Are ASICS usable outside of Mining?

[Ucy]

What else can Miners like ASICS do beside mining Cryptocurrencies? Can they be combined globally to serve as Super Computers, used for other complex calculations, for stimulations, as extra computer processors etc.
Why aren't Miners using them for some of these purposes instead of dumping them after Mining Crypto.

Guess ASICS would become cheap if they can be used for other purposes?

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[FloppyPurpleGherkin]

What else can Miners like ASICS do beside mining Cryptocurrencies?

Be a doorstop.


No, seriously.

[Eyedol-X]

What else can Miners like ASICS do beside mining Cryptocurrencies? Can they be combined globally to serve as Super Computers, used for other complex calculations, for stimulations, as extra computer processors etc.
Why aren't Miners using them for some of these purposes instead of dumping them after Mining Crypto.

Guess ASICS would become cheap if they can be used for other purposes?

Yes if you're an EE and can also develop your own firmware you can repurpose them to do many functions that a computer can do but why would you do that? It would take more resources to reverse engineer an existing product to be used for a different purpose versus building your own product for your need.

Example, it was reported a bunch of PS3's were used by a "country" that was faced with sanctions years ago to build a custom 22 CPU super computer. Why did this country do this? Because they got PS3's and nothing else to build a super computer with.

If this interests you go find some used Antminer S1's and S3's laying around, people probably giving them away at this point.

[treanski]

What else can Miners like ASICS do beside mining Cryptocurrencies? Can they be combined globally to serve as Super Computers, used for other complex calculations, for stimulations, as extra computer processors etc.
Why aren't Miners using them for some of these purposes instead of dumping them after Mining Crypto.

Guess ASICS would become cheap if they can be used for other purposes?

no asics can only do the one thing(algo) they have been made for, its forged in silicon. if you dont care about the noise you can use them as heater

[Etherion]

Asic power your life man. Almost everything you use has an asic chip. Even the printer cartage you use. But your talking about an asic miner which has only the intended use hard wired.

[dhouse]

they are called 'application specific' because they only do one thing, i think

[Raja_MBZ]

Look at the abbreviation of ASIC carefully:

ASIC = application-specific integrated circuit

Application-specific means it's made only to perform one specific task (to run one specific application). So no, you can't do anything else with your mining ASICs if they're purposefully built for mining a specific algorithm only.

[Elder III]

You may be confusing Asics with FPGAs.  An Asic has one specific purpose and it cannot deviate from that, so they can either mine (and heat your house at the same time I suppose) or they can go to a scrap yard.  A FPGA has the potential to be re-purposed for many different applications if the software is created for it.

[shield132]

What else can Miners like ASICS do beside mining Cryptocurrencies? Can they be combined globally to serve as Super Computers, used for other complex calculations, for stimulations, as extra computer processors etc.
Why aren't Miners using them for some of these purposes instead of dumping them after Mining Crypto.

Guess ASICS would become cheap if they can be used for other purposes?

Have heared from some people that ASIC can be used for complex calculations but as far as I know it's aimed for only one operation and that's mining. If they would be combined globally to create super computer, then imagine Bitfury and Bitmain, they would do many crazy things, imagine how fast you would crack any password and etc.
Yes, for other purposes they may become cheap, it all depends how valuable that "purpose" is. GPUs were cheap, yeah? But when it could profit some people a lot in mining, they become very valuable, so can say the same about asics.
And as it was already mentioned, heat is it's best side too. If you live in cold countries or anywhere in winter, you can have good heat system which can save your budget and even give profit.

[Raja_MBZ]

What else can Miners like ASICS do beside mining Cryptocurrencies? Can they be combined globally to serve as Super Computers, used for other complex calculations, for stimulations, as extra computer processors etc.
Why aren't Miners using them for some of these purposes instead of dumping them after Mining Crypto.

Guess ASICS would become cheap if they can be used for other purposes?

Have heared from some people that ASIC can be used for complex calculations but as far as I know it's aimed for only one operation and that's mining. If they would be combined globally to create super computer, then imagine Bitfury and Bitmain, they would do many crazy things, imagine how fast you would crack any password and etc.
Yes, for other purposes they may become cheap, it all depends how valuable that "purpose" is. GPUs were cheap, yeah? But when it could profit some people a lot in mining, they become very valuable, so can say the same about asics.
And as it was already mentioned, heat is it's best side too. If you live in cold countries or anywhere in winter, you can have good heat system which can save your budget and even give profit.

The core part of ASIC miner consists of only a chip, and it's *almost* useless if you don't use it for the purpose it's created. If you're only thinking of heating with ASICs without any mining, then it'll be super inefficient and cost you a lot of electricity.

ASIC = 1 application, if you don't want it to use it for that particular application, you better throw it away.

Maybe we can open an ASIC museum for old mining ASICs?