Bitcoin Essentials

Pros and cons of FPGA mining

Mining with FPGAs has its advantages and disadvantages. Let's examine these in order to understand if and when it is appropriate to use FPGAs to mine Bitcoin. As you may recall, mining started on CPUs and then it moved over to GPUs; then people discovered that FPGAs could be used for mining as well.

Pros of FPGA mining

FPGA mining is the third step in mining hardware evolution. They are faster and more efficient than GPUs.

To summarize, mining Bitcoin with FPGAs has the following advantages:

• FPGAs are faster than GPUs and CPUs
• FPGAs are more electricity-efficient, per unit of hashing, than CPUs or GPUs

Cons of FPGA mining

FPGAs are rather difficult to source and program, and are not usually sold in stores open to the public. ...