This past week the Japanese internet firm, GMO Group announced the company is planning to join the bitcoin mining industry.
One notable piece of information in the company’s statements revealed the new mining operation would utilize, “cutting-edge 7nm process technology for chips to be used in the mining process.” GMO Group further details they have an “alliance partner” with a semiconductor design company.
At the moment, 7nm semiconductor chips are not produced commercially, but many firms have announced they are planning on producing these chips in the very near future. There’s a good probability that 10nm and 7nm products may be widely manufactured by Q1 of 2018. Companies like Samsung, Intel, TSMC, and Globalfoundries are all racing towards the goal of creating 7nm chips in mass production. In the bitcoin mining world, specifically the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) industry, the current semiconductor chips used right now are between 16-14nm.
Smaller and More Efficient Chips Are Good for Decentralization
7nm ASICs Will Bring Bitcoin Mining to a Whole New Level
Andreas Antonopoulos says ASIC semiconductor improvements is good for decentralization.
Throughout 2015-2016 rumors of 14nm-10nm chips being used for bitcoin mining started circulating throughout the community, but these chipsets haven’t seemed to materialize. Back in October of 2015, the organization Bi Wang (BW) announced the production of 14nm chips and claimed it sold out of its first batch very quickly, but the public sale of these miners has since been delayed.
If a few organizations produce more efficient mining chips, then many people believe it can further decentralize the bitcoin mining ecosystem. Bitcoin luminary Andreas Antonopoulos explains how this will happen at the D10e conference in San Francisco in the summer of 2016.
“[The 14nm chip] is a very good thing for decentralization,” explains Antonopoulos. “What it does is it extends the shelf life of mining equipment from 2-3 months of useable life cycle to almost two years, which levels the playing field among all participants in the system.”
https://news.bitcoin.com/7nm-asics-will-bring-bitcoin-mining-to-a-whole-new-level/