Bitmain Announces Next-Generation Antminer Equipped With 7nmChip

Bitmain Announces Next-Generation Antminer Equipped With 7nm Chip

Mining

At the World Digital Mining Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia the blockchain firm and mining manufacturer, Bitmain Technologies, announced a new Antminer will be launched soon equipped with 7nm semiconductor technology. The firm’s CEO Jihan Wu reported that Bitmain’s next-generation ASIC BM1391 Finfet chip integrates more than a billion transistors for optimal SHA256 mining performance.

Also Read: Japanese Regulators Urgently Respond to Zaif’s Hack

Bitmain Announces the Production of New Antminers With 7nm Technology

Bitmain Announces Next-Generation Antminer Equipped With 7nm ChipOver the past few months, a slew of new SHA256 mining rigs and new semiconductors have been revealed to the public. New mining rig models with far better performance and efficiency are being manufactured by GMO Group, Canaan, and other companies. Bitmain Technologies has been releasing new miners, but most of them have been for different consensus algorithms and not SHA256. The last Bitcoin (SHA256) miner the company revealed was a new water-cooled Antminer that focuses more on operation longevity. On Friday, the firm’s CEO Jihan Wu made an announcement at the World Digital Mining Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia, revealing the next Antminer is coming soon.

On stage, Mr. Wu explains that Bitmain has created a new 7nm semiconductor that integrates more than a billion transistors called the BM1391 chip. According to the company the 7nm Finfet design is built for maximum efficiency. Mr. Wu emphasizes the new model creates a circuit structure that can process a significant hashrate while keeping low energy at the same time. According to BM1391 tests, Bitmain notes the ratio of energy consumption to the mining capacity is as low as 42J/TH.

Bitmain Announces Next-Generation Antminer Equipped With 7nm Chip
Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu announces the manufacturing of new Antminers equipped with 7nm chip technology at the World Mining Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Blockchain Innovation Bolstering Hardware and Software Acceleration

Mr. Wu also detailed during his keynote speech at the summit, the firm will begin mass production of the new 7nm equipped Antminers. The Bitmain CEO explains he is a big believer in blockchain technology and as “applications continue to develop, the industry’s market capitalization as a whole will drive growth.” This, in turn, produces better data processing, and hardware and software acceleration tethered to this innovative protocol, Mr. Wu explains at the summit. Mr. Wu notes the competitive process Bitcoin has unleashed on the mining industry in particular.

Mr. Wu declared on stage at the summit:

Even if someone makes a better chip in the future, we will make a better one. Bitmain will continue to develop the best ASICs in the world.

As we mentioned above, there’s been a bunch of new chips and SHA256 mining rigs announced this year, and just recently we also reported on the significant demand for 10nm and 7nm semiconductors. Limited availability has made 10nm and 7nm chips harder to obtain, but it seems Bitmain has been able to gain access to the next generation 7nm tape out process with one of the large foundries. For instance, the recently announced Whatsminer M10 uses older 16nm chips, but still claims the machine can process upwards of 30+TH/s. Just yesterday the blockchain firm and mining company Bitfury detailed the launch of a 14nm chip using older generation semiconductor technology.

Overall the introduction of new chipsets and mining rigs from various manufacturers, and the new Antminers with 7nm technology, the competition should increase the Bitcoin protocol’s SHA256 mining security and decentralization at the same time.

What do you think about the latest announcement from Bitmain Technologies? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comment section below.

Images via Shutterstock, Twitter, and Bitmain Technologies.

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A New Line of Powerful ASIC Miners Is Coming to Ethereum

New Ethereum Hardware

A chip designer with extensive experience in developing bitcoin mining devices is turning her sights on the ethereum protocol.

Chen Min, the former chief chip maker at bitcoin mining chip developer Canaan Creative, launched a new venture to build cryptocurrency mining devices called Linzhi. The firm’s first project tackles the ethhash algorithm used by ethereum and ethereum classic, with a new line of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) miners set to be released sometime next year.

