Bitmain Monopoly over. . . ?

[menindorf]

Seems like Bitmain has had a pretty strong corner on the market for ASIC hardware for some time. . . 

I have recently seen Avalon and Syan which look like decent competition. . . 

Anyone else know of any good alternative ASIC hardware companies? 

Seems like there must be more hidden gems of the mining world out there! 

I have had really good experiences working with Bitmain. . .  but I kind of shudder when I think about one company almost single-handedly controlling the Network Hashrate. . .  carefully planning their batch releases. . .   *shudder*

~Meni

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[jekecoin]

Bitmain killed the other companies

[sidehack]

A lot of other companies killed themselves one way or another - unsustainable complexities, being outright scams from the start or turning into one.

Also there's no real evidence that Syan is anything other than another scam.

Also Avalon's been around longer than Bitmain. The Avalon team put up the second functional bitcoin mining ASIC, and the first one available to the general public - if I'm remembering right, ASICMiner's BE100 predated it but were only deployed in their own mines for some months. Butterfly Labs announced development first, but didn't release a product until almost a year behind schedule. Avalon kinda pulled the dine-and-dash with a lot of people's money sometime around their third-generation chip release, but from what I understand, the engineers behind the actual work rebooted the company as Canaan-Creative once the right bastards in charge had disappeared, and carried on the Avalon product name.

And let's not forget Bitfury, who doesn't make small-scale miners but has released historically some of the best chips available at any given time. They had sub-1J/GH ASICs when Bitmain's 2J/GH BM1380 was rolling out on the S1 and obsoleting everyone's 6-10J/GH gear. They put up ~0.2J/GH chips when the S5's 0.4J/GH were being called top-class, and they've had 0.1J/GH 16nm for about as long as the S9 has been a thing.

And let's not forget BW, which I believe succeeded LKETC who grew strong around the A1 Dragon machines, 1J/GH competitors contemporary with the S2 and historically one of the most versatile and reliable large-scale miners yet made. Those guys deployed 14nm chips I believe before Bitmain announced the S9, though they kept them to themselves and other Chinese mines. Heck they were on their third revision of 14nm design a full year ago.

And let's not forget EBang, who's been selling an Avalon741-range miner on the open market for most of this year using their own ASIC design.

Bitmain may want to rule the world, and right now they do have efficiency in their corner. They also have a whole lot of visibility because they have wide open low-volume sales. But they also have crap customer service, crap warranties, crap machine-level engineering and a whole lot of profiteering shenanigans that folks are starting to realize aren't exactly worth the trouble.

[philipma1957]

A lot of other companies killed themselves one way or another - unsustainable complexities, being outright scams from the start or turning into one.

Also there's no real evidence that Syan is anything other than another scam.

Also Avalon's been around longer than Bitmain. The Avalon team put up the second functional bitcoin mining ASIC, and the first one available to the general public - if I'm remembering right, ASICMiner's BE100 predated it but were only deployed in their own mines for some months. Butterfly Labs announced development first, but didn't release a product until almost a year behind schedule. Avalon kinda pulled the dine-and-dash with a lot of people's money sometime around their third-generation chip release, but from what I understand, the engineers behind the actual work rebooted the company as Canaan-Creative once the right bastards in charge had disappeared, and carried on the Avalon product name.

And let's not forget Bitfury, who doesn't make small-scale miners but has released historically some of the best chips available at any given time. They had sub-1J/GH ASICs when Bitmain's 2J/GH BM1380 was rolling out on the S1 and obsoleting everyone's 6-10J/GH gear. They put up ~0.2J/GH chips when the S5's 0.4J/GH were being called top-class, and they've had 0.1J/GH 16nm for about as long as the S9 has been a thing.

And let's not forget BW, which I believe succeeded LKETC who grew strong around the A1 Dragon machines, 1J/GH competitors contemporary with the S2 and historically one of the most versatile and reliable large-scale miners yet made. Those guys deployed 14nm chips I believe before Bitmain announced the S9, though they kept them to themselves and other Chinese mines. Heck they were on their third revision of 14nm design a full year ago.

And let's not forget EBang, who's been selling an Avalon741-range miner on the open market for most of this year using their own ASIC design.

Bitmain may want to rule the world, and right now they do have efficiency in their corner. They also have a whole lot of visibility because they have wide open low-volume sales. But they also have crap customer service, crap warranties, crap machine-level engineering and a whole lot of profiteering shenanigans that folks are starting to realize aren't exactly worth the trouble.

