Quote from: Desolator on October 06, 2012, 02:44:01 AM

Unfortunately, there is basically one way to make an ASIC. It needs x amount of transistors and registerable cache in a certain ratio to run bitcoin operations a certain way and certain power levels obtain certain acceptable or unacceptable heat dissipations. If you add double the memory that you need to run bitcoin operations, that just means you wasted money in the design so they're all actually going to be structured extremely similarly. They obviously didn't invent a new way to actually build the chips' internals themselves, that's up to the Asian factories, so they're all just reinventing the wheel exactly the same way separate from each other.

This isn't like making an airplane where one guy does 2 wings and a propeller and the other does a jet engine. It's more like making ice cubes, lol. You hold water in something and drop it below 32F or you don't end up with ice Tongue

What? 1 way to make ASIC? Have you SEEN how many bitstream variations have come out? Even at the most basic level you have the decision between laying down a sea of hashes or a few pipelines per chip. Then you look at the various processes available. Is this a FPGA hardcopy which only really has 1 customer mask added to a standard FPGA-like common set of base layers? Is it a full-custom ASIC laid down transistor by transistor by hand? By algo? By using an HDL? Now take a couple dozen possible optimizations for performance, effiency, OR die size, and you have a few thousand different combinations that could be produced today.

It Is a lot more like making an airplane than you seem to realize, or at least like producing an engine, be it finely tuned, or a big lumbering diesel.

There have been some really good technical mudslinging threads about what constitutes a true full custom ASIC, but there is no question that more than one solution is really being produced. The chances of them all coming out if the same factory in China is not even remotely likely.

OTOH, the chances that there will be at least 2 ASIC options that have the same chip are nearly 100%. I've seen at least one reference to a design being shared, but I'm mobile so I don't have a link handy.