I'd like to write today about a small piece of why we are confident our product is better than KnCs.
So today's topic: Our silicon design is superior.
Both are 28nm designs, but HashFast's is far more powerful and energy-efficient.
Let's look at KnC's 28nm ASIC, and some basic details as we can pull from their documentation.
https://www.kncminer.com/news/news-25First let's calculate the hash rate per square millimeter of silicon. This is a measure of the efficiency of the design.
Honestly, we don't need much to estimate this. The lid size for their chip is enough to make some good estimates.
KnC's diagram shows their chip has a 41.2mm lid, and implies that the silicon under that lid may be between 30mm x 30mm, and 36mm x 36mm. (The additional space is needed for decoupling capacitors and such.)
Let's use those two numbers as bounds for the size of the silicon under the lid. If the die(s) take up just 30x30mm of the space under the lid, then:
30x30mm = 900mm^2
100 GHash / 900 mm^2 = 0.11 GHash/mm^2
Or if the die takes up a bit more of the space under the lid,
36x36mm = 1296mm^2
100 GHash / 1296mm^2 = 0.077 GHash/mm^2
HashFast's Golden Nonce chip: I don't have to estimate the size because I work at HashFast.
One 18x18mm die is able to do 400 GHash (nominal - more overclocked**)
Hashing per square mm:
18x18mm = 324mm^2
400 GHash / 324mm^2 = 1.23 GHash/mm^2
Let's compare those numbers, for the high and low values for KnC's chip:
1.23 / 0.11 = 11.2
1.23 / 0.077 = 16
So HashFast's chip is between 11 and 16 times more efficient, in hashing per square mm, than KnC's chip.
This has an impact on how fast we can deliver units to customers.
One wafer of HashFast's chips has the same capacity as 11 to 16 wafers of KNCs. The initial engineering run from TSMC is limited to 12 wafers, out of which KNC will be able to satisfy 11 to 16 times fewer customers than HashFast will be able to. You'll get your units faster once production starts from us.
In addition, the HashFast chip operates much more efficiently. You get four times the hash rate for the same amount of power (250W). That's 1.6 GHash/W for HashFast, and 0.4 GHash/W for KnC.
Calculations such as this are a small part of why we are confident that we are delivering a quality product to our customers.
We figure it's time to start sharing such information.
Amy Woodward
VP Engineering
HashFast
** P.S. Simon made me put in the line about overclocking. But no one would ever do that to our beautiful chips, right?
