Modern Computer Architecture and Organization Second Edition, by Jim Ledin. Published by Packt Publishing.
This chapter begins with a brief introduction to the concepts associated with blockchain, a public, cryptographically secured ledger recording a sequence of transactions. The discussion continues with an overview of the process of Bitcoin mining, which appends transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain and rewards those who complete this task with payment in the form of Bitcoin. Bitcoin processing requires high-performance computing hardware, which is often specifically designed for this task. The chapter concludes with a description of the features of these hardware architectures.
This chapter will cover the following topics:
- Introduction to blockchain and Bitcoin
- The Bitcoin mining process
- Bitcoin mining computer architectures
- Alternative types of cryptocurrency