In the early days of Bitcoin, when it only existed as the only cryptocurrency, it was possible to mine with CPUs, or in other words, with our home computer.
Today that has changed.
The constant increase in difficulty and competitiveness among miners has meant that there are two types of hardware to mine with: ASIC chips and GPU cards.
ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) chips, or also called Application-Specific Integrated Circuits, are chips whose function is to perform a specific and particular task, for example to mine only the SHA256 algorithm.
These machines are the most widespread in Bitcoin mining. However, they could be used to mine other coins. This will depend on the algorithm to be mined for which they are designed.
For example, if an ASIC chip is designed to mine Dash's X11 algorithm, it will be useless for mining Bitcoin.
The GPUs (Graphic Processor Unit) or Graphic Processing Unit is what we know as the graphics card of a computer.
They have a higher 'hash rate' or mining power than CPUs, which means that they can solve math problems faster. They are the most used for mining Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, among others.
As we explained before, it is important to make it clear that with a GPU we will not be able to mine Bitcoin and that with an ASIC chip we will not be able to mine Ethereum
