KnCMiner, a company, based in Sweden, has unveiled their new line of Solar chips which will have a 16 nm process. Currently, most updated chips run on a 20 nm process. 20 nm process chips can achieve the efficiency of .7 W per Gh/s. 16 nm chips are believed to improve the efficiency of mining tenfold, resulting in an efficiency of .07 W per Gh/s. With these specifications, a 1.4 KW miner that could be powered by a standard home outlet could mine at 20 Th/s.
KnCMiner’s new chips are planned for launch in Q1 of 2015. With rapid improvements in ASICs, Bitcoin miners will need to continually keep up with the new technology. 16 nm chips will quickly outdate 20 nm technology and make it obsolete. As more 16 nm chips are introduced, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining will also increase significantly, making it more difficult for Bitcoin miners to profit from home.
“The 16nm process represents a step change in processing capability as we’re using several proprietary techniques developed in-house to reach speeds an order of magnitude above today’s levels.” – KnC
The 16nm Solar chips will be manufactured by a process known as FinFET. With FinFET, chip designers can sculpt transistors in 3D rather than standard planar modeling. The Solar ASIC chips feature 5000 cores each and have not yet gone into full production. KnCMiner’s new chips represent another step towards next-generation Bitcoin ASIC development. FinFET manufacturing delivers better efficiency and superior performance when compared to planar modeling.
16 nm FinFET chips are extremely difficult to manufacture, this results in potentially low yield for manufacturers. Despite having cutting edge equipment, many of the chips assembled will be faulty. As manufacturers struggle to produce working chips, the cost of the faulty chips will increase the cost of the working ones. FinFET technology is still extremely young and has a long way to go before the process is made more efficient. Though Bitcoin ASICs are not designed for longevity, the performance of 16 nm chips will outweigh the shorter lifespan of the product.
Continued evolution
Cloud mining has gained a lot of popularity this year, and many large companies have been formed. The Bitcoin mining industry, both cloud mining and hardware mining are continually evolving and resulting in innovation that leads to the development of new, better technology.
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Photosource: KnCMiners