Bitmain Reveals New Bitcoin Mining Chip
The titular Bitmain Technologies has recently announced a new 7-nanometer Bitcoin mining processor. Interestingly, it is expected to offer a whole new level of energy efficiency, as per the company’s announcement.
Introducing the BM1397
The new ASIC or application-specific integrated circuit is dubbed BM1397. It will reportedly offer significant improvements, energy efficiency, and chip size for mining proof-of-work digital currencies. Apparently, it is based on the so-called SHA256 algorithm, which includes the likes of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and the world’s leading crypto Bitcoin (BTC).
The aforementioned mining chip is built using a 7-nanometer FinFET process taken directly from the company’s very own chip supplier called Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The BM1397 is capable of gobbling up less electricity, which is far better when compared to its predecessors. More importantly, it is going to offer energy consumption to computing ratio, something that is said to be as low as 30J/TH.
Bitmain stated via an official statement that the improvement promised reached around 28.6 percent in terms of power efficiency with its previous 7nm chip called the BM1391. In order to make this possible, the firm’s engineering department has thoroughly customized the mining chip in a way that its circuit, architecture, and even economics are greatly optimized.
The new ASIC is said to feature in new Antminer mining devices, namely, the S17 and T17. Bitmain promised to detail all of these in the next coming days.
Implementing a New Algorithm
The announcement made by the company soon after the mining giant unveiled some of its most recent Antminers. These are none other than the S15 and T15, both of which are completely different from the ones mentioned above. The development encouraged Ethereum’s very own open-source development community to tentatively agree in January. It was made in such a gesture in order to implement a brand new algorithm, which is expected to restrict ASIC mining on the network. The only catch, though, is that there is still pending further testing of the much-needed code called ProgPoW.
The aforementioned code, as previously reported, was delayed earlier this month of the year. The decision was made in order to give favor to the conducting audits to gauge the efficiency of the method.
It is worth noting that other companies apart from Bitmain are currently facing challenges due to the recent cryptocurrency market decline. For instance, the Japanese Internet giant called GMO Internet Group said that it would leave the highly celebrated Bitcoin mining community due to significant Q4 losses.