[PartiallyTyped]

ASICs are much more efficient than GPUs wrt to power consumption and that translates to less heat production, space, and operation costs.

[AtlasBarfed]

As cryptocurrencies pop up like flies, has ASIC design -> production started streamlining more?

It was my impression before BTC that ASICs weren't particularly frequent, since FPGAs existed for a lot of applications, but mining has the pressing need for absolute performance and tuning and iteration that it would accelerate that space.