Samsung & Bitcoin - mass production of special mining processors

Samsung has reportedly started mass production of special crypto-mining processors.

According to a report by The Bell , Samsung has launched the mass production of so-called application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) dedicated to mining Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. ASICs are always designed for one task and are particularly powerful, but if, for example, the calculations for a crypto currency change, ASICs are very quickly unusable.

Although graphics chips are slower here, they can be used much more flexibly. There are also many crypto-currencies that can not be calculated profitably with ASICs. Therefore, the demand for graphics cards should not decline only due to the Samsung ASICs.

ASICs for Bitcoin are worthwhile
With the high prices of Bitcoin with its ASIC-friendly calculation, however, the use of specially manufactured processors seems to be very worthwhile. But this can only be done by larger companies. The product development of the ASICS at Samsung was completed in 2017 and production is now starting in January 2018.

The client is apparently a crypto-mining company in China. Even competitor and contract manufacturer TSMC already manufactures ASICs for the crypto-mining company Bitmain in China and uses according to older reports already more capacity than, for example, for the production of graphics chips for Nvidia.

Electricity is cheap in China
It is quite conceivable that Bitmain is also the customer of Samsung. However, there are many similar companies in China, because electricity is quite cheap in China compared to many other countries. According to an analyst from Samsung Securities, Samsung Electronics, as a major contract manufacturer, only wants to become more profitable through the production of ASICS, as the order situation has recently become quite problematic.