UPDATE (5th June 13:30 GMT): KnCMiner has announced the tape-out of its Titan scrypt miner. This means every detail in the chip design has been finalized and it is now moving on to manufacturing, no chip design changes are possible beyond this point.

The company said the first batch of Titan miners will ship “well within” the promised timeframe for pre-order customers, which is the third quarter of 2014.

KnCMiner also told CoinDesk that the first batch of Neptune miners is expected to ship before the end of the current quarter, ie by the end of June. The company could not specify an exact date, but one will be announced as soon as possible.

KnCMiner has announced that it has almost finalised the design for its upcoming Titan scrypt ASIC, although it did not provide further details as to when the tape-out would take place.

Most notably, KnCMiner also announced a product update, saying the Titan will deliver up to 400 MH/s – a sizable increase over the original output estimate.

When it was first announced back in March, KnCMiner said the Titan would deliver 100 MH/s, but, just days later it revised the spec and said the scrypt miner would churn out 250 MH/s.

With the latest revision, the Titan should deliver a fourfold performance boost over the original spec.

New versions unveiled

KnCMiner also previewed two new versions of the Titan miner as part of its second batch, which are available for pre-order from the company’s web store starting today. The new rigs are expected to be ready for delivery about a month after the first batch is released.

KnCMiner says the latest revision will not have a significant impact on power consumption and thermals:

“In this run, we’ve been able to upgrade the Batch Two ‘Mini’ Titan to 200 MH/s, and the ‘standard’ Titan to 400 MH/s, while still keeping power consumption and thermal disturbance as low as possible. We’ve also made great strides in noise reduction and packaging, aiming for a sturdier product altogether.”

The team has also unveiled new chip art. This little KnC logo, measuring 0.16mm across, will be embedded in every single Titan die.

Keeping up with competition

KnCMiner’s announcement follows Alpha Technology’s revision of its Viper scrypt miner spec, which will now deliver up to 250 MH/s of power. When Alpha made the news, KnCMiner was promising 250 MH/s from its flagship Titan miner.

Less than a month ago, KnCMiner said it would initiate tape-out of Titan ASICs within a few weeks, saying shipments will commence in the second or third quarter of 2014. With Q2 drawing to a close and no tape-out announcement yet, Q3 is starting to look like a more reasonable timeframe, though the process could be accelerated.

Image via KnCMiner