Quote from: HyperMega on July 27, 2016, 08:00:02 PM

10nm is not so far!

TSMC and Samsung already did several 10nm tape-outs (e.g. smartphone processors of Qualcomm and Mediatek). These kind of technology will be pretty sure part of the next gen smartphones in 2017.

Globalfoundries bought IBM's microelectronic manufacturing business completely in 2015. GF/IBM skips 10nm and goes directly to 7nm, but there will be for sure no 7nm products in 2017.

Last potential foundry player (in this league) is Intel. They are probably ahead of TSMC and Samsung, but very picky with respect of selecting customers.

Meanwhile Bitmain is a midsize TSMC customer. If they want, they probably can get a 10nm production slot. But why should they invest another $10M NRE if nobody is challenging them at 16nm?
Anyway I'm sure that Bitmain has already access to the TSMC 10nm technology and is designing the next gen ASIC. So they will go into production as soon as they need to.

Well, Avalon's supposedly going to make a 16NM miner sooner or later, the Avalon 7. Not sure if that's true or not, but if Avalon actually make a miner capable of rivalling the S9, they might start researching the 10NM tech in hopes of making a more efficient miner. Bitfury's also purported to be making a 16nm miner, although those things cost your soul to buy. ASIC technology will get to 10nm sooner or later, but the 16NM process is still young and maturing; chips can only get more efficient even in the same gen.