Mining Machine Talk: Introduction to Alchemy "Mining"
miningmining, is a craft that transforms electricity into "gold", and is a kind ofmodern alchemy. And in order to master this craft, in addition to having "magic energy" electricity, you also need electricity that can be turned into "gold"Point "gold" rod - mining machine。
For encrypted asset mining, the mining machine is one of the basic hardware facilities necessary for mining. With the gradual popularization of encrypted asset mining, the mining industry has also been upgraded step by step. Mining farms, mining machines, and miner groups are all developing in the direction of specialization and refinement.image description。
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Take bitcoin mining machine as an example, in the earliest days, an old server or ordinary PC could be used as a mining machine for mining. The earliest such mining machines were calledCPU miner. Later, there appearedGPU miner, miners use GPUs with higher computing power to mine BTC, and CPU mining machines are phased out. By 2012, some technical geeks tried to use FPGA programmable chips as the core, and produced a batch ofFPGA mining machineimage description
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Figure 3 FPGA mining machine
ASIC mining machineASIC mining machine, this type of mining machine integrates a large number of dbSHA256 algorithm customized chips, which makes the performance of BTC ASIC mining machine higher than that of ordinary GPU mining machineThousands or even tens of thousands of times. The emergence of ASIC mining machines has led to a sudden increase in the computing power of BTC's entire network, and the difficulty of mining has been greatly increased. GPU mining machines may mine for several years, but they still cannot mine the income of ASIC mining machines for a day.image description。
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therefore, with many people and the cryptoasset community, startedBoycott ASIC miners, and anti-AISC algorithms such as Scrypt, Etash, Equihash, X17, X13, X16r, etc. have appeared, and the corresponding currencies include LTC, ETH, ZEC, DASH, BTG, BCD, RVN, etc. , all only support GPU mining, which brings good news to GPU mining machines.
evenIn order to maintain the fairness of mining, some teams use algorithms that only support CPU mining machines for mining, such as BTV, which only supports CPU mining machines for mining.
There are also some currencies, and at the same timeCompatible with CPU and GPU mining machinesMining (currently more friendly to CPU miners), such as XMR, PASC, etc.
people are always chasing profit, when a currency that originally only supported GPU mining, FPGA mining machines or even ASIC mining machines just appeared, they can use a small number of advantageous mining machines to grab huge profits. therefore,ASIC-resistant algorithms are always cracked, and then there are FPGA mining machines and even ASIC mining machines. The LTC, ZEC, and DASH mining fields that used to be dominated by GPU mining machines have now been conquered by ASIC mining machines.
It seems that ASICization of mainstream mining machines is the ultimate destination of all currency mining. Some newly designed PoW currencies have even planned the ASIC route of mining machines at the beginning of the design, such as the Nervos main network token CKB, and the star new coin Grin released in early 2019.
There is also a batchstubbornCommunities or teams, through (continuous) hard forks, to resist or even deter the ASICization of mining machines in their respective fields, and to ensure the security of their respective miningideal of decentralization. If the algorithm is iterated every six monthsXMR, through the hard fork of the ASIC mining machineRVNetc.Beametc.
Encrypted asset mining is still in the early stage, and the exploration and experimentation of different modes is far from the end. Which form of machine is the final form of the mining machine, I will leave it to future generations to comment.
