BitFury Unveils Fastest Bitcoin Mining Chip Ever Created

The Bitcoin mining game has undergone several evolutionary steps over the past few years. As mining chips became smaller and smaller, the question became whether or not hardware manufacturers could keep on improving certain aspects. BitFury seems to have cracked the code, as they recently announced the mass production of the fasted – and most effective – 16nm ASIC chip the world has ever seen.

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Making Bitcoin Mining ASIC Chips More Effective

One of the most often heard arguments is how the Bitcoin mining ecosystem uses up far too much electricity, and all of the heat generated during the process is going to waste. Truth be told, this is only partially true, as several miners use the generated heat to warm their houses throughout the year, reducing the “resource waste.”

That being said, reducing the electricity requirements when mining Bitcoin is at the top of the priority list for every hardware manufacturer. BitFury is the first company to come up with a new 16nm Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chip that will make the Bitcoin network more efficient than it has ever been before.

In its original concept, this new BitFury ASIC mining chip was designed to reach a total capacity of 40 gigahash per second, while keeping the power efficiency around 0.06 joules per gigahash. After thorough testing, it turned out the energy required to power these new chips varies between 0.055 and 0.07 joules per gigahash, making the BitFury 16nm ASIC chip the most energy-efficient so far.

But there is more to this new BitFury 16nm ASIC chip, as it only takes 0.35V of power supply voltage to operate this hardware. In fact, the voltage is even lower when putting the chip into a static mode, as it only requires 0.28V power supply voltage. Other companies have tried to achieve this low level of voltage required, but their efforts have been unsuccessful so far.

BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov stated the following:

“We are very excited to launch mass production of our super 16nm ASIC Chip. The final results of our hard work have fully met our expectations. We understand that it will be nearly impossible for any older technology to compete with the performance of our new 16nm technology. As a responsible player in the Bitcoin community, we will be working with integration partners and resellers to make our unique technology widely available ensuring that the network remains decentralized and we move into the exahash era together. BitFury warmly welcomes all companies interested in joining our integration and reseller program.”

Technical Details And Minimizing The Carbon Footprint

What makes the new BitFury 16nm ASIC chip so impressive is how it will deliver a minimum computing power of 100 gigahash per second, and the average output sits around the 140 gigahash per second. Keeping in mind these speeds can be achieved while using traditional air cooling, it goes to show how stable the BitFury chips are.

The biggest gain to be made is when immersion cooling comes into the picture, which results in hashpower of up to 184 gigahash per second per chip. BitFury becomes the first custom-made silicon ASIC chip manufacturer to achieve such a computational efficiency per unit of silicon area.

With the “Exahash era” drawing closer, BitFury positions itself as the first transaction processor to support the growing increase of computing power required to power the Bitcoin network. Comparing the new generation of chips to their previous 28nm counterparts, BitFury can now deliver up to four times the amount of computing power at a given energy level.

These impressive numbers only tell part of the story, as BitFury stays true to their commitment regarding a minimal carbon footprint. Making the company’s data centers more energy-efficient – by relying on renewable energy sources – a major step in the right direction. That being said, the company continuously seeks new ways to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As a direct result of these efforts, BitFury has deployed its propriety immersion cooling technology in its Tbilisi data center in Georgia. Further advancements in the field of immersion cooling will help BitFury reduce their carbon footprint even more in the future.

What are your thoughts on this new 16nm ASIC chip? What will be next for the Bitcoin mining sector? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Business Wire

Images courtesy of BitFury, Shutterstock