Dubbed Project Lavasnow, Linzhi’s new ethereum miner claims to use 1/8th the amount of electricity as Bitmain’s ethash miners, according to a presentation Chen developed for the Ethereum Classic Summit held this week. It also expects to run 1,400 million hashes per second, compared to 190 from one of Bitmain’s AntMiners.

The increased hashpower means one of Linzhi’s miners should generate roughly $20 per day, compared to a projected $3 from a Bitmain miner. As a result, the company expects customers to break even on the cost of a miner within four months of purchase.

Linzhi did not announce how much each miner would actually cost.

At present, the company is still working on developing the product. Customers may begin receiving their miners in April 2019, according to the presentation.

While many individual miners and members of the ethereum community at present are opposed to ASICs, Chen said in her presentation that hardware alone does not cause centralization.

Rather, “it is the style of the business,” she said.

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New 7nm Bitcoin Mining Equipment From Triple-1 Co. Ltd.

Besides Canaan Creative, Bitmain, Innosilicon, & GMO Internet, another company is working on producing 7nm mining equipment. Triple-1 has been working on its 7nm bitcoin mining chips and expects to start shipping the equipment in November, shortly after GMO (a fellow Japanese ASIC Manufacturer)  expects to start shipping its 7nm miners.

Developing 7nm Mining Equipment

Triple-1 Co. Ltd., a Japanese company established in November 2016 and headquartered in Fukuoka, engages in ASIC chip development and cryptocurrency mining farm construction. The company began looking into developing 7nm bitcoin mining chips in February last year.

This week, Triple-1 confirmed that it has completed “the silicon wafer, the sample-chip, the sample-board and the prototype-unit of the mining [7nm] ASIC chip ‘Kamikaze.’”

A representative of the company told news.Bitcoin.com, “we have been conducting a verification of the function as well as the efficiency on the sample-chip and prototype unit,” adding that the company’s “partner foundry is TSMC Co. Ltd. (Taiwan).”

The power efficiency of Triple-1’s 7nm chip is listed at 0.05W/GH, which the company claims, reduces power consumption by at least 50 percent over a conventional 16nm chip.

The Kamikaze chip is the same size as conventional chips, but with a circuit density 5.2 times greater, the company claims, which boosts each chip’s performance to 300GH/s or more.

Triple-1 president and CEO, Takuya Yamaguchi, commented, “Although mining capacity is more than four times that of conventional products, power consumption is expected to be halved at maximum.”

Delivery Schedule

According to Triple-1’s development schedule, the sample 7nm mining unit is expected to be completed at the end of September. Mass production of Kamikaze chips is slated to start in the middle of October with the mining units delivered by the end of November.

Yamaguchi told the Sankei Shimbun:

We plan to ship samples in August and mass-produced items from October, and aim for 10 million chips per month in FY 2019.

In June, GMO Internet also unveiled its 7nm bitcoin mining chips and mining rigs. The company now has two models of its 7nm bitcoin miners, B2 and B3. Both are expected to ship at the end of October.

 

Coingeek Speaks on Consensus Changes and Next-Gen ASICChip

Coingeek Speaks on Consensus Changes and Next-Gen ASIC Chip

News

Last week, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the proposed consensus changes published by the Bitcoin ABC development team, and the opposition towards certain elements of that proposal from a few BCH community members. Now the blockchain firm and mining organization Coingeek, led by the billionaire tycoon Calvin Ayre, has revealed some different proposed changes to the BCH protocol that the group would rather support. Moreover, Coingeek also explains the company has designed a next-generation ASIC chip that will be unveiled during the last week of November in London.

