Agreed, but so far I haven't seen any such work.
Due to what the ASICs tend to do (accept data and start nonce, hash away with new nonces, return nonce if the hashed data falls below a specific threshold), and presuming SHA256 is everything it claims to be, it's also unlikely you'd ever see any such work.They're not generic hashing chips, so any sort of 'quickly hashing every file' is not applicable. They couldn't even do a single SHA256 hashing of a few bytes, as the hash isn't actually returned.
The output of a SHA256 hashing is supposed to be sufficiently unpredictable that any task you think you could accelerate by exploiting what the ASICs do and working back from there is also not going to fly.
This question has pretty much been asked since before ASICs popped up, and a Google search for 'bitcoin asic other uses'* will readily pop up some suggestions, most of which are invalidated or just unlikely to be practical.
As an example, as one blog post postulates:
The ASIC could aid in password cracking if:
* the hashes are generated with sha256(sha256(x))
* salt + password = 80 bytes
* the hash starts with 4 zero-bytes
Which is a situation that has never existed and, moreover, is now practically guaranteed to not exist (unless purposely done so).* the hashes are generated with sha256(sha256(x))
* salt + password = 80 bytes
* the hash starts with 4 zero-bytes
I think some generic discussion posts around here come brrrr-weather time may have the only reasonable answer (beside "no") so far: they're pretty good as heaters.
* That search also returns this same question, over at StackExchange, which elaborates on the question a bit:
(Note: My question differs from "Reusability of ASIC miners" because I am only asking about hashing-specific applications, not whether ASICs can do other mathematical operations.)
