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7nm chips will be coming out in early 2018 (or so they say).   Let us use this as the placeholder for discussions.    

One company has talked about it lightly in their presser - Canaan.   I assume they will be restrictive and not disclose much but we should watch for news coming from TSMC.  

With that said... Who is going to continue to ramp up operations with Avalon or S9 given these are coming out?   I would figure units like that go obsolete within the first release of 7nm.

Should be amusing to read what the masses of folks here folks with no ties to the Semiconductor Industry come up with for their Speculative dreaming thoughts.  ;D

300ths at 500W, shipping Nov 2017!  ;)

I like that you jumped right to 7nm and ignored the 10nm process when the mining companies are still on 14/16nm. This thread might be useful around 2020....

I will be getting three of these. Sounds great!

Make that four. I've always to have over 1ph of my own gear!  8)

More to the point of the OP asking Current gen obsolete soon? http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/laughing/rolling.gif (http://www.sherv.net/)

I still have 1 UC/UV s7 running and only last month retired the last 2 full speed s7's. Even now they are still marginally profitable for me but I used their power quota to upgrade with Avalons. Given that I got my 1st s9 early in 2016 and that they will still be uber profitable for at least another 1-2 years there is simply no need to upgrade soon.

Now once the next lower nodes are used for mining chips - and that will be long after the main users start getting Production yields - sure. Then it maybe/probably will be economically prudent to always buy the best/latest available at that time but that will not be anytime 'soon' and definitely does not mean an existing farm is suddenly unprofitable when the next-gens finally show up in the wild.

So, in the meantime IF you are going to mine then get off yer duff and start now! Start growing your farm so it can finance future expansion/upgrades in the future.

Yo NotFuzzy, shhhhh... don't be giving out sound advice. The op, and all wide-eyed naive wannabe god's gift to mining, should totally wait for the 7nm node to hit the mining hardware segment. Hell, you'd be a fool to buy in at 7nm, really, when the 4nm node will be right behind it and just think, at least 0.001J/G or 1W per THs.
You're a complete idiot for buying any current gear with THAT coming down the pike any day now!
No, really!

Well sometimes that bothersome nice bit of me comes out... Usually a sign that it's time to medicate... http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/smoke/weed-4.gif (http://www.sherv.net/)
And don't forget that that as Foxminers claims with their 90THs Wonder miner (also using 28nm chips), "The chips are Endothermic -- instead of producing heat they actually absorb heat from their surroundings" ...

So I guess they actually cool the room and the heat majikly is transported to another dimension right? ;) With that technology most definitely need to hold off buying today's crap...

You guys are all too funny.  But on a serious note; let's keep it to 7nm speculation and what it could do to the 16nm ASICs.

You must have missed the point of the sarcasm dripping from every post in this thread. There is no 7nm speculation. It is so far away from being a reality there is no point in even discussing it.

Ja.
Case in point: This is the EUV light source used to produce the test wafers that have been ran to start characterizing how the gates actually perform vs models ASML EUV Stepper (http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2017/08/the-secret-of-euv-generation.html)
Note the throughput given in the article: 100 wafers per hour. That was only very recently reached after almost 20 years of R&D on the light source and 100/hr is their bare minimum for the process to viable even for top-end priced chips.

From Oct 2016 about GloFo and their stepper (same one) GloFo 7nm EUV Progress (https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/leading-chipmakers-eye-euv-lithography-to-save-moores-law)

Like I said earlier: In another year or 2 if there is an economic  need for them and 10nm and lower node mining ASICs are finally produced, of course we'll buy them and of course they will start to displace the current 16/14nm node miners. Until that rather distant future (in Tech Time) is rather pointless to discuss what eventually happens to all devices as its technology evolves.

Here's just the light source for the EUV - my buddy works for Cymer and installs these around the world, lucky sot!

https://www.cymer.com/euv-source/hvm-i   (crap, I see that link is dead, but look around and you'll find it...!)

It all runs under HiVac, and is a couple meters tall...!  Damn that looks like fun to me!!!

