In a letter to investors, Google co-founder Sergey Brin same that demand for the powerful computers wont to mine ether and alternative cryptocurrencies has contributed to a "boom of computing."
Brin wrote weekday that many factors have LED to a surge in computing power that has seen search large Google's own processors speed up by an element of two hundred,000 over a amount of twenty years. the primary issue is that the "steady hum of Moore's Law," touching on the observation that computing power per area unit of a chip tends to double each alternative year.
The second issue is exaggerated demand for process heft, partially from gamers and their graphics-hungry rigs however additionally "surprisingly, from the GPU-friendly proof-of-work algorithms found in a number of today's leading cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum."
GPUs, or graphics process units, square measure wont to "mine" ether: to update the cryptocurrency's blockchain through a method referred to as proof of labor, that involves chop-chop crunching through cryptologic functions. (Ethereum miners might not use GPUs for for much longer, however, providing a specialised piece of hardware has been developed by Bitmain)
Brin didn't feel either of those factors was the largest contributor to the computing "boom," however. That issue, he wrote, is machine learning, a data-intensive technique wont to develop computer science systems that may drive cars, acknowledge faces or translate texts while not human input.
Google has explored uses for blockchain technology, the cryptologic structures that underpin cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum, however has created little mention of cryptocurrencies themselves - except to ban browser extensions for mining and ads for initial coin offerings.
