Design exploration of an ASIC for Blockchain processing

区块链是一种新兴技术，它使用分布式公共分类账来跟踪各方之间的交易。区块链正在颠覆供应链管理、资产跟踪和医疗记录保存等行业。与传统系统相比，区块链提供了许多优点，传统系统使用中央机构来跟踪所有交易（例如，用于金融交易的银行）。这个中央机构成为整个系统的单点故障。如果这个中央机构被黑客入侵，整个数据库的细节可能会泄露。相反，在区块链网络中，记录由属于区块链网络的每台计算机存储。因此，任何破坏这些记录的企图都会立即被其他用户发现，使此类活动几乎不可能发生。区块链处理目前在通用处理器上执行，这些处理器不是为区块链工作负载设计的。因此，它们的区块链处理性能不是最优的。与专为区块链处理设计的芯片相比，它们的功耗也更高。这次合作的目的是为了解决制造这种用于区块链处理的芯片的关键问题。该项目将开发一种芯片设计，可以为区块链工作负载提供最先进的性能。

Blockchain is a emerging technology that uses a distributed, public ledger to keep track of transactions between various parties. Blockchain is disrupting industries such as supply chain management, asset tracking and healthcare record keeping. Blockchain offers a number of advantages over traditional systems, which use a central authority to keep track of all transactions (e.g., a bank for financial transactions). This central authority becomes a single point of failure for the entire system. If this central authority is hacked, details of the entire database could be leaked. In contrast, in a blockchain, records are stored by every computer that is part of the blockchain network. Thus any attempt to subvert these records would be immediately detected by the other users, making such activity nearly impossible. Blockchain processing is currently performed on general-purpose processors which were not designed for blockchain workloads. As a result, their performance for blockchain processing is sub-optimal. They also suffer from higher power consumption compared to a chip designed specifically for blockchain processing. The purpose of this collaboration is to address key initial concerns for building such a chip for blockchain processing. This project will develop a chip design that can provide state-of-the-art performance for blockchain workloads.