Anyway.....
Nothing personal. This is addressed to everyone, not just you. I am quoting you so everyone can follow along on the subject.
Anyway...
Chip design is hardware.True, once made, it's made.
Put real simply, software is SOFTWARE, firmware is SOFTWARE written in to non-volatile memory, like in BIOS -....but that can be re-written too! It's called firmware because it's software written in to non-volatile ROM (Read Only Memory). Firmware is used in our little machines to tell the BTC cores how to produce hashes the SHA-256 way. Firmware is used in the LTC core to tell the little hasher how to hash the Scrypt way.
SHA and Scrypt are algorithms. An algorithm is a set of instructions of how to solve a problem and it is usually run in a loop, as we see in the DOS window the 'same' steps being performed over and over and over. It's the brains of the chip. That is the FIRMWARE at work!
Long story short, and as far as I am concerned, the SHA core can be re-programmed to run Scrypt algorithm instead of SHA-256 algorithm. It's that simple! One thing that bugs me about my
Re-write the firmware and we have a set of chips that can now run the heck out of Scrypt at a much higher hash rate! ..... Yeah baby! Yyyyyyyyyyyeahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Wolfey2014
This post actually made me register for the forum because of how completely wrong it is.
An ASIC is not a general processor like a CPU. It's an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (hence ASIC). You can think of it as software etched into silicon. It doesn't change. Ever. No firmware flashes, BIOS upgrades, or anything else will ever change what the ASIC does. You can't use an ASIC designed for one purpose (like hashing) and use it for another purpose (like running tax software). ASICs are optimized for specific tasks, and since they are optimized at the hardware level they can the job far more efficiently than a general purpose processor can.
The firmware on the GS translates messages coming across the USB cable into instructions the various components can understand (setting clock speeds, baud rates, start hashing, etc.). But there is no hashing algorithm in the firmware. The core algorithm implementations are etched into the the chips themselves.