Good site, bookmarked to my suppliers list. From there, Breakdown on how EUV is generated (https://www.cymer.com/euv-light-sources/)
Wish I could post some pics from my toy, er, testbed at work where I'm researching the next drop in via sizes for chips... Uber-fine patterning is all good and dandy but there are also discrete layers that need to be connected to produce working chips. Bleeding-edge for those vias which are laser drilled holes then plated to conduct signals/power are currently in the low 10's of micron diameters. With the rise of 3D chip architectures our customers are demanding the ability to pack more connection points into the same or smaller areas so to that end I'm already slashing holes sizes by at least 3x. Now as with the EUV source it is more a matter of getting more average power so the process is fast enough to support consumer electronics production volumes...

I doubt we'll see 10 nm (TSMC) or 7nm (GF) available to miner makers before 2019 or VERY VERY LATE 2018.

 The first experimental chips might show up in early 2018 or very late 2017, but there won't be capacity to spare from the BIG long-term contract customers for months after that.


 With that said - I'd predict the S11 will be around 35 TH at around 1300 watts (at the wall with the AP3++) and available in Febuary 2019 at the soonest.

That sounds realistic.   I would be surprised to see it in mid-late 2018 to be honest.   BUT....  I have been told to watch closely @ TSMC and Canaan has made it clear their units are reduced in cost to prepare for these chips.   Are they going to simply drop the price further come 2018 when 16nm becomes more affordable due to quantity and build-out/production?

We've got miners right now generating hundreds of dollars in profits per month, I don't think too many of us are concerned with when 7nm is coming out to be honest.

BREAKING - https://qz.com/1071926/japans-gmo-internet-group-plans-a-300-million-investment-in-bitcoin-mining/ - GMO Internet in Japan plans to develop and roll out 300M project creating their own 7nm chips in early 2018.  

The ones at risk are the ones still trying to recover their investment because they will be four times less productive,” Guiterrez says. He expects most major players will be able to upgrade as the technology for 7 nm chips becomes generally available to the foundries who do much of the work of fabricating the chips. “The other [mining chip makers] will surely follow and create their own 7 nm chips if they are not already doing it,” he says. “As [chip fabricators] get the new technology, everybody can access it.”

I do not know the chip industry but I know making money

and  here is the deal :

 pretend I am Bitmain.

I run hash nest  I make un real crazy good money with hash nest
look at the s-7 line for them

so  if they sell the s-7  by the gh and charge 35% of what it earns  you make 65% correct.

so you say fuck yeah no mess no fuss and buy it.

no auditor no regulation  but they pay you don't care.

So how about  they have zero s-7's running put them all in cold storage and use s-9's

the s-9 costs  only 16%  of the coins you  earn

huge mother fucking profit quasi legal but you can bet your left nut on it as a fact.

so they have zero incentive to build new miners  as it would sabotage their s-7 hash-nest  business

you won't see new gear from them until  the s-7  becomes a loser.

but here is the deal they have 3-4 cent power  they charge 8 cent if you use hash nest then they say that

8- 3 or 4 cents is there profit


 so  if the s-7  is really all s-9's  that 3-4 cent power cost  is effectively ½ to  1.5-2 cent 

power so if the s-7 shifts from 35% to 90%  and people dump it.  they will announce a power drop from 8 to 6.5 cents s-7 gets another extension.

they also can play games with bcc vs btc so the financial need for 7nm chips is far far far away.

and if they do  need them  they have enough cash that they will get to market ahead of any asic miner builder.

they would then wait to bring to market for us a long time.

beastly monster chips at the 7nm level may not come for 3 to 5 years as a home / farm miner

unless intel,amd,apple,nvidia decide to build an asic miner



35%   for s-7

https://i.imgur.com/eJqMkwF.png

16% for s-9

https://i.imgur.com/sK9w0Z1.png


3% for L-3
https://i.imgur.com/6PXdGHL.png

@ promojo
In addition to ^^ That is pretty much word-for-word what Bitfury said in mid-2015 about their 16nm chip and the Peta farm they were building that was going to be filled with them. Just change 'starting in' to be late Dec. 2015. We saw how well that went for all players including TSMC's biggest customers and THAT was using a node size already in pre-priduction status. In short is pure PR bullshit strictly for Investors consumption.

As of April this year there were a couple more than 10 EUV stepper systems on the planet (Cymer/ASML who make them won't give an exact number and just say "more than 10"). Right now even the most recent ones can barely produce 100 wafers/hr. Even if one is in Japan the tech is still far from doing more than characterizing results (defining models vs real-world) and building simple test structures and circuits. Not even Intel and IBM have eported going past that stage.

