How much does it cost to run a VideoCoin Worker?
In this blog, we present a worksheet to calculate the profitability of a platform for running a worker on the VideoCoin network. Unlike mining with other cryptocurrencies, VideoCoin Worker can run on a wide range of platforms. Any platform that can support video transcoding can join VideoCoin Network as a worker. The platforms can range from Raspberry Pi to Xeon CPUs up to 96 cores. Platforms with good hardware accelerators for video transcoding such as NVidia Jetson, Intel Quick Sync, and Cloud computing nodes with GPU acceleration will provide a broad choice for VideoCoin mining.
We present cost estimates for cloud-based as well as non-cloud based platforms below. For cloud-based platforms, the prices charged by various cloud providers and their mining capabilities are tabulated. For non-cloud based platforms, we estimate the cost of operation based on the power consumption of the platform and cost of power. The cost of power varies based on geographic location. We used the cost of power in the USA for estimation.
Factors affecting the cost of mining and profitability
An estimate of Mining cost on various platforms
References:
- Global electricity prices in 2018, by select country
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/ - How much power does the Pi4B use? Power Measurements
https://raspi.tv/2019/how-much-power-does-the-pi4b-use-power-measurements - Power Management for Jetson Nano and Jetson TX1 Devices
https://docs.nvidia.com/jetson/l4t/index.html#page/Tegra%20Linux%20Driver%20Package%20Development%20Guide/power_management_nano.html - Raspberry Pi 4 specs and benchmarks
https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-4-specs-benchmarks - Comparing AWS Reserved Instances Vs. Google Committed Use Discounts
https://www.cloudhealthtech.com/blog/aws-reserved-instances-vs-google-committed-use-discounts - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/linux/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/linux/ - DigitalOcean Compute
https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/ - yandex(Russia)
https://cloud.yandex.com/prices - Upcloud (Europe)
https://upcloud.com/pricing/ - Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix
https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix - Ffmpeg Open benchmarking
https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/ffmpeg - Intel® Core™ i7–8700K Processor
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/126684/intel-core-i7-8700k-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz.html - AMD Ryzen™ 5 3600X
https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-5-3600x
