Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

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MinerEU, Gridseed official distributor, has just informed us that Gridseed has signed an exclusive contract with Innosilicon to produce and distribute A2 Scrypt ASIC chips and miners globally. The advanced 28nm Scrypt ASIC A2 has 1.6-1.8 MHs hashrate and 10W on each chip. With a 1000KW PSU and the right cooling fans, a new A2-based miner can achieve up to 150 MHs hashrate.

The A2 chip is developed by Innosilicon’s teams based in Silicon valley and China and is the first 28nm Scrypt ASIC to hit the market. The global exclusive contract with Gridseed, the first Scrypt ASIC chip manufacture in the world, means the two most advanced ASIC producers will be able to provide better products and services for our mining community.

This new partnership will most likely mean that these new miners will be able to beat the competition that has also been working on 28nm Scrypt ASICs such as KnCMiner and Alpha Technology in terms of delivery time. We still don’t have official information about expected delivery dates, but we consider that end of May may sounds like a reasonable and optimistic date to start deliveries of first units. We’ll see how things go, but the battle on the Scrypt ASIC market is already seriously heating up.

For more information about the Innosilicon A2 Terminator Scrypt ASIC Chips…

Update: It seems that this deal with Gridseed might have not been finalized as Innosilicon has published the following updated information on their website (the link above):

Up to this point (May 5th 2014), Innosilicon has not signed any deal on official reselling or distribution rights with anyone so any announcement from an non-Innosilicon source claiming any rights on A2 is false.

Update: And the above sentence has been removed from Innosilicon’s website and has been replaced with the following:

Gridseed is one of our strategic customers and partners in virtual currency area, we share the responsibility of building a healthy environment for this innovative and exciting market place. If you’re looking for the right product that can help improve your appetite, have a look at this Forbidden Fruit Weed Strain Review by Freshbros.

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Zeus Integrated Systems, another Chinese company developing what they call ZeusMiner has announced that they have received the first sample batch of their Scrypt ASIC chips and have started building the first prototypes of the so called ZeusMiner mining rigs. The Scrypt ASIC chips that Zeus is making are apparently based on 55nm manufacturing process and should be able to deliver 1 MHS of Scrypt mining hashrate with something like 10-12W of power consumption according to the specifications. What is more interesting is that Zeus promises to start delivering by the end of this month (May), though the prices of the miners are not that attractive with the current crypto currency market prices.

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The ZeusMiners Scrypt ASICs will apparently be available in four flavors: 1.2 MHS Blizzard available for $199 USD, 18 MHS Cyclone for $2999 USD, 36 MHS Thunder for $5500 USD and 72 MHS Lightning for $9999 USD. The smallest ZeusMiner Blizzard could be an interesting solution and could easily replace the smaller 5-chip Gridseed ASIC miners due t the higher performance and similar price, especially if it turns out to be easily overclockable. The ZeusMiner Blizzard apparently consists of 4 chips with 300 KHS hashrate per chip and about 3W of power usage, so we see something similar to the Gridseed Infinity USB miner design. And we are going to be picking up one of these small units for sure if/when they become available in order to be able to review it.

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With that said we are still waiting to see the first devices actually available on the market and be able to test them, before talking more about if they will be worth purchasing. What we can say is that at the moment ZeusMiners seem to finally start looking like an actual product and a one that will be available on the market soon, though we do not claim this for sure or endorse the company before we see the actual product. We see that some of the Gridseed distributors we have posted about hereon the blog are already listing the ZeusMiner products on their websites such as Hash-Master for example and others have already announced what seems like their own branded miners that are most likely based on the ZeusMiner Scrypt chips judging form the listed specifications. You can check the GAWMiners Scrypt Miners as well as the Hashra Lunar Landers for more information. These two companies are planning for early June availability, so shortly after the date that Zeus plans to start delivering.

To read the latest update from ZeusMiner regarding the current status of shipping units…

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The Chinese company BitMain has started shipping the third batch of their AntMiner S2 SHA-256 ASIC miners with a hasrate of 1 Terahash for mining Bitcoin. The new batch of S2 miners is priced at $3199 USD (7.387 BTC), the company has started shipping the first two batches of their new Terahash Bitcoin ASIC miners at the start of this month, but the problem is that even at the current price putting the numbers inside a calculator does not give out promising results. With the current exchange rate of Bitcoin you are not going to be able to even get a return of the investment in the hardware you have made. You would need an exchange rate of about $650 USD in order to be able to break even by the end of this year and this everything going on lately things are a bit uncertain. Thus investing in Bitcoin ASIC devices may not be the best choice at this particular moment, especially if you are going to be paying with BTC for them. And with the current market situation investing in Scrypt ASIC miners does seem riskier as well, so people are already very careful in what they put their money into.


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