Also read: The Opposition Towards Bitcoin ABC’s Proposed Upgrade Changes

Craig Wright: The Plan is 128MB This November

Coingeek Speaks on Consensus Changes and Next-Gen ASIC ChipThree days ago we reported on the proposed changes being added to the next full node client published by the Bitcoin ABC development team. The new code changes should be in the next codebase release which is expected to be ready on August 15 for testing. As we discussed, the ABC developers plan to add canonical transaction ordering, a minimum transaction size of 100 bytes, activation of OP_CHECKDATASIG and OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY (CDSV), and push-only mandatory for scriptsig.

However, Nchain’s Craig Wright explained that CDSV would not happen while also detailing that friends like Calvin Ayre would not support the change. A few days later on August 11, Wright explained his preferred consensus changes that he would like to see implemented on the BCH chain this coming November. Wright states:

The plan is 128MB this November — 512MB in May 2019 — 2.0 GB in Nov 2020 and – after this, it is unbounded. There will be NO limits ANYWHERE in bitcoin. We expect 337k USD in fees a block just from one use case. That will then fuel BCH to become global money.   

Coingeek’s Statement Against Certain Changes and the Mining Pool’s November Suggestions

Coingeek Speaks on Consensus Changes and Next-Gen ASIC ChipFollowing this, on August 13 the mining organization Coingeek, which captures over 20 percent of the BCH hashrate, once again made a statement concerning Bitcoin protocol changes. The company starts off by explaining that it is fully committed to the global success of the original Bitcoin protocol which is “now restored in the form of Bitcoin Cash BCH.” Furthermore, Coingeek emphasizes that as a “significant miner” there are a few consensus changes they plan on supporting that are different than the changes proposed by Bitcoin ABC. The Coingeek proposal shows three features they would like to see implemented this November:

  • Continuing the program to re-enable the original set of opcodes. Specifically for November, CoinGeek supports re-enabling OP_MUL, OP_LSHIFT, OP_RSHIFT, and OP_INVERT.
  • Removing the current limit of 201 opcodes per script.
  • Raising the maximum block size to 128MB.

Additionally, Coingeek notes some changes within the Bitcoin ABC proposal that the organization will not support. Coingeek agrees with Craig Wright, and explains they will not “commit their hashpower” to any software implementation that supports “canonical transaction ordering and OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY (CDSV).”

“In the longer term, Coingeek will continue to support only consensus changes that restore the original Bitcoin protocol, and those that may be demonstrated as absolutely necessary to meeting the goal of massive on-chain scaling to terabyte+ blocks,” the mining pool details.

Coingeek Speaks on Consensus Changes and Next-Gen ASIC Chip
Coingeek’s hashrate over the last seven days.

Coingeek Emphasizes It Will Support the Best Interest for All Enterprise Bitcoin Cash Miners, and Plans to Unveil a “Next Generation ASIC Chip Design” This November

Coingeek also says it encourages the development of plug-in transaction selection, removing transaction delays, free and cheap fees, computational cost-based fee calculation, and the implementation of a secondary transaction cache to allow double spend monitoring for transactions. The firm says it will continue to support the original vision of Bitcoin and says other mining pools should join them in taking a stance.

“Coingeek’s suggested path is in the best interest of all enterprise-level mining operations and we welcome working together to support this now,” the company notes.

Coingeek Speaks on Consensus Changes and Next-Gen ASIC Chip

Following the statement toward enterprise mining operations, the company has also revealed it has designed a “next generation ASIC chip.” According to Coingeek, the chip will be optimized for enterprise-level mining on the Bitcoin Cash network. Coingeek details it will be showcasing the new technology at a booth during the organization’s London conference in November. The BCH mining pool says they invite all miners to join them at the even so they can plan for the future of the industry.

What do you think about Coingeek’s statements and proposals for the upcoming November Bitcoin Cash hard fork? What do you think about Coingeek announcing next-generation enterprise-grade mining chips? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comment section below.

Images via Shutterstock, Coingeek logo, Nchain logo, Coindance, and Pixabay. 

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