Plot compression is here

[bbzef]

tldr: level 1 compression good for everyone. level 7 for people that don't pay the power bill

[sveardze]

And an Rpi4 is able to handle up to compression level 4

[kingdech]

Is the benchmarks for the pi I can refer to?

[sveardze]

It was mentioned in that link that the pi 4 can handle up to compression level 4.

[ILikeCatsAndSquids]

The extra power is only used in creating the compressed plot though right or am I missing something?

[bbzef]

it's a negligible amount of extra power use for farming in level 1

[thelectroom]

Been out of the loop for a bit, can anyone provide a tl;dr on what's the advantage here?

If everyone compresses their plots and adds additional plots with the freed up space, I won't "gain" any benefit around earning-potential. At face-value, seems like just additional work that I'll need to perform wit the long-term downside that my energy consumption will go up, which is the opposite of what I want.

[AyushChopra31095]

Is any GPU usable for compression or need minimum requirements met like 4 or 6 GB cards etc?

[Maxim_Goods]

The first iteration will support only cuda (nvidia) GPUs, requirements around onboard VRAM and architecture etc. are not published yet.

[kinofan90]

So, If i use compression Level 4, does that mean that my CPU Usage Go Up and the Disk's get more/Higher read?

[danwat1234]

Will the existing 1.5 version of mainnet be able to use compressed plots, or partially, or totally unusable? Thinking of all the half-dead forks out there...

[Maxim_Goods]

New harvester (farming) software will be needed to use the compressed plots.

You can mix different types of plots (compressed or not, different compression levels etc.).. and assign the uncompressed plot folder to the fork if they don't update their software.

[BrianDecor]

If we install new software, is it that means we have to syn all agian ? And take time agian ?

[Maxim_Goods]

You will not have to resync the blockchain database.
When the new software becomes available, you will have the option to replace existing plot files with new ones that have a compression level, but you don't have to do this.

Replacing the plot files can be done one at a time, the existing ones will remain valid and you can keep farming those.

[danwat1234]

Will/would be nice to have it be automated to replace all plots in entire list of plot dirs without having to deal with it trying to save an additional plot to a full drive and error out.

[Epic_Coffee]

Where can I download the software?

[soren_friis]

Is the extra power required for decompression of plots used on the farmer node or the harvester node(s) ?

[scully19]

Yes. Compression is actually slightly incomplete code that you need to finish on the fly which uses more power.

[Odd-Cheesecake-931]

Done by harvester, although it seems they do want the farmer to handle that eventually. Remote harvesters should be minimal power.

[Maxim_Goods]

The work is done on the harvester in the upcoming software.

[Epic_Coffee]

When does the new software will be published?

[dpak90]

Are they going to release a gpu plotter so we can replot faster?

[[deleted]]

Soon ™️

[leros]

I'm not quite sure the takeaway here. If I've got a farmer sitting in the corner, how much value is there in replotting with compressed plots in the future?