Canaan Creative ships the Avalon 1 — the world's first ASIC Bitcoin miner. Purpose-built to run SHA-256 and nothing else, the Avalon delivered hashrates that made GPU mining obsolete overnight. Only 300 units were produced in the first batch.
The arrival of ASICs transformed Bitcoin mining from a hobbyist activity into an industrial operation. Within months, Bitmain and other manufacturers entered the market, kicking off an arms race that would drive Bitcoin's hashrate up by orders of magnitude and make the network exponentially more secure.
Bitcoin Wiki: Avalon