How 'specific' are ASICs?

[Stinky_Pete]

I was wondering what will happen to all the ASICs in 18-24 months when they are no longer profitable. Can they be used to mine other sha-256 cryptocoins, or are they absolutely specific to Bitcoin? Could the firmware be updated usefully?

[tacoman71]

Bitcoin mining is double step SHA-256 hashing. Any other coin that uses this type of proof of work should theoretically work.

[marjamrob]

On a separate note, are ASICS useful for much besides coin mining?

[candoo]

On a separate note, are ASICS useful for much besides coin mining?

no

[wolverine.ks]

On a separate note, are ASICS useful for much besides coin mining?

no

in other words, it's unlikely that there is anything else useful that also uses sha256 hashing? or anything that requires that level of sha256?

[-ck]

Besides mining cryptocoins, they make great bookends, paperweights, doorstops and coffee table ornaments.

They only do a specific subset of sha256 twice on specific data types and return specific results only, so they're not useful for absolutely anything else for their computational ability.

[wolverine.ks]

any desoldering and replacing the chips with something more useful?

[marjamrob]

Besides mining cryptocoins, they make great bookends, paperweights, doorstops and coffee table ornaments.

They only do a specific subset of sha256 twice on specific data types and return specific results only, so they're not useful for absolutely anything else for their computational ability.

Are they physically unable to do anything but hashing, or are they just really slow at anything else.

[maqifrnswa]

Are they physically unable to do anything but hashing, or are they just really slow at anything else.

physically unable

[DeathAndTaxes]

Besides mining cryptocoins, they make great bookends, paperweights, doorstops and coffee table ornaments.

They only do a specific subset of sha256 twice on specific data types and return specific results only, so they're not useful for absolutely anything else for their computational ability.

Are they physically unable to do anything but hashing, or are they just really slow at anything else.

Utterly incapable of doing anything else at any speed.

"Bitcoin" ASICS aren't "Bitcoin" ASICS, they aren't even "general purpose SHA-256 hashing" ASICs, they are "given a 76 byte  header, and a target, append a 4 byte nonce beginning with 0x00000000 to the end of the header, hash the resulting binary value with the SHA-256 algorithm, then hash the output with a second SHA-256 hash, check the resulting double hash against the provided target, if smaller than target save the nonce for return, if not discard, then keep incrementing the nonce performing the same process on all nonces until the max nonce (0xFFFFFFFF) is reached, then restart with a new header and target" ASICs.  We just say Bitcoin ASIC because that is kinda long but they are that specific.

For anything other than that EXACT problem they are utterly worthless.

[Trongersoll]

I was wondering what will happen to all the ASICs in 18-24 months when they are no longer profitable. Can they be used to mine other sha-256 cryptocoins, or are they absolutely specific to Bitcoin? Could the firmware be updated usefully?

ASICs don't have firmware as such. FPGAs are programmable hardware. ASICs are made specifically for the job they are designed. Sure the hardware design may start out as a program, but the ASICs are fabricated to do the job that they do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit