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Author Topic: Early ASIC Mining  (Read 156 times)
HeRetiK (OP)
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September 11, 2021, 05:06:23 PM
 #1

While reading this thread about Mastercard acquiring CipherTrace I came across the following claim:

2012
CipherTrace CTO Shannon Holland builds his first liquid cooled Bitcoin mining rigs with custom ASICs and firmware.

Which had me wondering -- is there any record of when the first ASIC miner prototypes started mining the Bitcoin blockchain? From what I remember the first to actually ship ASIC miners, albeit in a very limited capacity, was Avalon in early 2013. I'm aware of Friedcat / Bitfountain and Bitfury starting development on ASICs as early as 2012 but if I'm not mistaken even they weren't able to start mining before 2013? Not to mention Butterfly Labs...

Anyway, any insights on this? Was Shannon Holland connected to any of these projects or were early prototype chips made available to parts of the community before the blueprints hit the foundries? I'm genuinely curious as that part of mining history eludes me and I remember ASIC miners being kind of a big deal when they first entered the scene in 2013.
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DaveF
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September 11, 2021, 11:50:11 PM
Merited by HeRetiK (1), flip4flop (1)
 #2

Some links below from the olden days of the forum.
There are more but these are the bigger ones. There were a few in 2012, most really came into it in 2013. Even if they were planning in 2012 by the time the chips were made and miners built it was 2013 some into 2014.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.0
Or more to the point:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.msg1211518#msg1211518

Avalon:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120184

Bitfury in 2013:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677

BTCGarden:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=213172

BFL:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83985.0

Cointerra:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269093

Gridseed:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355268.0
IIRC they were the 1st to propose SHA / Scrypt on one chip. And one of only a couple to actually make it.

KNC:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.0
They had a really epic implosion in the end IMO.

-Dave

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HeRetiK (OP)
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September 12, 2021, 08:00:37 AM
 #3

Some links below from the olden days of the forum.
There are more but these are the bigger ones. There were a few in 2012, most really came into it in 2013. Even if they were planning in 2012 by the time the chips were made and miners built it was 2013 some into 2014.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.0
Or more to the point:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.msg1211518#msg1211518

Avalon:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120184

Thanks for the links! I'm mostly interested in 2012 and whether the claim of someone mining Bitcoin with ASICs in 2012 is actually plausible, because from my anecdotal experience it was incredibly hard to get your hard on ASIC mining hardware until at least the latter half of 2013. And that is assuming you even bet on the right horse and not on one of the many ventures that failed to deliver.

Friedcat and Avalon having specifications as of September / October 2012 means they still had to get the chips produced, as from my little understanding of the chip design workflow you're still working with simulations at that point (either software simulation or hardware-based using FPGAs).

So at least according to the public record there were no (SHA256) ASIC chips until December 28, 2012:

Update

After a long and anxious waiting, we have finally got our packaged chip samples at hand. Everyone would be busy in the following 2-3 weeks.

And even then the chips were still to be tested.


So in conclusion -- Am I missing something or does it seem unlikely that someone was mining Bitcoin with ASICs as early as 2012? Because given the technical challenges and capital requirements it seems weird for someone to produce ASIC chips without scaling production for either themselves or for sale to the public, either of which should have made a splash back then.
DaveF
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September 12, 2021, 11:19:39 AM
 #4

So in conclusion -- Am I missing something or does it seem unlikely that someone was mining Bitcoin with ASICs as early as 2012? Because given the technical challenges and capital requirements it seems weird for someone to produce ASIC chips without scaling production for either themselves or for sale to the public, either of which should have made a splash back then.

Unless they were early prototypes that never made it into production or, something made privately that was never marketed.
Then as far as I remember, or can find, all of the 1st real production ASIC miners that people could buy came into being in 2013.

-Dave

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