ASIC
A chip built to mine one algorithm, extremely fast at it.
An ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is hardware built to do exactly one job. A mining ASIC computes one algorithm, such as SHA-256 or Scrypt, orders of magnitude faster and more efficiently than any general-purpose CPU or GPU.
The trade-off is inflexibility: an ASIC mines only its algorithm, and is scrap for everything else. Some algorithms, including GPU-oriented ones like Pearl's, are designed so ASICs have no advantage.
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