Why Does Crypto Mining Use Gpu

At the onset of cryptocurrency mining, CPUs were the primary way to behave mining operations. Today, unless you’re using application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to mine a currency, the next all-time thing is GPU mining, and for many cryptocurrencies, it’s the dominant form of mining.

Hither’s a breakdown of what GPU mining is and how it has started to cause real problems for the hardware industries it draws from.

What is mining, and how do GPUs attain it?


Mining is essentially running software to solve circuitous mathematical bug in order to verify transactions on a cryptographic blockchain. Once a miner completes the math problem, the reward is a portion of cryptocurrency that’southward associated what the mining action. These verified transactions are the backbone of how a decentralized cryptocurrency is able to office equally a legitimate currency.

Cryptocurrency miners utilize their equipment to summate a specific number chosen a “nonce,” or “number just used in one case.” This nonce is plugged into a hash role (such as SHA-256) and calculated. Since the miner doesn’t know what the verbal nonce is, multiple calculations have to be done in parallel to go the right number quickly. This is where GPUs come into play.

GPUs are specifically designed to return 3D graphics and shapes. This requires complex mathematical calculations that demand to be done in parallel. For instance, if you lot’re playing
Call of Duty Warzone, your computer or console’s GPU has to not only render the entire game world (including shading, lighting, and shadows), just besides the grapheme models, guns, bullets, and game physics all at the same time. This requires the power to compute massive amounts of calculations all at once, and information technology’due south something graphics cards are very good at.

The same applies to GPU mining, where the many thousands of parallel processing cores in modern GPUs make them keen at brute forcing the complex math bug needed to calculate mining hashes and ultimately earn their miners some cryptocurrency.

GPU mining — beyond Bitcoin

A cryptocurrency mining rig from a computer graphic card.
Getty Images

While y’all can technically still
mine Bitcoin
with GPUs, application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) and field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) can exist purpose-built for calculating specific hash algorithms and are far more efficient and capable than GPUs at
Bitcoin mining. The number of GPUs it would take to match the “hashing rate” of a single ASIC would prove cost prohibitive due to the tremendous power requirements and costs involved.

An Nvidia RTX 3090 Founders Edition has a hashing charge per unit of 150 1000000 hashes per 2d (150MHps) and costs anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000. A popular ASIC like the Bitmain Antminer T17+originally price a petty over $800 and has a hashing rate of 64 trillion hashes per 2nd (THps). It does consume a lot more ability than an RTX 3090, around x times equally much, simply with its much greater hashing rate, it is a far superior piece of hardware for
mining Bitcoin.

That said, other cryptocurrencies can still provide a valuable profit for GPU miners, including Monero, Ripple (XRP), and Dogecoin. A good way to determine what cryptocurrency to mine is to use a mining figurer. This typically allows y’all to input the type of cryptocurrency you want to mine, the mining hardware you’re using or the hashing charge per unit, and the amount of power you’re using. From there, you’re able to meet how much yous’ll be able to brand.

1 of the more pop ways to mine solo is through software like NiceHash. This allows y’all to rent your mining hardware out for others to mine for alt-currencies. Yous’re sent the profits in the form of Bitcoin. The process of setting up NiceHash on your computer is pretty uncomplicated and is perfect for those who don’t want to mess with using a command line.

That said, it may be worth looking to either join a mining pool or utilizing cloud mining. A mining pool combines the hardware capabilities of multiple miners to increase their computational power. Cloud mining may be a decent pick for those who don’t have the money to invest in their own hardware (peculiarly these days). With cloud mining, you rent mining hardware from companies like HashFlare to do the heavy lifting for you. You are then paid for your investment with Bitcoin.

The GPU shortage continues

There was a massive crypto nail starting effectually Dec 2020, when the cost of Bitcoin and Ehereum jumped dramatically. This led crypto miners to quickly snap upward
graphics cards, accounting for 25% of all GPU sales. Unfortunately, this has contributed to the current GPU shortage and led Nvidia to limit the hash charge per unit of newer 30-series cards.

Despite the massive drawbacks to
mining Bitcoin
and Litecoin on
graphics cards, the upside is that
graphics cards
tin still be sold in the aftermarket because of their general-purpose use. ASICs by definition cannot exist used outside of their intended purpose and thus lose a lot of value if the specific algorithm it’s programmed for isn’t in use.

Additionally, if crypto prices crash, that reduces the profitability of mining, which also reduces the demand for
graphics cards
and a big sell-off of mining GPUs that take lost profitability, which tin can lead to a glut of GPUs on the second-hand market, crashing prices at that place in plow.

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Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-gpu-mining/

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