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Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Mining on Top of Unknown Block: A new protocol weakness
by
TierNolan
on 13/01/2014, 22:23:37 UTC
Not necessarily. There are certain optimizations made possible by the current structure of the block header.

ASICs don't compute SHA256 anyway.  They compute a vast number is parallel without any flexibility at all.

If the header was changed (say to move the nonce), then ASICs would be useless.  They might be able to handle a change in the size of the header (up to around 120-127 bytes), but the nonce must be in the correct position.  Otherwise, the ASIC wouldn't be set up to increment it properly.