How did mining occur before OpenCL?

1

According to the Bitcoin history, the OpenCL miner was released publicly in October 2010. How was mining done before that? There were about 4 million coins mined until then, so there must have been some mining software out there. Any ideas on what was it and how did mining work in those early days?

Kiril

Posted 2013-03-14T03:43:19.417

Reputation: 223

Answers

1

Before GPU mining all mining was done on the CPU.

placeybordeaux

Posted 2013-03-14T03:43:19.417

Reputation: 853

Was the mining software integrated with the bitcoin client or something, or was there any notable open source CPU mining software? – Kiril – 2013-03-14T04:11:23.243

2@Lirik The very first bitcoin miner was in the standard client, and it is still the reference implementation. However, it's disabled, because CPU mining is so inefficient. – Nick ODell – 2013-03-14T05:23:07.303

@NickODell CPU mining isn't disabled. Its off by default and hidden in the GUI. I can open the debug console and mine on the TestNet with no problems. – goodguys_activate – 2013-03-20T15:53:45.813

Asked: 2013-03-14T03:43:19.417

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Active: 2016-02-21T10:34:50.187