As for the $300million: If you think that will buy them time/space in line for 7nm tech forget it. Intel, IBM, Apple, Samsung and others have invested BILLIONS with their Foundry partners into the ever-smaller nodes sizes and they will be 1st in line for months after the tech is viable enough to be called Production-ready.

The last sentence in 2nd to last paragraph is the one single real non-puffery Truth statement in the entire PR: Emphasis mine...

 They can plan all they want - but if the chipmaking capacity does not EXIST their plans aren't going to happen 'till it does - and established players are more likely to get access to that capacity first.
 I also question their stated plan to locate in Northern Europe, especially after KNC died with THEIR farm near a Northern Europe hydro plant....

so two technical guys say it is a long wait.

and every economical  analysis I do shows no need for them  to make them  this year or next year or two years from now.


Plus no one  meaning :

samsung
apple
intel
nvidia
amd

 has shown  working quality 7nm gear  for the present  moment.

this is a long wait.

please remember the three screen shots above and that the L3 is 3.3%  for power and 96.7%  for profit on hashnest

and bit main has shown us they don't give a darn about which coin makes the money.  we will not be seeing 7nm gear from bitmain  for years.

Much less the fact that they have yet to get current 16/14nm chips as stable/reliable as the 22nm node is/was. I believe you have made mention of vid card failure rates going up as node size went down... I know I keep seeing pre-order ads for the Latest Samsung Galaxy (10nm CPU and base-band chips) but are they shipping yet?

I know there  was  a higher failure rate for the i7 6700x cpu's.

 I had one fall myself  and it is the only intel cpu I ever killed since 2005 other then 1 i7 in a 2011 mac mini.  this would be out of over 350 intel cpus I have worked with on modded gear.

Even forgetting  all the engineering feats need to stop the bleeding or leaking of electrons in the 16/14's .

 I have read the 7's  will not be silicon at all.
 My chip design/build knowledge does not touch yours, but the economic reality is  that the 7nm is not needed for mining  bitmain is making a fortune with  16/14 mode.

Going by commentary out of IBM, *THEIR* 7nm process will be using a "hybrid" Silicon/Germanium wafer.
No solid word out of anyone else except an Intel comment that "10nm will be the end of the line for pure silicon".


 Economic reality is that no miner maker will be making new gear on the new node(s) for a while, but that they WILL have to make the move for competative reasons probably 2 years more-or-less from now when the new node(s) start getting affordable yield figures and the relative efficiency has become known between them.

If the new nodes take longer to deploy than the current projections (like the 14/16nm generation did), it could be 3-5 years before miner makers will be ABLE to move to them.

yeah  2-5  covers it  and my gut tells me  about 4 on the button.

also  if we are all around in 2021  my guess is that 7nm chip  will be around longer then the 16/14 chip say 10 years or more

much like  the gasoline engine does not get much improvement anymore chips will reach their limits very soon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was just trying to be a smart-A$$ in the above post - hopefully twas taken as such!  ;)

Seriously, I have no clue regarding time-frame, specs, design, and true hash rate specs. But...

I'm also wondering is the current design of just about all the models that have come around going to remain the same or come out with some very innovative new design none of us have thought about.

I certainly hope I'm around, and will be able to get one from whomever puts it out. Most probably Bitmain, but who knows.? Price? Who knows. But if they have made the extraordinary leap to 20TH or even 25TH. That would be amazing and the cost might be that amazing also. Maybe twice the price? Is that out of line with what others may think?

If it's something like 20-25 TH/s, difficulty is going to Jupiter!!

Perhaps it would also be wise to wait for the 2nd or maybe 3rd iteration of the miner just to get any of the production trouble ironed out. Be amazing if the first batch was rock-solid. ;D :o :o :o doubtful...

Anyhow, I'm just rambling with a nice Friday early-evening beer buzz.  ;)

OK, I can dream. But it would be very nice to have four new 7nm miners. Then I will have that psychological point of  I shall simply have 100TH/s. But who knows what the whole BTC and mining scene / landscape will be like then. The "having" 100TH/s is a nice psychological place to be.