Would be nice for a real company like   AMD or intel to make a miner,    put it on a cpu and have a motherboard for it.  put a nice cooler and boom there you go.

[sidehack]

(except that designs based around a single CPU-like chip have almost universally failed due to reliability issues resulting from inefficient high-current low-voltage regulators and exotic cooling requirements needed to clear dense power quickly; see Spondoolies, Hashfast, BlackArrow, Cointerra and I don't know how many others for reference)

[philipma1957]

(except that designs based around a single CPU-like chip have almost universally failed due to reliability issues resulting from inefficient high-current low-voltage regulators and exotic cooling requirements needed to clear dense power quickly; see Spondoolies, Hashfast, BlackArrow, Cointerra and I don't know how many others for reference)

yeah but  if they  gear that chip to pull 70 watts maxed  and supply a cooler of decent ability  it should work.

it is easy to keep a cpu running 70 watts cool. but what do I know.

70 watts at 12 gh a watt is a 840gh machine.

it would be a good home miner.

not a good farm miner.

and I am certain home miners would want it.

[sidehack]

Could be a good home miner, if it wasn't prohibitively expensive by merit of requiring an entire motherboard to attach to. Which depending on what that motherboard is doing, could require substantial engineering overhead.

[QuintLeo]

And let's not forget BW, which I believe succeeded LKETC

 BW.COM was the result of a merger between LKETC and a large pool operator the name of which is escaping me at this time.


 The only company Bitmain can be said accurately to have killed would be Spondoolies - the other deaths were pretty much all self-inflicted or the "company" involved was never more than a scam in the first place, and to be FAIR the Spondoolies death was at least PARTLY self-inflicted.

[ZiG]

I don't see Bitmain's monopoly over any time soon ...there is NO REAL competition ...for now

[quochuan29]

I don't see Bitmain's monopoly over any time soon ...there is NO REAL competition ...for now

So said but i agree with you. Hope they have real competition

[okala]

Seems like Bitmain has had a pretty strong corner on the market for ASIC hardware for some time. . . 

I have recently seen Avalon and Syan which look like decent competition. . . 

Anyone else know of any good alternative ASIC hardware companies? 

Seems like there must be more hidden gems of the mining world out there! 

I have had really good experiences working with Bitmain. . .  but I kind of shudder when I think about one company almost single-handedly controlling the Network Hashrate. . .  carefully planning their batch releases. . .   *shudder*

~Meni

we still need more hardware companies to build more ASIC hardware for the miners. Bitmain has dominated the market for long and for us to really expands blockchain technology more companies need to get into the business of hardware production. I hard that there is a company in Japan that has also gone into mining tools production. I think before 2020 outside the one we have now other companies are going to be involved in mining business and Bitmain is always out of stocks because of demand.

[leowonderful]

Seems like Bitmain has had a pretty strong corner on the market for ASIC hardware for some time. . . 

I have recently seen Avalon and Syan which look like decent competition. . . 

Anyone else know of any good alternative ASIC hardware companies? 

Seems like there must be more hidden gems of the mining world out there! 

I have had really good experiences working with Bitmain. . .  but I kind of shudder when I think about one company almost single-handedly controlling the Network Hashrate. . .  carefully planning their batch releases. . .   *shudder*

~Meni

we still need more hardware companies to build more ASIC hardware for the miners. Bitmain has dominated the market for long and for us to really expands blockchain technology more companies need to get into the business of hardware production. I hard that there is a company in Japan that has also gone into mining tools production. I think before 2020 outside the one we have now other companies are going to be involved in mining business and Bitmain is always out of stocks because of demand.

That’s GMO, and iirc they are offering an ICO token that can be used to buy their miners. They’ve got capital but no track record for miners at all, it’ll be interesting to see what they can make. Hopefully the hardware they make doesn’t underperform like Innosilicon or other previous ASIC manufacturers.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

That’s GMO, and iirc they are offering an ICO token that can be used to buy their miners. They’ve got capital but no track record for miners at all, it’ll be interesting to see what they can make. Hopefully the hardware they make doesn’t underperform like Innosilicon or other previous ASIC manufacturers.

Of course as in the case of most ICO's their Token sale will only give the scammers investors who already sunk millions into the company a way to cash out at the expense of new Investards.

[leowonderful]

That’s GMO, and iirc they are offering an ICO token that can be used to buy their miners. They’ve got capital but no track record for miners at all, it’ll be interesting to see what they can make. Hopefully the hardware they make doesn’t underperform like Innosilicon or other previous ASIC manufacturers.

