What else can Miners like ASICS do beside mining Cryptocurrencies? Can they be combined globally to serve as Super Computers, used for other complex calculations, for stimulations, as extra computer processors etc.
Why aren't Miners using them for some of these purposes instead of dumping them after Mining Crypto.
Guess ASICS would become cheap if they can be used for other purposes?
Yes if you're an EE and can also develop your own firmware you can repurpose them to do many functions that a computer can do but why would you do that? It would take more resources to reverse engineer an existing product to be used for a different purpose versus building your own product for your need.
Example, it was reported a bunch of PS3's were used by a "country" that was faced with sanctions years ago to build a custom 22 CPU super computer. Why did this country do this? Because they got PS3's and nothing else to build a super computer with.
If this interests you go find some used Antminer S1's and S3's laying around, people probably giving them away at this point.