization, tokenization, smart contracts, distributed ledgers; perhaps you know what some of these words mean and others mean nothing to you. Several articles posted online are saying these technologies are changing the world as we know it. “The Web 2.0 dynasty is waning; the era of Web 3.0 is upon us.” You're told that you’d better be prepared for what's coming; after all, everyone knows that it's disrupt, or be disrupted.

But as much as you might want to hop on the bandwagon, you aren't sure where to start. As someone who's only recently dove head first into the decentralized circus, here's my take on how to become a blockchain developer in 2018.

Learn the Basics

You don't have to be an expert to step into this realm; however, it's best that you have some knowledge of what's been done, the key concepts, and some terms that will help you understand the conversations people are having right now. Instead of inundating you with meticulous detail, I’ve accrued an introductory list of resources that I find helpful to get you started:

What's Blockchain?

What's Bitcoin?

What's Ethereum?

What's a Smart Contract?

What's EOS?

What's Proof of Work and Proof of Stake?

There are some resources in here that assume that you literally know nothing about blockchain, so some of this may not be new to you (although a refresher never hurts!). I would also recommend learning more about economics, finance, and game theory, as there are many ideas from these fields that are actively playing out in existing blockchain projects.

Also, it should be noted that this is only to step into the conversation. In order to keep it going, you should be on crypto Twitter, Reddit, Telegram (🔌 like Saito’s Telegram here). To get a informative update on the current state of many blockchain projects, I'd recommend Adam Taché's State of Cryptocurrencies Summer 2018.

Have a Purpose

The field of decentralized computing is a burgeoning field, and as a developer, it’s important to have an appreciation for its importance, beyond what the latest ICO/whitepaper has told you. The reason I'm personally in this space is to see networks reward people fairly for the work they've contributed. With the rise of automation, we're seeing traditional jobs phased out alongside a rapid accumulation of wealth by the world's 0.001%. In order for humanity to enter its next chapter, we will need to find a way to correct humanity’s economic incentives to support the majority of people, whilst not sacrificing our drive for progress.

I've seen a couple of people take short-term interests in the field (ranging a couple of months) only to see their passion decline as they get discouraged. The lack of structure/hand-holding in this space seems to play a part in this; however, there are a couple of advantages because of this. In the crypto space, progress is being made so rapidly that people are still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. Those with strong vision and the ability to execute independently have tremendous opportunities to captain their ships into the typhoon known as decentralization. To summarize: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Doing > Thinking

Once you have the basics down and are committed to getting involved, it's time to move onto contributing to a project. There's plenty to learn in this space- so much so that if you feel like you need to learn "enough" before you jump in, you will never begin. Don't spend a lot of time contemplating the optimal project to join. My best advice to you would be to start working on something that is close to your current development experience. As much as it would be wonderful to be able to learn both C++ and the in's and out's of Zilliqa simultaneously, it will slow down the rate at which you can gain experience by actively contributing to a blockchain system.

These are a lot of the popular projects with very strong communities and core teams. Right now, it's probably the easiest and most user friendly to develop on top of Ethereum if you’re looking to just get started. However, there are many great projects to choose from, and I've compiled a short list based on language down below. My recommendation is if you have the opportunity, contributing to a smaller project early in its development is the equivalent of taking a crash course in blockchain. It's definitely more daunting, and there's no guarantee that you're building something useful, but from the perspective of personal growth, I’ve found it invaluable. (If you’re looking for some less well-known projects, I'd recommend using Cyrpto Miso as a starting place).

C

Stellar Core

C++

Conclusion:

The blockchain space is an exciting field that has only just begun to sprout in the last couple of years. While I've mostly discussed crypto blockchain projects, there are many different network structures being experimented-with, and built as a part of the larger decentralized zeitgeist. I'd encourage everyone to take some time to explore other decentralized networks and paradigms. Overall the paradigms share a similar belief; they all believe decentralized networks are necessary for the future of mankind's evolution.

Josh Wolfe has a great quote where he says, "Either you buy the product or you are the product. We want (and believe others will want) the utility of networks without being owned or pawned by them."