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What Is the Term for the Specialized Hardware Used for PoW Mining?

The specialized hardware used for Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining, particularly for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is called an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miner. ASICs are custom-designed microchips optimized for the single task of performing the specific hashing algorithm required by the network.

They offer significantly higher efficiency and hashing power than general-purpose CPUs or GPUs.

How Does the Availability of Specialized Mining Hardware (ASICs) Affect the ‘Cost to Attack’ for a PoW Coin?
What Is the Fundamental Difference in Architecture between a GPU and an ASIC That Makes the Latter More Efficient for Mining?
What Is ‘ASIC’ Mining Hardware?
What Is the Concept of ‘ASIC Resistance’ in Cryptocurrency Algorithms?