Samsung, the largest manufacturer of micro chips in the world, will begin building and selling Bitcoin related chipsets and ASIC units.

 
The ASIC community is a buzz after the announcement that Samsung has started the production phase of bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining equipment and ASIC mining chips. A Samsung spokesperson has reported that the company is operating a foundry to manufacture mining equipment. Samsung also reiterated they are currently only serving the Chinese market for miners. The plan is to match the supply requested by a Chinese bitcoin mining firm they have partnered with in order to get a better understanding of the potential revenue outlook before expanding to other nations.

Samsung is also the largest company in South Korea and is responsible for a large share of the country’s economy. If the pilot program is successful, Samsung could utilize substantial amounts of infrastructure, such as large-scale and sophisticated semi-conductor manufacturing plants, at their disposal in effort to gain a significant portion of ASIC manufacturing, giving companies like Bitmain serious competition.

Not content with just SHA-256 specific miners, Samsung will also beginning building graphic cards purpose built for GPU mineable cryptocurrency. The company has begun mass production of a new type of DRAM for graphics cards, which is said to be more suitable for mining operations. The 10-nanometer 16Gb GDDR6 DRAM is twice as fast as conventional GDDR5 DRAM and improves power efficiency by more than 35%, resulting in greater profitability for GPU for cryptocurrency mining.

These are certainly interesting developments since it is known that existing GPU manufactures like Nvidia want to get their cards into the hands of gamers, not miners. The logic being gamers tend to continue buying new cards while miners chase profitability. Also it is interesting to note whether the South Korean government will warmer up to cryptocurrencies now that their biggest company could benefit from wider adoption.