Introduction
The abbreviations TH and GH stand for tera hash and giga hash, respectively, and represent units of measurement used to quantify the computing power of a device, specifically in the mining industry. They measure how many hashes a device produces in a second to solve a specific cryptographic hash function. In other words, they measure the device’s hash rate. To understand the hash rate and the relationships between the units, it’s essential to first understand the basics of cryptocurrency mining.
What’s Crypto Mining?
In cryptocurrency mining, miners, or nodes, act as validators for new transactions on the blockchain while creating new coins in the process. When any amount of currency is spent or transacted between digital wallets, the digital ledger (the blockchain) must be updated by debiting one wallet and crediting the other.
When you exchange fiat currency physically, you track this debit and credit system in the economy. However, with digital currencies, one major drawback is that digital systems can be easily manipulated. For example, by hacking the algorithm, someone could credit their wallet with huge amounts without debiting any other wallets. This would create more coins in the blockchain since the coins that entered the hacker’s wallet haven’t been deducted from the network.
This is known as the double-spending problem. Bitcoin is revolutionary because it has managed to curb this kind of activity thanks to its blockchain technology, eliminating the need for a third party to monitor the network. Bitcoin mining is essential to this mechanism. New coins are created to reward miners for their work in securing the network. Therefore, miners have an incentive to provide computing power and secure the network through cryptography.
Miners use special mining hardware to produce the computing power needed to solve the hash function. The more guesses their machine can make, the higher their chances of finding a match and claiming the block reward. Thus, computational power is a critical part of mining activity.
Types of Mining Rigs
Even though mining is computationally demanding, mining operations used to be reasonably simple. Satoshi himself mined the Genesis block of Bitcoin on his CPU-based computer. However, as Bitcoin (BTC) prices skyrocketed and the cryptocurrency market became a popular investment pool, many people turned their eyes to cryptocurrency mining.
The increasing number of miners created greater demand for powerful mining technology. A faster machine meant more chances to claim the block reward. But the competition led to the capacity of mining devices escalating rapidly. Since the invention of Bitcoin, the average hash rate of mining hardware has skyrocketed.
GPU Miners
The first mining upgrade was the implementation of GPU mining. GPUs are graphics cards designed to process parallel information to generate high-quality video graphics. This parallel processing power is very attractive for cryptocurrency mining. With a few tweaks, they can be adapted to mine cryptocurrencies at a much higher rate than an average CPU.
However, GPUs were initially made for processing video graphics. Mining crypto using a GPU requires delicate fine-tuning, and if you don’t know what you are doing, you can even burn your device due to overheating.
ASIC Miners
The second upgrade in mining rigs was the ASIC miner. These devices are specifically developed to run the hashing algorithm at ultrahigh rates continuously. Since their sole purpose is to mine cryptocurrencies, they don’t require fine-tuning or adjustments. Moreover, they are much more energy-efficient than an average GPU. For example, one of the best mining rigs is the Antminer S19XP, which produces roughly 140,000,000,000,000,000 guesses in a second on Bitcoin’s SHA-256 algorithm.
What Is Hashing Power?
As explained above, cryptocurrency mining requires continuously trying to solve a cryptographic hash function. Hashing power measures the capacity of the mining device to run a specific algorithm in a second.
The total amount of hashes per second of a cryptocurrency blockchain is called the hash rate of that coin. For example, Bitcoin’s (BTC) hash rate is around 190 million tera hashes per second, which is equal to 190 thousand peta hashes per second or 190 exa hashes per second.
Hashing Power Table
To measure the hash rate, we use the following metric prefixes:
- 1 kH/s (kilo hash per second): 1,000 (one thousand) hashes per second
- 1 MH/s (mega hash per second): 1,000,000 (one million) hashes per second
- 1 GH/s (giga hash per second): 1,000,000,000 (one billion) hashes per second
- 1 TH/s (tera hash per second): 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) hashes per second
- 1 PH/s (peta hash per second): 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion) hashes per second
- 1 EH/s (exa hash per second): 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one quintillion) hashes per second
- 1 ZH/s (zeta hash per second): 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one sextillion) hashes per second
As you can see, 1 TH represents 1,000 GH. Just like terabyte and gigabyte, but instead of measuring disk space, tera hash (TH) and giga hash (GH) are units that measure a device’s capacity to run a cryptographic hash function.
Conclusion
Hash power is a crucial concept for understanding cryptocurrency mining and the capacity of mining rigs. As crypto-mining technology advances, the total hash rate of the mining industry is sure to reach new heights. However, this doesn’t mean we are getting better at mining cryptocurrencies. On the contrary, the block reward remains constant regardless of the computing power we use. This is a problem the cryptocurrency community needs to address, as the extreme demand for computing power has serious economic and environmental implications.
