Bitmain Announced Their First 7nm ASIC Chip, Soon in Miners

24 Sep
2018

Bitmain has finally announced their next generation of ASIC chips that are based on 7nm Finfet technology called BM1391 for the SHA256 algorithm, these chips will power the next generation of Bitcoin ASIC miners coming from the company. The new BM1391 chips integrate more than a billion transistors and are optimized for maximum efficiency according to the company and can achieve a ratio of energy consumption to the mining capacity that is as low as 42 J/TH. Bitmain was dominating the Bitcoin mining market with their Antminer S9 in terms of hashrate and units shipped, but they started losing in terms of performance and efficiency lately due to the fact that the competition was adopting new production technologies and making further optimizations to get higher hashrates. We’ll see if Bitmain will be able to get back in the game with their next generation ASIC miners using the new chips…

Updated zjazz CUDA Miner 0.97 for Merit and BitCash Mining

22 Sep
2018

There is a new update of the zjazz CUDA Miner 0.97 for the Cuckoo Cycle algorithm that is being used by the Merit (MRT) and BitCash (BITC) projects. The new version comes with a number of improvements in functionality improvements, including support for BitCash mining on 3GB Nvdia GPUs (Merit was already supported on these), basic ccminer-like API support, list of failover pools is now supported and more to make mining better and problem free experience. You can find the full changelog of the new release below.

zjazz CUDA Miner 0.97 Changelog:

- Bitcash 3Gb GPUs support on Windows
- Linux CUDA 9.1 and CUDA 9.2 binaries
- First API version: ccminer-like. summary, pool, gpus and quit functions available. -b/--api-bind
- List of failover pools added. Use multiple times -o (--url)
- GPU timeout feature added: Application quits if new blocks from stratum are received and GPUs are not mining. Timeout value can be set with --gpu-timeout
- Improved stats, show hashrate detailed per GPU with --hashrate-per-gpu
- Bugfix for the --cuckoo-intensity 18 issue
- Added some debug info messages. --debug-info to enable them
- User friendly GPU memory errors presentation
- Set the number of threads per device --device-gpu-threads
- Hashrate reliable % message added
- Per line ok/ko state message added
- Force GPU processing to stop when connection with stratum server is lost
- Time to wait before reconnecting configurable: -R/--retry-pause parameter added

The Cuckoo Cycle algorithm is CPU intensive and the zjazz CUDA miner provides multiple options to reduce the CPU load if you are mining on a GPU mining rig with a slower processor that is having trouble coping up, so make sure you check these out. Do note that the zjazz CUDA Miner is a closed source software available as binary releases for both Windows and Linux and comes with a built-in development fee of 2%.

– To download and try the latest zjazz Nvidia CUDA GPU Miner v0.97 for Windows and Linux…

MicroBT WhatsMiner M10 Bitcoin ASIC Offering 33 THS at 2145 Watts

20 Sep
2018

WhatsMiner M10 is a Chinese Bitcoin ASIC miner that is apparently starting to ship just now that promises performance comparable to other top SHA256 ASICs available on the market at the moment. At 33 THS with 2145 Watts of power usage it is surprisingly efficient for 16nm chips available at a price of $2000-1800 USD including a power supply. What is more interesting though is that MicroBT, the manufacturer of the WhatsMiner, has just announced their next product called WhatsMiner M10S that will supposedly be able to deliver up to 55 THS with about 3500W of power usage at 65W/THASH or 44 THS with about 2600W at 60W/THASH power usage.

Whatsminer M10 Specifications:
– Chips: 315 * 16nm ASIC
– Hashrate: 33TH/s (+/- 5%) (depends on cooling)
– Power Consumption: 65 W/THS, 2145 W per miner (+/- 10% )
– Power Supply Unit: WhatsPower P5, 2500w, 93% efficiency 220V
– Operating Temperature: -5C ~ 40C
– Dimension: 34cm x 20cm x 17cm
– Weight: 8.55 kg

The only problem with ASIC miners going forward with higher performance is the increased power usage and that is causing trouble for people that are running smaller mining farms, let alone small home miners that do not have the infrastructure available that is capable of handling this high power usage per device. Anyway, with the current market situation it is arguable what is wiser to do – invest in Bitcoin mining equipment or buy directly BTC and hold, that is if you are investing fiat, not crypto.

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