What is an ASIC miner?

On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block using a CPU on a personal computer in Helsinki, Finland. As people's recognition of Bitcoin increased and the number of miners increased, the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network continued to rise, and the difficulty of mining also gradually increased; therefore, it is difficult to win the right to record new blocks using only CPU calculations.

From CPU to GPU, and then to ASIC mining machines; in order to improve computing efficiency, Bitcoin mining equipment has gone through several stages of development. At present, cryptocurrencies based on the SHA 256 algorithm, including Bitcoin, are basically mined using ASIC mining machines.

Compared with CPU and GPU, ASIC is more targeted; because it is a chip designed for a specific purpose, ASIC mining chip has higher performance, lower energy consumption, and computing power tens of thousands of times higher than CPU and GPU or even more. ASIC mining machine is a professional mining equipment built based on this specific chip.

Take the current main model S9 of Bitmain, the leader in the mining machine field (occupying more than 80% of the market share), for example. The rated computing power of this mining machine can reach 13 TH/s, and the power consumption is about 1300W; the 189 BM1387 ASIC chips used in it are equivalent to the computing power of 200,000 Nvidia flagship graphics cards GTX 1080Ti. However, the algorithm-optimized chips designed for a certain currency can only mine specific cryptocurrencies; for example, the Antminer S9 can only be used to mine Bitcoin, but not Ethereum, which has a more complex algorithm.

As more mining machines join the mining industry, it becomes difficult for a single mining machine to mine Bitcoin. In order to obtain stable mining income, miners gather their mining machines together to form a mining farm; then join the mining pool to contribute their computing power, and thus unite to compete with other mining farms or mining pools for the right to record accounts.