CHIA - Auto-Plotting - Farming - Blockchain - Crypto Done Right

What is Chia? I am sure you have heard of the new Crypto Coin "Chia" right? It the first of the eco-friendly, non power hungry blockchain solutions on the market. How is this possible? What makes it unique?

Check out this primer from our friends at StorageReview.com and a Podcast with the latest member of the Exec team at Chia, Jonmichael Hands, formerly of Intel, now the VP of Storage Business Development there.

After you understand the fundamentals, the question becomes why am I writing to you about it today? I will start with two topics today, more to come.

Topic 1 – Dirt

Well, we now know, that this eco-friendly crypto has a unique new issue. Wear out… A ‘dirt cheap’ SSD can be ‘destroyed’ in as little as a month or less. Why is this? It has to do with Plotting… not the Farming…

A plot, as one might think of it, is just like what happens when you own a farm… You have to ‘seed’ the land… Think about if you had to plow the dirt, then you have to prep the dirt, then you have to seed the dirt, then you have to go back and water the dirt… No longer ‘dirt cheap’ right?

A plot today takes roughly 100GB of storage space, while it can create up to 400GB of writes… That 4:1 or greater work needed means you are creating a write endurance challenge for the drives.

So how to solve that… Create, use, deploy drives with the capacity to maximize plots in a given space, like a 32TB 2.5” SSD (larger available) that can withstand the write issues created, while allowing for up to 300 plots (Yes folks, that same space with 3.5” 12TB HDD will be an issue).

So wear out and space are an issue. Now let’s talk about processes…

 Topic 2 – Tractors

While eco-friendly for farming, generating the plots to farm on storage takes time… Concurrent staggering of plots on a SATA SSD can take over 96 hours. That has to do with CPU, memory, and read/write speeds of the drives. There has to be a better way right?

Why is this, you ask? Think about the tractors… The CPU is the tracker prepping the soil. A tractor on a farm can cost in excess $500,000 or more. So do you have one per small plot of land? Of course not, that is ‘not economical’. What if there is a better way… Dare I say it? MINI TRACTORS!!

With a Computational Storage Drive (CSD) from NGD Systems, we provide a tractor per drive to do ‘Auto-Plotting’ of the SSDs. Oh, and if you really want it… Pre-plotted (with your key of course).

How does this work? Well, take a look at how we are solving problems today… We can do AI Inference, ML Training, DB search/sort… The idea of Auto-Plotting is a perfect synergy of solutions to help with the Chia needs. And when you are done ‘plotting’ and moving the plots to those Spinning Rust (high failure rate, low access time HDD). You can turn our product into an even more meaning solution…

Stop playing the nickel and dime game, use your current currency to more effectively, more efficiently and more expeditiously mine your own Crypto Currencies!!

Up next… Topic 3 – Power, Topic 4 – More on Auto-Plotting