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When you get into ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), the answer to 'can it be repurposed?' is almost universally no. It's basically a purpose bui
by alanctgardner2 14y ago
When you get into ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), the answer to 'can it be repurposed?' is almost universally no. It's basically a purpose built circuit, built into a single package. This is cheap and fast, because you only put in the parts you need, but there's non-trivial engineering effort to design them.
I think initially some miners used FPGAs: these are reprogrammable and offer similar performance, but they're much more expensive.
- quinndupont 14y agoI think ajross is (mostly) right, ASICs can be re-purposed for SHA256 calculations. To what extent they have baked in a whole round of SHA256 is a good question, they may just be developed around very parallel XORs (which is why some GPUs are faster at BTC mining than others—they have built in XOR logic). I do believe seeing that (the mythical) Butterfly Labs intends on releasing software for all sorts of other parallel high-performance applications (or some kind of driver/API type of thing), but I could be hallucinating.
- sliverstorm 14y agoI think ajross is (mostly) right, ASICs can be re-purposed for SHA256 calculations. I know what you mean, but I think you should be more specific in your statement. Bitcoin mining ASICs might be re-purposable. Not all ASICs.
- quinndupont 14y agoGood point. An ASIC could be completely non-repurposable. The commonly-available (soon) BTC ASICS should be damn good at SHA256 cracking, maybe other XOR-related applications too.
- sliverstorm 14y agoRe: FPGAs, don't forget their other major downfall for mining- power. An equivalent ASIC uses much less power.