3 ms·
It took much less money than that to develop the first Bitcoin ASICs. ~150k USD for 130nm, 200-300k USD for 110nm, and ~500k USD for 65nm, as of 2013 http://bl
by mrb 9y ago
It took much less money than that to develop the first Bitcoin ASICs.
~150k USD for 130nm, 200-300k USD for 110nm, and ~500k USD for 65nm, as of 2013 http://blog.zorinaq.com/asic-development-costs-are-lower-than-you-think/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/asic-development-costs-are-lower-tha...
- dragontamer 9y agoI doubt that 65nm would be able to beat a GPU (which are all 16nm class or better) at the task however. If you make an ASIC but if the $3000 Titan V is more power efficient anyway, then you've wasted your time and money. 65nm and other "old node" designs primarily are about mass-manufacturing a design. They probably can beat an FPGA in cost and margins once mass produced. But for performance and power-efficiency, you gotta be way better. Maybe 28nm or 22nm class or better to beat the GPUs (or even standard CPUs like EPYC and the SHA256 accelerators built into it) Also, you gotta beat your competition. If someone else makes a 10nm-class BTC ASIC (https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/samsung-confirms-asic-chips/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/samsung-confirms-asic-chip...), then your 28nm or 22nm design is obsolete.
- mrb 9y agoA 65nm or even 130nm Bitcoin ASIC handily beats a 16nm GPU at mining, in terms of perf per watt and perf per dollars. And by handily I mean 1 or 2 orders of magnitude.