<p><pre><code>  I&#x27;m having trouble believing that it is [...] desirable
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To make it less useful to build a NSA-style ASIC hash cracking cluster, like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;EFF_DES_cracker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;EFF_DES_cracker</a><p><pre><code>  I&#x27;m having trouble believing that it is [...] achievable
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The point is not to write an algorithm that is only fast on x86, rather than ARM, POWER, whatever; it&#x27;s to write an algorithm that uses so much memory that it&#x27;s not orders-of-magnitude faster to use an ASIC that&#x27;s just a bunch of compute cores connected to fast buses, rather than a general-purpose processor with megabytes of on-chip cache.