ASIC Mining vs GPU Mining

1.Mining Hardware Background

Currently, the most mainstream mining are GPU and ASIC mining. GPU mining requires a computer to run, in which the graphics card determines the mining speed of the GPU mining setup. The motherboard and power supply largely determine the mining stability of the GPU miner. ASIC mining hardware utilizes advanced technologies, which offer convenient maintenance and high-performance computational power.

When mining cryptocurrency, the higher the computational power means, the easier it is to gain profits, and the lower the energy consumption means, fewer expenses for electricity bills. Therefore, computational power and energy consumption are references to measure the capabilities of miners.

1.1 GPU Mining

Originating from bare hands to mining picks and then to mechanized equipment, the tools for mining gold have evolved. Similarly, cryptocurrency mining equipment has also developed from GPU to FPGA to ASIC.

As an iteration of CPU mining, GPUs first entered the market for mining in 2013, showing their significant advantages compared to GPUs, which have thousands of cores while CPU has at most 64 cores. In this case, the GPU setup can substantially increase the computational power.

To improve the development of computational power, the interface in GPU miners had increased from one to hundreds. In terms of R&D investment of computational power, GPU mining has denoted much less than ASIC mining. GPU mining still has a place in the mining industry.

1.2 ASIC Mining

Solving the problem of the expensive cost of GPU mining, ASIC mining began to take over in 2013. Since then, the computational power of the entire network has been rising sharply due to the large number of ASIC miners added to the market. Based on the average computational power in July 2013, all CPU mining equipment has been unable to generate positive income. On the other hand, FPGA equipment is also close to zero income.

With the further decline in the output ratio of Bitcoin mining, it has been harder for the computational power of GPU to support the computation for mining. ASIC miners have become responsible for "producing/mining" Bitcoin. Notably, in 2016, power efficiency of ASIC miners entered into the era of 100J/T, in 2019 40J/T, in 2020 30J/T, and in 2021 20J/T.

The figure shows the iteration of the mining equipment from 2008 to 2022. The performance of the mining equipment includes computational power and energy efficiency.

2.ASIC Principle

ASIC technology is an electronic circuit (chip) specially designed for a specific purpose. ASIC mining performs under specialized algorithms for mining, ASIC technology can save the computing cycles required for multiple mining, so the cost is much lower. In terms of computational power, ASIC can process at speeds multitudes higher than contemporary GPUs.

3.ANTMINER (ASIC Server)

BITMAIN is the world's leading manufacturer of digital currency mining servers through its brand ANTMINER, which has long maintained a global market share and leading position in technology, serving customers across over 100 countries and regions. At first, ANTMINER was only responsible for Bitcoin mining, and later the business expanded to other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, Dashcoin, Litecoin, Zcash, and so on. ANTMINER has become the most well-known ASIC mining equipment through continuous improvement, enhancing computational power, and reducing energy consumption.

The ANTMINER S19 series is one of the most popular Bitcoin mining equipment. It has a foothold in the mining industry with top-computational power and ultra-low energy consumption. Over the years, the ANTMINER line-up has continuously upgraded and launched many new iterations for various cryptocurrencies, providing air cooled and hydro cooling mining solutions.