Post
Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Life after ASIC
by
J35st3r
on 06/06/2013, 21:26:48 UTC
Plenty.

The current ASICs are based on very old technology as the up-front tooling costs (mask manufacture) were much cheaper than state of the art processes. Avalon uses a 110nm process, BFL uses 65nm process (hence the Avalons using far more chips than BFL for the same performance, though probably a good move as Avalon got it right the first time, while BFL's development was a series of disasters).

Given the success of ASICs (to the manufacturers anyway), there is a huge incentive to build on more state of the art processes, which will be faster and lower power comsumption. AFAIK the current commodity foundries are at around 23nm, and Moore's law still has a few generations left to go yet before it hits the endpoint (transistors don't work once you're down to a few dozen atoms in width).

So there is going to be lots more excitement to come (both success and failure) over next next few years, and that's not even allowing for black swan's like quantum computing. Stock up on the popcorn!