Of course I would still have my approximate 60TH/s mini farm.( add another 13TH when I can get my S9 controller card replaced and get the one bad hash board repaired. Not looking forward to dealing with it at present. It is in pieces and I have used some parts swapping around.
Anyway, I seriously doubt I have the ability to have four more miners in my house for many reason, power, heat nose,yada.. yada... yada  Might be time to start thinking of hosting somewhere.

OKAY, I know I'm starting to ramble... I'm making plans on power sources in my house for a new appliance (miners) that is not even a solid, material object that can be touched. Imagination-ware!Bye! ;)

Let us hit some BLOCKSSSSSSSS!!! 8) 8) 8)

That is all. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programs already in progresssssssssssss  :o :o :o 8) ???

It sounds like there is some skepticism on the 7 nm.

 Do you think the Japanese firm claiming they'll be out with a 7 nm next year (https://qz.com/1071926/japans-gmo-internet-group-plans-a-300-million-investment-in-bitcoin-mining/) is full of hot air or do you take them serious?

Unlike most people on this list, I am in the chip biz.  I cannot say much.  I can say this:  A US$300M investment in a 7nm-based chip design will get you pretty much that.  Then you'll need more money to get your chips fabbed and you systems built and installed and everything else.  A few $millions will go a long way towards physical plant for installation, but it takes a lot of money to play in the 7nm game. 

There were some comments in this thread about the move from 22/20nm to 16nm.  The 20nm node was largely skipped by the industry because 16nm node added so much value with the introduction of finFETs, that it wasn't worth it to continue investing in 20nm.  The 16nm node still has a ways to go, and has had a number of rounds of refinements.  I don't know which actual 16nm process is being used by BMT, but they could probably get some mileage just by re-spinning into a newer 16nm process.  If they cared about improving the product.  However they're in a situation where they can sell all they can make, and price is hardly an object right now, so why waste the engineering resources? 

7nm is a huge wall to climb for anyone, and I don't think anyone's going to be building a 7nm miner for at least another year, maybe 2. 

If someone does come along and proves me wrong, I'll buy it.

 22nm is big in the memory industry and was for Intel, but most others skipped it as it wasn't ENOUGH of an improvement over well-optimised 28nm to be worth the hugh development costs.

 I'm pretty sure that Japanese company is way optimistic on their announced timeframe - not so much blowing smoke but haven't looked at ALL the factors.

Ja. Rather like that infamous line from a BFL exec over their 28nm node Monarch delays that went something along the line of, "In the semiconductor industry delays are very common and are to be expected" as he shrugged off the growing clamor of very pissed off customers who had pre-ordered and Paid In Full months earlier..

In other words, they know damn well they are basing their PR projections on Fairy tale assumptions that all ongoing process problems will be miraculously solved and no other glitches popping up. They also damn well know that is NOT how the Real World works.

thanks, i was about to sell all s9 and l3 d3
because of good market price on eBay.
the problem is no colo now and I m stuck to run machines desperately look for good amp industrial zone small rentals, keep searching

I'm wondering if our friend Sonny Vleisides (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/bitcoin-startup-butterfly-labs-settles-with-ftc-for-38-6m-but-it-cant-pay) has gone to Japan...  This sounds a bit like his type of operation.

 Since the D3 is at best the #3 miner CURRENTLY available for X11, it might be worth selling it off early batch ones soon before the BIG difficulty jumps hit.
 S9, no point - it's the best AND the most cost-effective on the market WHEN it works (though BitFury based gear SHOULD be capable of getting close).
 L3+ is pretty much a tossup for the best on the market WHEN it works AND is the most cost-effective.

whelp that would be epic, but why not making those cores more universal? like GPU they can mine all the altcoins including bitcoin, that would be more profitable lol.

a universal asic chip hmmm

 i think  that is like saying why not make the color black  look like every color.

As I understand an asic chip is more or less hard wired to one al-gore-rhythm

and a gpu chip can be programed  to do any al-gore-rhythm

 They would be less profitable as there would be a ton of wasted space on the chip and a bunch of circuitry that even in a "powered down" state is STILL going to pull a little power.

 The whole REASON that an ASIC is efficient is that it is dedicated to doing ONE thing VERY VERY WELL, as opposed to something like a GPU that has to be set up to do many different things and is not as good at each one.

