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I am working on an fpga mining device just for fun. I realized that there is a getblocktemplate function which replaces the getwork Json-rpc call. So do I need to switch over to it and change all the code or can I continue using it . Will getwork be removed from bitcoin later or will it still be supported?
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The advantage of getblocktemplate is that work units from it last longer, because you can change the extraNonce field. That's nice if you're writing an fpga miner, because it saves bandwidth.
getwork will probably never go away. It's useful and not very hard to maintain. Note that that's a personal opinion; I'm not one of the Bitcoin developers.
Edit: getwork has been removed in v0.10.0, so you have to use getblocktemplate.
Just out of curiosity how does it save bandwidth. If the nonce is the maximum value it simple wraps back and starts again right from 0. And since I dont have a very fast fpga the probabilty that some one finds a nonce before I complte the entire cycle is very high. BUt I still kepp calling get work and inserting the data onto the uart lines of my fpga miner from my python script runing on the host computer. So how does it save bandwidth – Enthusiast – 2013-06-04T06:01:08.613
it simple wraps backIf you check the same nonce again, you'll get the same result. If you didn't get a block the first time, you won't get one the second time. Bandwidth savings only really matters in pooled mining. – Nick ODell – 2013-06-04T06:19:57.567What I meant was before I can do the same hash again the block would have already been solved by someone else and I will get the fresh data from the uart line. – Enthusiast – 2013-06-04T06:21:22.893
A 6 Ghash/s FPGA will burn through all of the values for the nonce field in less than a second. So, not necessarily. – Nick ODell – 2013-06-04T06:46:17.297
Can you take a look at http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/11456/i-am-unable-to-figure-the-getwork-api question
– Enthusiast – 2013-06-04T06:52:58.693