3 ms·

Well, the GPUs and FPGAs are (and have been) easily reconfigured after decommission. ASICs, however, are inherently specific-use (Application-Specific Integrat

• simias 13y ago
  Of course, with bitcoin it's not possible (unless you want to crack sha-256 hashed passwords maybe?), I was wondering if by designing the bitcoin algorithm differently that might have been possible. For instance, to stay with the protein folding example, maybe bitcoin could have used an algorithm that used similar logic as the one used by the folding@home project but with different input data and expected results. Once the hardware is no longer needed for mining it can be easily repurposed for research.
  • redblacktree 13y ago
    > unless you want to crack sha-256 hashed passwords maybe? It makes you wonder if we'll ever hear of anyone turning their bitcoin cluster to this purpose. Perhaps someone unauthorized. Edit: Downthread, nwh explained why this isn't possible: > No, they can't crack passwords. They increment a nonce at the end of a supplied string and only return if the nonce results in a low hash. They're not a generic "fast SHA" device like you're thinking.
    • rpearl 13y ago
      well, btc mining involves sha256(sha256(x)). Not being a hardware person, I don't know if the designs of the asic miners can be re-used to just compute sha256. Maybe, maybe not?
      • zapu 13y ago
        Very specific sha optimizations are put into these circuits, which makes it doubtful that they can be reused for any other kind orf computation involving sha.