What happens after 16nm?

[Matias]

16 nm is the current state of the art technology.  Next step is 10 nm, but at least Intel won't ship it before second half of 2017, so I guess we are going to live at least till that with 16nm. Moore's law is apparently slowing.

So what does this mean for bitcoin mining? Cost of electricity is even more important,  since you can't offset it with faster hardware?

[HagssFIN]

I think there is still a plenty of things to develop in 16nm section in Bitcoin mining after these next chips that are coming (Bitfury, etc.)
But yeah, generally seems that Moore's law is apparently slowing a little.

[Amph]

well they are already at the lowest point of electrcity cost, there is no more gain there, unless you're telling me that each megafarm have the possibility to go to zero cost, which is impossible for almost one exa

miners will simply begin to manipulate the value of bitcoin to have their margin, i believe big farm can already do this...

[QuintLeo]

Technically, it's 14nm OR 16nm depending on the fab for the current stuff.

 I'm not 100% sure but I'm pretty sure that either IBM or Intel is doing early work on an 8nm process, but that's years away from deployment.


 Moore's Law started slowing a bit a long time ago, when chip design started running into quantum effects.

[64dimensions]

Dude,

Just go to the EEtimes website.

[Dalkore]

Not much for the public market.  Development costs really start to rise and 16nm and lower.  At a point you even start competing for resources that large fortune 500 companies use at the chip fabs.  I think 16nm is a good place to consolidate the market and see how the BTC halving plays out.

[QuintLeo]

I think 16nm is a good place to consolidate the market and see how the BTC halving plays out.

 There's no choice, as there's nothing AVAILABLE at this time or for years from now in a commercially-available smaller process.

[RozoTheMiner]

IBM recently announced that it has recreated the Silicon substructure used in making processors. Currently silicon can go to 10 nano meters but IBM's can go to 8nm with there new silicon.

[Matias]

I don't mean, we wouldn't ever go  beyond 16nm or 10nm, but Moore's law is apparently slowing and we will be longer on 16 nm than on previous stages.

[EastSound]

I don't mean, we wouldn't ever go  beyond 16nm or 10nm, but Moore's law is apparently slowing and we will be longer on 16 nm than on previous stages.

I think the mining chips will use the 16 nm for a few years. It will be too costly to go lower than that. But it depends on the bitcon price.

[philipma1957]

I don't mean, we wouldn't ever go  beyond 16nm or 10nm, but Moore's law is apparently slowing and we will be longer on 16 nm than on previous stages.

I think the mining chips will use the 16 nm for a few years. It will be too costly to go lower than that. But it depends on the bitcon price.

pretty much this is what will happen.

We were at the 28 stage a while  since the sp20 and s-5 were early 28 mm  and the s-7 is newer 28 mm

The 28 was doing .5 watts and with improvements and tweaking it got as low as .24 watts.  as my batch 2 s-7 could do .24 watts a gh with a titanium psu on a downclock to freq 550

So bitfury has shown its  16mm chip to do about .06 watts to about .11 watts

Maybe a newer 16mm chip in 1 year will do .04 watts to about .08 watts. If true the 16 mm gear will be longer lasting.

 It could last until the next ½ ing due in DEC 2018

[QuintLeo]

Not real likely, the big gain from the S5 to the S7 (and the SP20/etc to the SP50) was moving from standard-cell design to full custom design.

 Bitfury's new chip is already full custom - as Bitmain has stated for their next gen "in the works" chip and Innosilicon has specified for the A4 (and by implication the A3).

 For perspective, the B-Eleven is 14/16nm but NOT full custom, and it's supposedly right in the same efficiency range (when it hits production) as the S7.

[Dalkore]

IBM recently announced that it has recreated the Silicon substructure used in making processors. Currently silicon can go to 10 nano meters but IBM's can go to 8nm with there new silicon.

Doesn't affect Bitcoin, you have to remember their are only a handful of chip foundries in the world.  You will not even get access to that tech for years, there are large multi-national corps that have priority to those runs and technical data.   Bitcoin will always be getting the last few generations of die sizes, many of the 10nm & 7nm runs are booked out 18-36 months in advance.   

[EastSound]

Not real likely, the big gain from the S5 to the S7 (and the SP20/etc to the SP50) was moving from standard-cell design to full custom design.

 Bitfury's new chip is already full custom - as Bitmain has stated for their next gen "in the works" chip and Innosilicon has specified for the A4 (and by implication the A3).

 For perspective, the B-Eleven is 14/16nm but NOT full custom, and it's supposedly right in the same efficiency range (when it hits production) as the S7.

That B-Eleven's efficiency is similar to the S7. So it is about 5 months late and it will make them some loss.

[notlist3d]

Not real likely, the big gain from the S5 to the S7 (and the SP20/etc to the SP50) was moving from standard-cell design to full custom design.

 Bitfury's new chip is already full custom - as Bitmain has stated for their next gen "in the works" chip and Innosilicon has specified for the A4 (and by implication the A3).

 For perspective, the B-Eleven is 14/16nm but NOT full custom, and it's supposedly right in the same efficiency range (when it hits production) as the S7.

That B-Eleven's efficiency is similar to the S7. So it is about 5 months late and it will make them some loss.

I think Bitfury beat a lot of companies is part of it.   B11 really needed to be earlier to make a big difference, although if they do low enough cost it might still work.   So a lot of these companies that did chip dev I think will be forced by Bitfury to sell at lower prices.

There are some companies like SP I really wonder what they will do.  Counting on big buyers on SP50, when Bitfury beat them it would seem.   It will be really interesting to see what happens when companies like those two compete for the big sales when it seems Bitfury is ahead so far.

[QuintLeo]

BitFury MIGHT be ahead, but I don't think they're actually ahead of everyone - or only by a month or two at best for them.

 Innosilicon has been playing things pretty close since their last announcements in November - which "advance talk" was uncommon for them, given they didn't say word one about the A2 more than a week or so before they actively started selling those units (I'm pretty sure they were fairly mum about the A1 before that chip was actively available too).

 In THEORY KnC was months ahead of BitFury, but the silence on their "Solar" stuff for the last quite-a-few months has been resounding.

 Bitmain - probably behind but they like to milk "current stuff" as long as they can before they introduce a new generation.
 When they start doing sales on "used S7s" you know their 14nm gear is hitting or about to hit full production (ref the last S5 sales vs the initial S7 sales timeframe).

 Dunno what's going on with SFARDS, but their SF100 unit is already pretty far behind the curve on it's SHA256 side - as usual for their "dual miner" chips half of it is obsolete in a hurry the other half is still competative for a while wasting a large part of the cost of the chip.

[sakinaka]

We've been using the other chip sharpnesses for a long time. 16nm ASICs haven't been released yet, so when it will be we'll be able to wait until 2017.

[makingwin1]

you should go in EEtimes website there is everything you need to know.

[EastSound]

We've been using the other chip sharpnesses for a long time. 16nm ASICs haven't been released yet, so when it will be we'll be able to wait until 2017.

The difficulty rose 20% last time, and it is predicted to rise another 20% this time. I think the manufacturers are already mining with 16 nm.

[QuintLeo]

B-Eleven (which is 14/16nm but not full-custom), S7, and Avalon 6.
I suspect THOSE are the primary movers on the last month of hashrate gains.