GPU vs CPU vs ASIC mining
How GPUs, CPUs and ASICs differ as mining hardware: what each is good at, what each costs to run, and which coins suit which of them.
CPU mining
A CPU is a general-purpose processor: flexible but not specialised for the repetitive maths of mining. A few algorithms are designed to stay CPU-friendly, but for most coins a CPU is far too slow to be worth the power. It is where mining started, and where most coins have long since left it behind.
GPU mining
A GPU has thousands of small cores built for parallel maths, which is exactly what most mining algorithms need. GPUs are the sweet spot for many coins: powerful, widely available, and reusable for gaming, AI or resale. Pearl is a GPU coin, and its useful-work algorithm specifically needs modern cards with tensor cores.
ASIC mining
An ASIC is a chip built to do exactly one algorithm and nothing else. That makes it extremely fast and efficient for its coin, but useless for anything else and quick to become obsolete when difficulty climbs. ASICs dominate coins like Bitcoin, but they cannot mine a GPU coin like Pearl.
Which should you use for Pearl
For Pearl the answer is simple: a modern GPU. The algorithm relies on tensor cores, so it runs on NVIDIA RTX 20-series and newer and on supported AMD and Intel cards, with newer NVIDIA RTX cards the fastest. CPUs are not suited to it, and no ASIC exists for it.