a non-trivial portion of the more complex parts of the instrucion set
Yeah, that is the key.
At the moment I don't have time to write a longer discussion, so for now I'll repost what I wrote in another thread. We'll see which of those new threads will get most intelligent discussion.
As a miner, this frightens me because when this era of "flexible ASICs" arrive, GPU miners will definitely be obsolete. Add this to the threat of Ethereum going POS, it seems like the odds are stacked against us regular home-based miners. This might be a signal that now is a good time to liquidate mining rig assets and just directly invest in coins.
But the general idea is very simple: if you don't want your XYZ devices to become, play to their strengths in designing the hash function.
Would it be worth pursuing the obverse strategy also, i.e. try to target the weaknesses of ASICs when designing the hash algorithm?
An idea I've been fond of in the past is using a series of hash algos drawn randomly from a set, with the series also changing size randomly within a range, and a random interval between changes in the composition and size of the series (credit to Meni Rosenfeld for that idea).
But could there be other techniques to use the same strategy? Could a hash be written such that the potential for physical flaws in an attempted ASIC chip die would undermine the manufacturing yield, e.g. force chip designers to make individual chips that would need to be >30 cm
2?