GPU Mining Explained

Cryptocurrency miners use their equipment to calculate a specific number called a “nonce,” or “number only used once.” This nonce is plugged into a hash function (such as SHA-256) and calculated. Since the miner doesn’t know what the exact nonce is, multiple calculations have to be done in parallel to get the right number quickly. This is where GPUs come into play.

GPUs are specifically designed to render 3D graphics and shapes. This requires complex mathematical calculations that need to be done in parallel. For example, if you’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), but also the character models, guns, bullets, and game physics all at the same time. This requires the ability to compute massive amounts of calculations all at once, and it’s 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 great at brute forcing the complex math problems needed to calculate mining hashes and ultimately earn their miners some cryptocurrency.