Bitmain, which manufactures Crypto Assembly Mining hardware, announced the development of a new 7-nanometer chip that offers greater efficiency by reducing energy costs compared to previously manufactured devices.
According to recent reports, the new ASIC, BM1397, offers significant performance enhancements that make the proof-of-work algorithm much more profitable for coins such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
Specifications
Among the technical specifications, the company states that the new 7nm chip was developed with a FinFET process and its performance is very good, as it has a ratio of energy consumption to process performance of about 30 J/T. The new 7nm chip is designed with a FinFET process in mind.
In this context, the company commented:
This new development offers a 28.6% improvement in power consumption over the previously developed 7nm BM1391 chip. To achieve this, Bitmain’s engineering team completely redesigned the chip to optimize architecture, circuitry and economics.
The new ASIC will be integrated into the new Antminer devices (S17 and T17) for which Bitmain has pledged to provide details later.
This new announcement comes shortly after the company pointed out that the latest Antminer, the S15 and T15, introduced in November 2018, have integrated the ASIC chip BM1391.
Mining ZCash and Ethereum
In 2018 Bitmain also released ASIC mining equipment for operation with the ZCash and Ethereum protocols. This prompted the Ethereum community to vote in favor of implementing a new consensus algorithm called ProgPoW, which does not allow mining with this type of mining hardware.
However, ProgPow is currently experiencing delays due to differences within the programming team waiting for a new external audit that will provide more data on the algorithm’s efficiency.