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 cannot continue forever; there is a limit to the hashing speed of an ASIC chip.
This is perhaps the most exciting chapter in our book. A vast majority of mining is currently conducted on ASICs; therefore, this chapter is extremely relevant...