Bit of food for thought for those that think 7nm will show up next year.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/intels-next-generation-chip-plans-ice-lake-and-a-slow-10nm-transition/

Given the issues with 14/16nm, and the reported issues getting 10nm up to speed, I'm starting to think that *2019* might be excessively optimistic for actual 7nm production to arrive.

Been tried, failed miserably, re: SFARADS attempt in 2015 for a BTC and x11(?) combo chip. You can find it with a Github search.

At least the chip lives on as fodder from just about all of the scam vaporware rigs these days....
Still biggest problem is that being hard-wired each different algo requires different cores so in essence you get something more like a SOC - 1 big chip comprised of different IP blocks. Just not efficient use of real-estate.

 3 options that have ever been built as ASIC.

 Gridseed and the GC 3355 - which was very quickly not competative on SHA256 efficiency if it EVER was, but was the only option for some months for Scrypt.
 SFARDS SF100 - second-generation of the GC3355, again by the time it shipped it was no longer competative on the SHA256 side but was fairly close on the Scrypt side.

 SFARDS was the merger of Gridseed and WiiBox - they appear to have built and sold ONE batch of the SF100 then quietly died, or got out of cryptocoin entirely.

 The Baikal technically is multi-algo, but X15 INCLUDES all of the other algos supported by the Baikal miner so it was just a matter of "breaking out" input and output to the applicable sub-algos to allow it to mine on more than one algo (but not at the SAME time, the Gridseed and SFARDS chips were designed to do both Scrypt AND SHA256 at the same time).

 I'm inclined to say that the Baiklal is the only one that was SUCCESSFUL at multi-algo, the GC3355 lived for a long time as Scrypt but not SHA256 and the SFARDS was never a success at all.

Interesting... Thanks for pointing that out...  Off to learn what Germanium wafer is I go.... lol

Thanks for sharing!

 Germanium, like Silicon, is a semiconductor material.
 Germanium was actually more common than Silicon in the early days of semiconductor manufacturing, but it turned out Silicon had a higher tolerance for heat AND was less expensive to make wafers for (silicon is literally dirt-cheap - a large proportion of "dirt" is Silicon, along with Aluminum and Iron).

 Germanium has the advantage of a lower "band gap" than Silicon, which makes it easier to push electrons around in the material - this might buy 1 or 2 more generations of semiconductor manufacturing before MAJOR structural changes have to happen due to the increasing issues with Quantum-level effects on small node sizes, but I'd not bet on Germanium going past about 5 nm without running into the SAME issues Silicon is hitting at 10 - and the relatively poor heat capacity is going to cause it's OWN issues.


 Moore's Law isn't dead yet - but it's been limping a bit for the past decade, and it's definitely not looking good past the NEXT decade.

I'll say one thing - it will be interesting to see how thermally stable using Ge will be...
And I bet it rules out high-power apps such mining chips ;)

The first transistors were made using Ge and even today it excels at having about 1/2 the band gap voltage that Si does, a Ge P-N junction voltage is around 0.3V and Si is around 0.7V (yes doping lowers it but still applies) and is more radiation tolerant (Aerospace industry loves it) but using Ge brings with it 3 things: High intrinsic leakage, thermal drift, and lower max allowable junction temps than silicon-based devices (also lower max Vc but that does not apply here). Those 3 things are what allowed Si-based devices to take over semiconductors so many decades ago.

Gotta assume that using different techniques the leakage factor has been solved, that just leaves the junction voltage drift vs temperature.. As for max temperatures -- the temps that current mining chips run at will destroy them in a heartbeat.

edit: damnit - ya beat me to the main points.... :P

Interesting points you mention here.   Thanks for the input!

To be picky, the original transistor (and many original diodes) were point-contact devices.

 Reliability of those wasn't particularly impressive though, folks LOVED junction-type transistors when those started showing up as commercial production parts.

 Germanium still gets used even today in some signal processing and radio usage for detection diodes, but much less so then in the past as AM and SSB modulation has largely been replaced by phase and frequency modulation techniques.

We made Erbium doped Fibre Grad Bragg Filters at JDSU R&D...and used several other exotic elements.
Pushing Light...

Re: Original topic..there is no big threat coming down the pipe for a LONG time..

More issues to consider.

