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Bitcoin Essentials
book

Bitcoin Essentials

by Albert Szmigielski
February 2016
Beginner
130 pages
2h 43m
English
Packt Publishing
Content preview from Bitcoin Essentials

Chapter 5. ASIC Mining

In this chapter, we will take a look at mining with Application Specific Integrated Circuits or ASICs. They are microprocessors built for a single purpose. In the case of Bitcoin mining, they are built to perform the SHA-256 hash function that is used in Bitcoin. ASICs have a clear advantage over other mining hardware, as they are the fastest hashing machines (save for the still-theoretical quantum computer) designed specifically for the repeated hashing of candidate blocks.

ASICs can mine much faster than CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs and are therefore more desirable to a potential miner. Furthermore, improvements in ASIC technology mean that even faster machines have been hitting the market in the last two years. However, the trend ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781785281976