RandomX

Activated in November 2019, RandomX generates random sequences of instructions exercising every subsystem of a modern CPU: large caches, branch prediction, out-of-order execution, floating point. An "ASIC" for RandomX would essentially be a CPU, eliminating the efficiency gap specialised hardware relies on.

Six-plus years on, Monero remains ASIC-free — the only major PoW network where consumer hardware is competitive. AMD chips with large L3 caches (2 MB per mining thread) lead; huge-pages configuration adds 20–50% hashrate and is the first tuning step every XMR miner should take.