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Does a transaction that requires the entire block gas limit to be executed (currently ~8M) take the entire block by itself?
And if that's true, will that transaction take longer to get confirmed than say a regular transfer transaction? (given they're both sent with the same gas price)
I thought I will comment to @lunr's answer but adding as an answer due to its length.
And if that's true, will that transaction take longer to get confirmed than say a regular transfer transaction? (given they're both sent with the same gas price)
The answer is, it depends. Let A be a regular transaction and B be the one that consumes gas limit. Suppose they are both sent with a higher than average gas price, then the miner might find it lucrative to add B alone in his block. Reason being that it is usually not possible to achieve block gas limit as a sum of all gas consumption of smaller transactions. Also, the entire transaction fees for that block will be measured in the higher than average gas price provided.
On the other hand, if both A and B have lower than average or average gas prices, then the miner, by including B, will be stuck with the gas price B has sent for all the gas in that block. He might choose to add some other transactions with higher gas prices and then might add A to fill up the block gas limit.
Does a transaction that requires the entire block gas limit to be executed (currently ~8M) take the entire block by itself?
Yes.
And if that's true, will that transaction take longer to get confirmed than say a regular transfer transaction? (given they're both sent with the same gas price)
Probably. That's because including that tx in a block will be less rewarding for the miners, since it takes up the whole block (leaving no place for other txs which means less fees for the miner.)
