LTC ASICs imminent? GridChip claims 60 KH/s at 0.44 W

[tacotime]

The spec sheet is here:


https://github.com/gridseed/gc3355-doc/blob/master/GC3355_DataSheet.pdf

These are hybrid miners that utilize the BTC hashing core to do a few of the SHA256 calculations for LTC apparently, they are claimed to be able to simultaneously hash BTC at 1.75 GH/s and LTC at 59.6 KH/s while pulling 4.56 W.  Hashing LTC alone, they are claimed to pull 59.6 KH/s at 0.44 W.

the chips are not mine, this is gridchip project (team behind avalon gen1,gen2) there is conference on 8th dec in Beijing for launch where you can pick up raw chips & development board. other regions will be added later

Scheduled at 10:00 on December 8, 2013, in West Street, Haidian, Beijing, 70 3W coffee (Haidian Book City, south of the membership across the sea floor), held Gridchip GC3355 chip product launches and mining machines. In addition to the chip and mine-site machine product launches, and BTC, LTC demonstration outside mining, but also on-site sales of 50 sets of single-chip development board and a few chips.

Development board: each 500 yuan
chip: 400 yuan per piece, per pack of 1600 yuan four chips

This price is only preliminary offers developers, not as a formal reference to the product price. Each person can purchase two development boards, chip purchase of two packs per person.

http://www.cybtc.com/thread-3226-1-1.html

[1713300888]

1713300888

[1713300888]

1713300888

[1713300888]

1713300888

[Scooby903]

Well damn...

[tacotime]

Well damn...

If it's true I'll be cranking my GPUs hard for the new few months until these come out -- ASIC introduction into Bitcoin caused a 100-fold increase in valuation, I would be surprised if we don't see a big increase with Litecoin too.

This is 0.00738 W/KH/s versus 0.300 W/KH/s for a GPU -- a 40.7 fold increase in efficiency.  This is about the same increase in efficiency as compared to BTC when ASICMINER first introduced its chips; I'm curious to see how they did it.

[tacotime]

Added release date

[BR0KK]

I believe this when i see it ... No preorder for me at least!

[Lauda]

Hopefully it doesn't happen soon. I want to put some more GPUs to better use.

[tacotime]

Hopefully it doesn't happen soon. I want to put some more GPUs to better use.

If it happens it happens... maybe that primecoin GPU miner will finally get off the ground.

[ilostcoins]

Some threads with photos:

http://www.cybtc.com/thread-3370-1-1.html
http://www.cybtc.com/thread-3379-1-1.html
http://www.cybtc.com/thread-3355-1-1.html

[tacotime]

So it is confirmed I guess... the second thread shows a single chip hashing at 84 KH/s.

[eon89]

Well perfect time for people to invest and switch to more asic resistance coins.

[El Dude]

Well perfect time for people to invest and switch to more asic resistance coins.

lol , ASIC are a good thing and strengthen the network .

[kramble]

Interesting, something like this was always more likely to come from left-field rather than the scammers shouting "we're developing multi-MH/s LTC ASIC" to the rooftops.

The documentation is a little light on specifics (such as the internal RAM, TMTO or threading), but at around 60kH/s in four LTC units its not too dissimilar to the open source engine, so we're probably looking at a few MB of RAM at most.

I'm most intrigued by the register specification which has 8 words of midstate and (the usual) 19 words of data. I wasn't aware that midstate was applicable to the scrypt algorithm (or at least, it only applies to the very initial stages of the PBKDF_128). I'll need to look at this in more detail as I may have missed an optimization here.

Anyway, good luck to them.

[Amph]

what about the cost?

ok 4x the cost of a single 7950

[jammertr]

I'm no expert at this but if I'm reading this datasheet right, claims to hash btc and ltc at the same time

[Moebius327]

I wonder if this is true. Where can we order?

[chirale]

Also interested in getting some chips...but not sure I know where to click... my chinese definitely not great!

[BTC-Market]

Who do I throw my money at and when?

[digicoin]

It depends on price

[chirale]

Is there anyone that speaks chinese and understand how to order a couple of board and some chips?

[pyromaniac]

Are there any readymade samples? What is their speed and price? I would buy them.