Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

GPU

Due to the increased difficulty of the bitcoin network and the general tendency of finding faster methods to mine, miners started to use GPUs or graphics cards available in PCs to perform mining. GPUs support faster and parallelized calculations that are usually programmed using the OpenCL language. This turned out to be a faster option as compared to CPUs. Users also used techniques such as overclocking to gain maximum benefit of the GPU power. Also, the possibility of using multiple graphics cards increased the popularity of graphics cards' usage for bitcoin mining. GPU mining, however, has some limitations, such as overheating and the requirement for specialized motherboards and extra hardware to house multiple graphics cards. From ...