ASIC
Also: Application-Specific Integrated Circuit
mining · intermediate
A chip designed to do exactly one job — for Bitcoin, compute double-SHA-256 as fast and efficiently as silicon allows.
Bitcoin mining started on CPUs, moved to GPUs in 2010, FPGAs in 2011, and ASICs in 2013. Each transition was a thousand-fold efficiency jump. An ASIC has SHA-256 baked into the silicon — no general-purpose instructions, no cache, no operating system. Just hash, compare, repeat, billions of times per second per chip.
Modern ASICs (Bitmain S21, MicroBT M60S, Canaan A1566) sit around 15–18 J/TH — fifteen joules to compute a trillion hashes. The number drops a little every generation as fabrication processes shrink. Antminer's lineage roughly doubled efficiency every 18–24 months for a decade; gains have slowed as the curve approaches physical limits.
ASIC concentration is one of mining's structural risks. A few manufacturers, mostly in China, dominate the supply. The 2024–2025 push for open-source designs (Block's Proto, Auradine) and the spread of small home-miners (Bitaxe) are deliberate counter-pressure.
Related terms
Where you'll see this
Proof-of-Work Miner
Mine a block header in the browser. Watch nonce-search burn cycles to find a hash under target, then compare your rate against the network.
Stranded Energy
A long-scroll argument: Bitcoin mining as the interruptible buyer for curtailed renewables. With real CAISO and hashprice data.