 Even when 7nm reaches actual production - what are the YIELDS going to be like?
 How long will they take to improve and by how much?

 What is the design cost going to end up being (14/16nm design is EXPEN$IVE compared to anything before it).

 What is the cost per chip going to end up being like?

 What is the CAPACITY going to be like the first couple years?



 Keep in mind that the S7 is still viable *NOW* if you have fairly cheap electric despite being a generation outdated.
 The S9 isn't going to immediately become unprofitable even when 7nm reaches actual production in a miner design.

This  fact makes the rush to 7nm  become more of a walk then a run.

Thanks for the insight and comments.....

Whether or not they are ready for 2018, It's cool they are producing PCI-E cards. Will be fun to have a decent miner in my PC.

BitFury reports to use immersion cooling on their website (http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic) to nearly double their efficiency. This would probably give them an advantage to understand the tech well if the next generation is going to run hotter.  Seeing those numbers makes me think about researching into it more.


They are reporting 10 Th/s with 500W (http://telegra.ph/GMO-to-Invest-10-Billion-Yen-in-Its-Own-7nm-5nm-and-35nm-Dedicated-Bitcoin-Chips-09-15) on the GMO 7nm chipset, so that's about double the efficiency of an S9 - not a large jump like 28 to 16/14nm - but still significant.

 

 

That article makes me think less of them as of today no one has good 10 nm

And they are talking 7nm 5nm and 3.5 nm

My thoughts are this. 7nm in 2019 at best.

5nm in ?

3.5nm. I think comes in over 10 years.

I, too, am beginning to think more and more that they are dreaming as I look into their project.   

I think we are still to see the advantage of immersed chips and other forms of liquid cooling that would be the next step I see being developed.

Liquid cooling is still serious option available and the performance improvements are also something that could be looked into.

 You're addressing a question there.
 Yield has to do with how many usable die you get from a wafer as a percentage of the POSSIBLE die you should get if there are no flaws.

 Efficiency - I'm starting to question their figures a LOT, 28nm to 14/16nm in Mining ASIC so far has seen about half the power usage per hash in most usage on comparably optimised products (S7 to S9 for example).

 Given that quantum effects have been limiting the gains in both possible clock rate AND in efficiency at an increasingly worse level per generation for GENERATIONS now, I doubt we're going to see an improvement of 2.5 TIMES the efficiency from 7nm - even if it really IS 7nm and not just CALLED that while having real feature size closer to 9-10 nm range.

Liquid cooling  is not  bad  it works well for cpu's and gpus.

if GMO  ends up  seling a gpu style miner with liquid cooling I would buy it.

I have looked at gmo I think what we are talking about could be a possiblity.

Not to forget this guy..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=346134.0

That is rad.

I think we have yet to see full potental from what we have already let alone 10nm and 7nm chips.

This is from the 16nm series chips from bitfury a while back.

https://youtu.be/DSbmuBvDWo0

There should be more development with the chips that are currently available and I think chips around 7nm will have no choice but to be cooled in this way.

Esoteric methods of manufacturing like extreme ultraviolet lasers will aid in the process of such chips.

It'd be nice to save some energy, right now, but I'm worried about playing with the S9s.  One could probably increase efficiencies with liquid cool, but I'm afraid I'd ruin them.  It took me eight months before I was comfortable taking them apart to clean.  I'd probably try it on an S7 first if I owned one.

EUV isn't an option for 10nm and smaller.

 It is a REQUIREMENT and has been one of the major factors causing delays in the deployment of new smaller nodes of production.

 There is no reason why smaller node chips will require anything more than air cooling.

 Immersion cooling can be nice - but it's only practical on a HUGE SCALE for mining.
 Even most of the MAJOR industrial-level mining farms have been air cooled due to the cost of setting up an immersion cooling setup.

 Even for LARGE SCALE mines, the efficiency might not be worth the up-front costs, though the longer "cycle times" for equipment might change that some now that mining has caught up to semiconductor state-of-the-art.

I agree; it's probably expensive to setup liquid and would take maintenance.  

Would you buy a 16/14 nm Bitcoin miner, at this point, or wait for the next gen to come out?

I don't like the relatively low reliability of the S9, and nothing BitFury based showed up for a long time, so I've BEEN waiting.

