Rush to 7nm ASIC chips development: incoming revolution in bitcoin mining industry
Tags: Bitcoin

Today, we are going to see the ASIC technology future, the new 7nm chips that will probably change the mining world by reducing power consumption and making it more decentralized.

If you don’t know what ASICs are, we have already explained how they work in the previous articles (here and here).

GMO Internet has announced its entrance into the cryptocurrency mining business in September 2017 to support cryptocurrency mining infrastructure, leveraging the know-how accumulated on Internet Infrastructure and Internet Finance.

He announced the start of 7-nanometer (nm) semiconductors development for bitcoin mining. Many miners are interested into the topic because 7nm chips are not currently on the market. More details have recently been released on investment plans concerning the Japanese company GMO.

A document in the company’s statements revealed that the new mining business would use 7nm ASIC chips in the mining process.

Company has revealed the performance and hardware specifications for its future 7-nm ASIC chips, which thanks to new studies, it will present a very low energy consumption. GMO also declared its plans to produce and sell PC ASIC cards to consumers, thus helping bitcoin mining decentralization.

A declaration by GMO Internet Group:

“We are developing high performance computers (mining boards) for mining with our alliance partner who possesses semiconductor design technology. [..] We will use the latest technology to create 7nm chips. As for the chips to be used, we are currently working on research and development with our partner, equipped with semiconductor design technology.”

Masatoshi Kumagai president of GMO Internet Group (see the profile)

Kumagai, president of the GMO Internet Group, adds:

“It will be possible to reduce power consumption compared to the existing mining machines with the same performance, and achieve a computational performance of 10TH/s per chip Each card will be able to mine at a projected 8 terahashes per second or more with a power consumption of only 300 watts.”

GMO has already managed to create 12nm FFC* chips, and then progress towards the realization of a technology that will be able to produce the latest 7nm chips.

* FFC is an abbreviation of Fin FET Compact, which is a type of field effect transistor with three-dimensional structure

GMO PCIe ASIC SHA256

So, with the company statements, it’s clear that their goal is to make 7nm chips by elaborating and improving the production technology used for the 12nm FCC chips that are already producing.

“In consideration of the fact that GMO Internet has succeeded in developing a 12 nm FFC mining chip, we will proceed to the next step of the development to realize a 7 nm process technology for chips to be used in the mining process. We will not sell mining boards equipped with 12 nm FFC process based mining chips.”

Bitcoin famous luminary, Andreas Antonopoulos, also made an important statement at the D10 conference in San Francisco in the summer of 2016.

“The 14nm chip is a very good thing for decentralization. What it does is it extends the shelf life of mining equipment from 2–3 months of useable life cycle to almost two years, which levels the playing field among all participants in the system. 7nm ASICs will bring Bitcoin mining to a whole new level”

Andreas Antonopulous (see the profile)

CONCLUSION

Companies like Samsung, Intel, TSMC and Globalfoundries are all trying to create 7nm chips in mass production. In the bitcoin mining world, especially in the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) field, the current semiconductor chips used at this time are between 16–14 nm.

Most likely, the 7nm chip will not only transform the bitcoin mining industry, but it will revolutionize the entire computer industry with a quadruple efficiency. The 7nm semiconductors are very small but contain over 20 billion transistors that will allow devices to perform more complex calculations.

There may be a chance that a mining company will agree to partner with a company like Samsung that is investing billions in producing 10nm and 7nm chips. Indeed, GMO has formed an alliance with IBM and Globalfoundries to research and develop these 7nm chips, hence partnerships are not a rare thing.