Cryptocurrency Miners Are 'Limiting' the Search For Alien Life Now (vice.com)

Since the latest graphics processing units (GPUs) are so popular with cryptocurrency miners, the SETI project -- short for "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" -- can't find the graphics cards it needs to expand its operations. The SETI@home project helps provide some computing power, as it involves thousands of volunteers who turn the power of their computers over to the project, but it's only a portion of the SETI project's total computing power. Motherboard reports: Searching the stars is intense work that "uses radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space." Analyzing all of the data from these telescopes uses a lot of computing power. "We'd like to use the latest GPUs and we can't get 'em," Dan Werthimer, chief scientist of SETI, told the BBC. "That's limiting our search for extraterrestrials." Manufacturers such as Nvidia are struggling to keep up with demand for graphics cards. It recently told investors it would rise to meet its manufacturing challenge while focusing on its core market -- gamers. It even suggested vendors limit purchases of graphics cards from individual buyers in an effort to stop miners from buying up all the cards. "This is a new problem, it's only happened on orders we've been trying to make in the last couple of months," Werthimer told the BBC. "We've got the money, we've contacted the vendors, and they say, 'we just don't have them.'"

Comments

Simple solution

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"We've got the money, we've contacted the vendors, and they say, 'we just don't have them.'"

Offer more money and more hardware will get manufactured.

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a solution to both problems: make a cryptocurrency where the work product is some large quantity of SETI search. Here's an idea for a name...

Star...

(hmm, what indication of money can we think of ? Ah that's it)

...bucks

Yeah! We'll mine for Starbucks. Surely that name isn't taken :)

Re:Simple solution

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Offer more money and more hardware will get manufactured.

Well, why aren't the manufacturers investing in new factories to increase capacity? Probably because they see the current high demand as a passing fad, and that demand for their cards will return to normal levels after the bubble burst. They don't want to get stuck with a big new factory, when no one is buying cards for mining any more.

Duplicate content

[Matt_H]

This is a duplicate of this story