 If the S9 was RELIABLE, I'd probably have been accumulating them for a while now.

Same after some teaser videos the chip news from bitfury has dried up most of there videos now are to promote their data centers .

I would have at least 12 s-9's  maybe 15  but they break a lot so I have 3 and ⅔  of them  and still no reply for repair to one board.

 There are a few folks using BitFury chips to make miners being sold to the public - the Hotmine X5/X6 comes immediately to mind.

 I do with Sidehack would get to his BitFury project - at the rate he's going, the chips he has access to might be OUTDATED because he keeps puttering around with old OUTDATED stuff first.

Unfortunately it's extremely difficult to get your hands on one of those miners and many have tried to no avail. Sidehack's going at his own speed and it'll probably be too late for the Bitfury chips to be profitable at all, but he always designed hardware for hobbyists anyways. Bitfury hardware is difficult to obtain and you'll probably pay a premium for it if you get anything from em.

They actually DO sell chips and miners... You simply need to put in a MOQ of $1 Million USD.

Spoke with some well respected crypto people based out of Japan, they confirmed this company is 100% full of shit. They will never bring a 7nm miner to the table.

Well if you told me to make a guess I would guess they never sell it.

Do you have any specific info to back this allegation?

This is interesting because GMO Internet is actually quite big company and has been around making IT product for a while.

No I dont ever reveal sources. You are more than welcome to be skeptical, it matters not to me. I know what I know.

Interesting.  It does seem far fetched for an unknown company to come from the sidelines and punt beyond a company who has been making them for years without anybody surpassing their price point per hash.  Although ... that's exactly what does happen from time to time in tech

Any thoughts on a faster ASIC than the S9 14 TH/s in the next 6 months?

 Probability very close to zero - Bitman seems to have decided the S5+ form factor was a mistake and is not interested in buillding rack miners since it's current "small" miner is already pushing power supply limits for a lot of it's market, and Bitfury seems to be getting out of miners entirely except for "container" sized stuff.

 I can see a SMALL possibility of Bitmain moving to one of the newer "enhanced" 14/16nm process node upgrades for better efficiency, but even that is iffy when they have so little competition and NONE of it has demonstrated a LOT higher efficiency or performance.


 I strongly suspect the next "much bigger performance" miner models will have to wait for a non-Intel 10nm or 7nm process to reach full production (Intel rarely shares their production lines, and when they do it's with someone BIG like Apple).

I am pretty sure we will all be riding our S9s for a good while. Id love a little competition but it just doesnt seem to be going that direction. Bitmain is still the big dog and everyone else is putting out hardware that cant even come close to touching it.

This miner is for sale and is advertised at 13.5 TH/s with only 1050W.  It's liquid cooled. $1895.

https://syanmining.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/front-vega-prod.png
https://syanmining.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/back-vega-prod-1.png

https://syanmining.com/hardware/

Does this seem legit?  

I've heard of some mining companies in the past scamming people.  It's 14nm

Been living under a rock eh? ref the existing Is Sayan Miner Real (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2233298.0) thread in Hardware...

please delete this.  they  are very likely a scam

How are they not reliable?   Please explain.....   These machines are pretty rugged as far as temps go and RH.

This is NOT the place to discuss the s9!
This thread is about the (so far) vaporware 7nm node. PERIOD.

Just check the Antminer s9 thread in Hardware (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493601.0) and ask your questions about them there. All the good and bad points of the s9 are already explained there.

God forbid you actually READ this thread and understand that several folks here are involved in the semiconductor industry. When we say BULLSHIT we mean it.
Read the damn thread, explore for yourself where the chip industry is at and what the like of Intel, IBM, GloFo, Samsung and TSMC say about where the nodes sizes will be in a REALISTIC time frame.

The fact that GMO is releasing another crap-altcoin (that IS what 'Tokens' are) to rape investards scrape up capital just adds to the stench coming from the pile of their PR's to-date.

He doesn't really need any. Anyone familiar with the semiconductor industry immediately knows what GMO is claiming is utterly ridiculous. Pure PR and nothing more.

It's obvious that everyone will try to grab their hands-on the latest 7nm chips which is less than half the current 16nm ones by bitmain. Avalon or S9s may go complementary when these will be out but after they enter the market, mining will no longer be a piece of cake for common people as those Giants in this industry are now here to stack up their wallets with the best hardwares and there will be Monopoly for sure for such entities where their money will speak for them.

