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March 28, 2013, 09:43:16 AM |
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Okay, despite the accusations of scam in your other thread, I'll throw out some suggestions even if it is only for the benefit of others. As some would say, I'll bite.
What I'd like to see in an ASIC is not just a Bitcoin only application. I'd like to see a generic SHA ASIC. So, say it supports SHA-256 natively for Bitcoin, but you could maybe also do SHA-384 or SHA-512, etc. Maybe even some other hashing algorithms if they share enough in common.
However, you can't really make it an all-in-one chip either, otherwise you're practically making a CPU and losing the ASIC advantage. So you'd have to balance supporting other hashing algorithms without bloating transistor count, etc. But if you could make an ASIC that does more than just SHA-256, you could have a lot of security uses. Admittedly some might say they'd only be used for blackhat scenarios (i.e. creating rainbow tables), but that's another discussion in itself.
I don't see any scrypt support being a good idea. That requires too much expensive cache and the utility and value of altchains that use scrypt would be debatable for many Bitcoin miners.
But basically too much of a deviation from what makes just SHA-256 tick will just increase the ASIC's cost while lowering its potential hashing capability. Of course, you should mostly be consulting what your engineers are saying... I don't design ASICs and probably only a few here do.
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