If you have just started to be interested in mining, then you will certainly ask yourself: what is mining on ASIC, and what is better to use for the production of crypto currency of an ASIC or a graphics card? In this article, we will analyze what ASIC mining is and can make money on it.
What is ASIC?
ASIC-Miner (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is a device designed specifically for mining a crypto-socket. In fact, it is a chip (chip) that performs one particular type of work, but faster and better than analogous microcircuits that perform several types of work.
In its beginning, the ashikas were not created specifically for the production of crypto-currency. ASIC was first used by the British company Sinclair Research in 1981 in personal computers to accelerate their graphical work. After that, many electronics companies implemented their ASICs to optimize the performance of an electronic device element.
Unlike general-purpose integrated circuits, ASICs are used in a specific device and perform strictly limited functions specific to the device; as a result, the performance of functions is faster and, ultimately, cheaper.
Each crypto currency works on the basis of a certain algorithm, which can coincide for different currencies, and may not coincide. For example, the Bitcoin blockbuster functions on the SHA-256 algorithm, and the Litecoin base is already another algorithm – Scrypt. Its algorithms are in Ethereum and many other crypto-currencies. ASIC-miners are developed under one specific algorithm, but decrypt it tens times faster than video cards and any other electronic computing devices, since all their components are aimed at working with this algorithm.
What is better than an ASIC or a GPU farm for mining?
Prior to ASIC-mining, crypto-currency was mainly produced on video cards or computer processors. But by 2012, the main problems of the miners were:
- Increasing the complexity of the production of the block, because of which more power was required.
- Excessive power consumption, increasing in proportion to the increase in capacity.
The solution to these problems was mining on ASIC. Due to the fast operation with one algorithm, the energy consumption spent on obtaining one cryptonet is significantly reduced. The performance of one ASIC is equal to several video cards (depending on the power), so it is logical that the power consumption from the GPU-farm will be many times greater. Professional ASIC, of course, consume more, but overall the ratio of performance to power consumption is not compared to the same indicator for farms on video cards.
If we talk about the advantages of GPU-farms, this is undoubtedly availability, availability of warranty and maintainability, the ability to drop various crypto-currencies, minimal noise and heat emission and, also, video cards can always be sold to gamers. Together with this, for the assembly of similar farms it is necessary to have special knowledge and computer literacy, GPU-farms occupy more space and pay off longer than ASIC.
In its turn, the advantages of ASIC are that they are immediately ready for operation, there is no need to build, easy to configure and pay off faster than GPU-farms. But the disadvantages of ASIC are: high price, as they are often not available freely, the quality of the device from China is not always excellent, practical repair of the suitability, noisiness and huge heat emission (it is necessary to remove heat, do ventilation), sharpening under one algorithm, that Excludes the possibility of using a particular ASIC after losing the actuality of the produced currency.
What kind of crypto currency can be produced by ASIC-miner?
Several years ago ASIC-miners were made only under Bitcoin. But in our time, manufacturers make ASIC-miners and other crypto-currencies. Thanks to the development of the sphere, now with their help you can cannibalize currencies, acting on the following algorithms:
- SHA-256 (currencies Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, BitcoinDark, Syscoin, Peercoin, Namecoin, etc.);
- X11 (currencies Dash, Pura, etc.);
- Ethash (currencies Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Metaverse ETP, Ubiq, etc.);
- Scrypt (currencies of Litecoin, Dogecoin, B3Coin, Bitdeal, etc.);
- Equihash (Zcash, Komodo, etc.);
- Blake (2b) (Decred, Siacoin).
Now ASIC-miners constitute a serious competition to farms on video cards, but we can not say that they are superseding them, since they have several significant drawbacks, described above. Nevertheless, the development of new ASIC-miners is quite active.
In what direction this industry will develop – it is difficult to say. Perhaps, the manufacturers will bet on increasing the hash of ASIC-miners. Perhaps – to universality, that is, to support as many algorithms as possible in one device. In any case, we can say with confidence that at this stage the development of ASIC-miners does not stop.