What vital parts of this thread have you not read/understood?
The technology behind the low node chips - INCLUDING the current 16/14nm nodes - is geared for low power (typically meaning mobile) applications. A large part of the problems with 16/14nm being unstable is because of the miner makers pushing >10w into chips with over 2k cores in them using process technology that is optimized for far lower power. As in less than 1W sustained and average of less than 500mw. The physical structures are being pushed to the max right now.

10nm and lower - assuming Bitmain et al continue their historic design philosophy of packing in as many cores as possible in into these massively expensive chips in turn pushing thermals to the max, I foresee terrible troubles...

Will they finally take a more conservative approach? They really have to but if they do it will be accompanied by much kicking and screaming because to them - http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/school/math-problem-smiley-emoticon.gif (http://www.sherv.net/)

It's all about profits in the end and that's the fact. Aren't these 7nm chips meant to consume the least possible electricity and give max returns in turn? I have read everything in the thread and I know that the current ongoing 16nm miners are doing their best, but if that's so, why are these people coming up with their own miners? That's basically monopoly and they are trying to capture the mining market by going completely "pervert".
Don't believe? Check out Russia's decision over mining.

These mythical 7nm chips that only appear in press releases?

Folks that are making their own mining chips on the 14/16nm node are few.

 Bitfury
 Bitmain
 BW.Com
 Caanan
 EBang

 One "huge farm" I am aware of that decided it was better to "roll their own" than to try to deal with the limits of Bitfury production and Bitfury pricing (nobody else is selling SHA256 chips AT ALL on the current 14/16nm node).

 I am not aware of anyone else on this list.


 I suspect that process variation is more of a problem than the "process isn't designed for high power" - consider that AMD and Nvidia routinely build 200+ watt chips on some of these same process, though they might not be quite as high a utilization percentage as a cryptocoin mining chip they aren't all THAT much lower on their GPUs.
 As the node sizes get smaller, process variation is going to get worse - the closer you get to "one electron = turn on or off", the worse it's going to get unless the industry moves to some method of nanofabrication where it can PLACE single atoms where they are needed.

 (Yes, that CAN be done - IBM did it years ago to create an atomic-scale "IBM logo" - but it's not even close to being anything but a laboratory stunt at this point).

One other thing worth noting. While it's true that Intel, AMD, Nvidia and so forth produce 100+ Watt parts on the 14nm process, they have much bigger packages with thousands of pins and lot's bigger dies inside. Bitmain, and I expect all the others (e.g. Cannan et. al.) have gone with small packages as well. I expect that feeds into the power supply design, board layout, and cooling.

The last folks that I saw with a "large package" mining chip was Spondoolies. They were obviously willing to make the investment in supporting a larger chip. History might suggest that their choice was not a good one in terms of cost competitiveness, though they had reliable and configurable hardware.

Looks to me like Bitmain has decided the best way to deal with "variation" is to mix and match blades to get to a repeatable hashrate for the whole miner, without strictly consistent parts.

Spondoolies wasn't competative with Bitmain because they build their miners to be configurable, NOT because their chips were too expensive or not comparable.

 If they had been SMART, they would have settled for fewer sales and NOT tried to compete on price - the same route Caanan is taking with the Avalon - except that the SP20 when set for the same hashrate as the S5 was almost identical efficiency level and ran a hair cooler.

 The SP20 compared to the S5 was a night and day difference in many respects - the SP20 could get down semi-close to the high end of S7 efficiency range (at a cost in hashrate), or it could be tuned to do 50% or so more hashrate than the S5 (at a cost in efficiency), and that tuning also allowed it to handle high temps a LOT better than the S5 could.
 You could also STACK SP20s, they were a lot more compact design in actual usage (longer, but lower in height and no cables/lack of a top made the EFFECTIVE height quite a bit lower, and almost identical width).
 The SP20 was also overall a much more PROFESSIONAL design - it's STILL a more professional design than the S7 or S9 or even the Avalon 741.

 Configurability and professional design came at a cost though.

Unless they are sub 1000 watts they will be useless to me :(..

RIP Spondoolies... I loved them!  Great support and product too.