Сообщается, что подразделение Samsung Semiconductor, занимающееся производством чипов, скоро начнёт поставки 14-нанометровых ASIC-чипов для нового майнингового оборудования, которое производит Baikal. Первая партия чипов уже была протестирована, а массовое производство планируется начать в январе 2018 года.
Отраслевые наблюдатели отметили, что Samsung обычно предпочитает иметь дело с гигантами индустрии, такими как Qualcomm или Apple. А подписание подобных договоров с малоизвестной российской компанией, создающей оборудование для добычи криптовалюты, — совершенно несвойственно Samsung.
Тем не менее предполагаемой сделке есть рациональное объяснение: Samsung вполне может объединиться с небольшим, но перспективным производителем оборудования для майнинга, чтобы затем продвигать его продукцию в Южной Корее, которая на данный момент является одним из 5-ти крупнейших криптовалютных рынков.
ASIC — специализированные устройства, разработанные для добычи криптовалют, обычно для одного или нескольких видов «монет», которые, однако, могут выдавать гораздо более высокие показатели при добыче криптовалют, чем фермы на видеокартах.
Samsung Electronics to Produce ASICs for a Russian Bitcoin Mining Hardware Company
South Korean semiconductor industries are faced with unexpected high demands due to booming of Bitcoin mining. Amount of work recently made a sudden increase for semiconductor foundries and OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly & Test) industries. Number of orders is also flooding towards packaging equipment manufacturers.
According to industries on the 21st, it is confirmed that Samsung Electronics recently signed off on a contract with Baikal, which is a Russian Bitcoin mining hardware (HW) company, regarding foundry business for ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) for mining. Sample production is currently finished, and Samsung Electronics is going to mass-produce these semiconductors on full-scale starting from January of 2018 through 14nm process. Baikal is planning to release new Bitcoin miners through chips that are produced from Samsung Electronics’ plants.
It is very unusual that Samsung Electronics, which has opened its foundry business to global strategic customers such as Apple and Qualcomm, signed off on a contract with an unfamiliar Russian company. “We believe that Samsung Electronics opened its foundry business to Baikal for future investments as HW markets related to virtual currency have been heating up recently.” said a representative who is familiar with Samsung Electronics. “Taiwan’s TSMC is already making huge sales in this field.”
Bitcoin mining HW industries have emerged as big investors for semiconductor markets. Bitcoin does not have a central control agency and it is issued through mining process. One can obtain certain amount of Bicoin by cracking a code through computers. Bitcoin uses SHA-256, which is a standard hash function designated by NSA (National Security Agency). ASIC that is used for mining HW focuses on this hash function processing. Before 2013 when there were not any miners, general GPUs (Graphic Processing Unit) and FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Array) were used. However semiconductors and miners for mining are used nowadays. Compared to PCs that use regular GPUs, processing speed of hash function of miners is about 1,000 times faster.
