ASIC for LTC? Possible?

[jayeeyee]

This may have been asked before.. in matter of fact.. I'm pretty sure it's been asked before but I'll ask it anyways.

Is it possible that an ASIC hardware miner can mine LTC?  For example, an Avalon unit or BFL unit.  Now, I know ASIC stands for "Application Specific Integrated Circuit" and the hardware is "hardcoded" to perform one job and one job only, and in this case.. to mine BTC which uses SHA-256 algorithm.  But my question is more software related.  I remember when LTC was meant for CPU only when some sneaky and smart individual(s) came up with a miner software to use GPU's to mine LTC.  I'm wondering if this would be possible for ASIC?  Sorta like a software miner emulating scrypt on an ASIC device.

I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question to ask.

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[Transisto]

It is possible but the algorithm was specifically made for making this prohibitive.

See : http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html

I think one what's slowing it down the most is latency to access large pool of memory.

On modern hardware and with default parameters, the cost of cracking the password on a file encrypted by scrypt enc is approximately 100 billion times more than the cost of cracking the same password on a file encrypted by openssl enc; this means that a five-character password using scrypt is stronger than a ten-character password using openssl.

[jambaman42]

Anything is possible with enough money. The problem is there isn't anywhere near enough money to fund one of these. FPGAs are in development for litecoin, but they're still a ways away. ASICs simply cost too much right now.

[ssateneth]

No, you cannot re-purpose ASIC's made only for SHA256 hashing to do something else, such as scrypt. It is impossible.

/thread

[drawingthesun]

Its possible with enough money to build a ASIC for Litecoin mining. However a Bitcoin mining ASIC can never mine Litecoin.

Yes someone got Litecoin mining working on a GPU, but remember a GPU is flexible and can run all types of code (Look at games for example)

a ASIC is physically designed for a set of tasks, and outside of that range that ASIC is a door stop.

[cheesylard]

ASIC means application specific integrated circuit.

Since there is no litecoin ASIC yet, then no.