chiavdf 1.2.1

Changes since 1.2.0 (released 2026-10-22).

Highlights

Windows now ships a signed installer (for winget) that stages the FTDI drivers.
ASIC timelords gain supervised live control and per-engine telemetry, checkpoint reuse across proof requests, and a configurable --segment-threads option.
A new prove_low_memory Python API produces the same proof as prove in constant memory.
The macOS arm64 release bundle ships a GMP build tuned for Apple Silicon, and class-group compositions are interleaved on Apple Silicon.

New contributor: @andlo (#454).

Default behaviour is unchanged. New options (--live-control, --raw-speed, --segment-threads) are opt-in or default to the previous behaviour (--segment-threads defaults to 2).
Windows users can install vdf_client with winget install --id Chia.chiavdf --exact. The portable chiavdf-win64.zip is still published.
The macOS arm64 release bundle now includes a GMP 6.3.0 built from source in place of Homebrew's bottle.

Low-memory prover — Adds prove_low_memory, which returns the same bytes as prove while keeping memory use constant in the iteration count, at roughly twice the time. (#454, #462)
Apple Silicon class-group kernels — Independent class-group compositions run two at a time on Apple Silicon, raising throughput of the ASIC client's proof construction. Proof format and verification are unchanged. (#461)
ProveSlow iteration rounding — Rounding the iteration count up to a multiple of k*l no longer wraps for values near 2^64; very large counts now fail with a normal allocation error. (#460)
Small primes in is_prime_bpsw — Small primes (for example 11, 13, 151 and 233) are no longer reported as composite. Production callers only pass large values, so their results do not change. (#464)

Supervised live control and telemetry — hw_vdf_client gains an opt-in --live-control mode, which lets a supervising application change operating points without restarting the client, and opt-in per-engine --raw-speed telemetry. Legacy behaviour is unchanged outside live-control mode. (#459)
Checkpoint reuse — Successive proof requests reuse dispatched checkpoints, and the cached prefix is chosen using the available proof parallelism. (#450)
--segment-threads — Sets how many threads share one proof segment (1–8, default 2, the previous behaviour). Proof bytes do not depend on the value. (#468)

Windows installer — Adds a signed Inno Setup installer for Chia.chiavdf that installs the Windows binaries, adds them to the machine PATH, and stages the FTDI driver packages with pnputil. (#453)
macOS arm64 GMP — The macOS arm64 release bundle ships GMP 6.3.0 built from source with a faster two-limb division method for Apple cores, with a pinned source hash and a release-check script that verifies the bundled libraries. (#463)
macOS GMP build follow-ups — The macOS architecture is now derived from runner.arch, GMP_TARBALL may point at the build directory's own copy, and a build directory containing a comma is rejected with a clear message. (#472)

VDF_MODE override — VDF_MODE can be overridden in the Makefile and CMake, the assert-enabled VDF_MODE=1 configuration builds again, and CI builds and runs it. (#465)
1weso_test exit status — 1weso_test now returns a failing status when verification fails, including in default builds where assert is compiled out. (#466)
Managed workflow updates — Syncs the shared dependency review, Node runtime check and Dependabot configuration from the organization template, and removes the retired dependency-review helper scripts. (#449, #455, #469)

Package-manager installs — Documents installing the release builds with Homebrew, winget and apt. (#451)
Cubing vs. squaring — Records the NUCUBE vs. NUDUPL evaluation in README_BACKGROUND_COMPETITION.md. (#467)

Full Changelog: 1.2.0...1.2.1