Of course as in the case of most ICO's their Token sale will only give the scammers investors who already sunk millions into the company a way to cash out at the expense of new Investards.

Yep, sad to see they’re so money hungry already. I hoped this wasn’t going to be the case but it seems they’re already taking a step in the wrong direction. Hopefully it turns out okay for their miners at the very least.

[QuintLeo]

we still need more hardware companies to build more ASIC hardware for the miners. Bitmain has dominated the market for long and for us to really expands blockchain technology more companies need to get into the business of hardware production. I hard that there is a company in Japan that has also gone into mining tools production. I think before 2020 outside the one we have now other companies are going to be involved in mining business and Bitmain is always out of stocks because of demand.

That’s GMO, and iirc they are offering an ICO token that can be used to buy their miners. They’ve got capital but no track record for miners at all, it’ll be interesting to see what they can make. Hopefully the hardware they make doesn’t underperform like Innosilicon or other previous ASIC manufacturers.

 GMO claims are wildly optimistic at best when it comes to their timeframe - I have ZERO trust for them at this point and won't even bother looking at their ICO thing.


 Innosilicon had *ONE* issue of "underperform" in their history - which was also the only case where they pre-announced a chip and miner before they had a working prototype in hand.
 I wouldn't worry about their A4+ miner "underperforming" as the word seems to be that their initial claims in THIS case were on the low side a bit.
 They DO have a long-time history of making some of the most RELIABLE, rock solid miners on the market - something Bitmain hasn't been able to manage since at least the S5, and even the S5 wasn't as reliable as anything Innosilicon has built.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Innosilicon had *ONE* issue of "underperform" in their history - which was also the only case where they pre-announced a chip and miner before they had a working prototype in hand.

I assume ya mean their A1 chip? Power spec/speed was around 20% off... Ja could hit close to top rated speed but required proper DCDC bucks and heat sinks which the Dragons and most clones had but sadly Bitmine.ch and in turn AMT blew big time.

Too bad as as the AMT-branded Dragon clone I finally got from Josh was and still is a rock-solid 1THs miner. But after running non-stop for just a hair under 2 years just got too damn hungry to feed anymore...

[Zitudent]

(except that designs based around a single CPU-like chip have almost universally failed due to reliability issues resulting from inefficient high-current low-voltage regulators and exotic cooling requirements needed to clear dense power quickly; see Spondoolies, Hashfast, BlackArrow, Cointerra and I don't know how many others for reference)

yeah but  if they  gear that chip to pull 70 watts maxed  and supply a cooler of decent ability  it should work.

it is easy to keep a cpu running 70 watts cool. but what do I know.

70 watts at 12 gh a watt is a 840gh machine.

it would be a good home miner.

not a good farm miner.

and I am certain home miners would want it.

12 gh a watt is not very challenging. So all the MB should give this option for the home computers.

[QuintLeo]

Innosilicon had *ONE* issue of "underperform" in their history - which was also the only case where they pre-announced a chip and miner before they had a working prototype in hand.

I assume ya mean their A1 chip? Power spec/speed was around 20% off... Ja could hit close to top rated speed but required proper DCDC bucks and heat sinks which the Dragons and most clones had but sadly Bitmine.ch and in turn AMT blew big time.

Too bad as as the AMT-branded Dragon clone I finally got from Josh was and still is a rock-solid 1THs miner. But after running non-stop for just a hair under 2 years just got too damn hungry to feed anymore...

 They also had the A2 for Scrypt - which DOES meet specs reliably and was also a rock-solid design (adopted from the Dragon miners I believe), only issue there was the original PS in the 110Mh units was real marginal for trying to run full Turbo mode.

 Needing proper board-level design to meet specs is to be EXPECTED on high-end chip design - that's where SFARDS fell down badly, looked like their mining CHIP was decent but they had the same garbage for board-level design that crippled them when they were still Gridseed.
 It's also a large part of what killed KNC in the end.


 12 GH / watt on SHA256 has been demonstrated both by Bitmain and by Bitfury on the current 14/16nm node - but Bitfury so far has only demonstrated it at the chip level, and I forget what the actual hashrate of the chip was in their demo videos at that efficiency level.

 Putting a single mining chip on a PC-based motherboard though would be a total waste.
 PCI-E cards would make more sense if you're going to put a miner in a standard computer - but reference Butterfly Labs for how the only cards (AFAIK) that were ever released in that form factor didn't make it in the market.