how an application specific integrated circuit asic miner works
instead of being general purpose integrated circuits like ram chips pc processors or mobile device microprocessors asics employed in cryptocurrency mining are custom designed to mine cryptocurrencies by only generating hashes the chips are designed to compute one or a few hashing algorithms they are placed on an integrated circuit board or many and programmed to generate hashes a hash is a long hexadecimal number the result output of a hashing algorithm s input blocks have a dedicated space called a block header that includes certain information one of these fields is the nonce or number used once in another field there is information about the transaction that will transfer the block reward to the miner which is called the coinbase the coinbase field also acts as an extra nonce field because it can hold more data these two fields can be altered to generate different hashes to mine a block the mining program changes the nonce and the extra nonce usually both to generate a new hash until a number less than the target hash is reached this is called hashing the more hashes that can be performed in a set period the more likely a miner is to earn the reward bitcoin is programmed to allow a miner to hash at 8 x 1028 hashes per second much more than the entire network of asics and other computers can currently do hashing uses all of the computational resources in the asic miner which generates a lot of heat heat generation inhibits efficiency heat slows down conductivity and can cause damage so the machines use active cooling such as heat sinks large fans or liquid cooling to combat the heat one asic mining farm cleanspark submerges thousands of asics in non conductive oil which is cycled through a cooling process to maintain a specific temperature many miners join a mining pool to increase their chances of earning bitcoin mining pools usually pay shares of rewards based on a miner s hashrate and work contributed asic miner considerationsbefore investing thousands of dollars in an asic mining rig here are some factors to be considered 