Japan's GMO Unveils Specs and Price of 7nm Bitcoin Mining Rigs

Japan’s GMO Internet has unveiled the price and specs of the GMO miner B2 equipped with 7nm ASIC mining chips. The mining capacity is 24 TH/s and the price of the machines will be adjusted monthly according to demand. Using GMO’s mining rigs, the power consumption can be reduced up to 20% and the cost of network equipment can be reduced to 1/55, local media report from Tuesday’s press conference.

Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space

GMO Miner B2 Specs

Japanese internet giant GMO announced the details of its bitcoin mining rigs called “GMO miner B2” in a press conference on Tuesday, June 5, ahead of the actual launch that is scheduled for the morning of the following day, June 6.

Nikkei reported:

The GMO miner B2 features a semiconductor chip ‘GMO 72b’ dedicated to mining that adopts the in-house developed 7-nanometer process technology. The hash rate indicating the computing capacity of mining is 24 TH/s, and can calculate hash 24 trillion times per second.

For comparison, the popular Bitmain Antminer S9’s hashrate is 14TH/s. According to Bloomberg, the GMO chips are designed in Japan and produced in Taiwan.

Masatoshi Kumagai, Chairman and Director of GMO Internet and the GMO Group representative, described the advantages of his company’s mining equipment over other products.

“The performance per unit is higher than that of major competitors’ products,” he was quoted by the news outlet. “If we switch from over 20,000 mining machines operating in Northern Europe to GMO miner B2, the installation space will be about half in terms of equivalent performance.”

Power Consumption

“Compared to general mining machines…the power consumption is up to 20%, the cost of network equipment etc. can be reduced to 1/55,” Itmedia noted.

Kumai publication reported from the press conference that each unit consumes 1,950 watts and power supply units can supply up to 2,200 watts at 240 V.

Adjustable Price – $1,999 for June

GMO miner B2 will be sold through the company’s subsidiary in Zug, Switzerland, according to Nikkei. They will be on sale starting Wednesday and orders will start shipping from the end of October, as news.Bitcoin.com previously reported.

The price for each unit is “announced monthly,” the publication added, revealing that the “sales price in June is $1,999.” Itmedia described:

The price for the June release is $1,999 (including power supply unit, excluding tax). The sales price is adjusted monthly according to demand etc. The number of shipments was kept private.

Currently, Bitmain’s Antminer S9 is priced at $837.

GMO’s Plans

Mr. Masatoshi Kumagai told reporters that so far the crypto mining industry is dominated “by mining machines provided by Bitmain, a major mining hardware company in China,” and that he “noticed the fact that not a single Japanese company that is good at manufacturing is able to participate.”

He also revealed that the company “invested nearly 10 billion yen for the development of the product,” the publication conveyed and quoted the chairman explaining:

We are not setting business targets such as sales targets yet, but if we cannot sell it, we will use it in our mining business, so I think that it is a very excellent business in that there is no inventory risk.

Furthermore, he added, “we also provide an API (application programming interface) for system monitoring compatible with GMO miner B2 and a detection function [for] when the product is connected to the net at the time of an unlikely event of theft.”

What do you think of GMO miner B2? Will you buy one? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Nikkei, Itmedia, Kumai, and GMO Internet.

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