Re: What is Bitmain doing with the new 12nm chips they're buying in 2018?

the long link mentions bitmain and it would be 10k chips a month for first 3 months of year

and a total of 100k chip order.

which if you are putting into a 180 chip s11 is not a lot of s11's

Your counting is not correct IMHO,

100.000 wafers is not 100.000 chips... There are usually a lot of chips on one wafer, there is the same mistake on 8btc website who re-take this news...
Something big is happening there! It is a lot of chips.

Maybe it is 12nm-16nm for next batches of S9 (maybe S9+) because they hyped price and there is still no competing company, they have a monopol now. So why make new miner now?

This is why I think that:

Quote

"An enhanced version of TSMC's 16nm process was introduced in late 2016 called "12nm"
"In late 2016 TSMC announced a "12nm" process (e.g. 12FFC) which uses the same design rules as the 16nm node. The enhanced process is said to feature lower leakage better and cost characteristics and perhaps a better name (vs. "14nm"). 12nm is expected to enter mass production in late 2017."

[Source: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/16_nm_lithography_process]

the article said chips not wafers

http://news.8btc.com/bitmain-urgent-order-100k-12nm-chips-from-tsmc-in-2018

Digitimes is original source:
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180102VL201.html

"The short lead-time orders total about 100,000 wafer starts, and will be built using a 12nm process at TSMC"

There is a mistake in re-taken article on 8btc

So this is a hell lot of chips... Maybe BM is trying to overtake some cryptocurrency or make private hard-fork? I'm just speculating...

that article appears to refer to the entire 12nm production of the foundry with more then 1 company in on that amount

well if you think every chip from 100,000 wafers is for Bitmain damn that would be a lot of gear.

Havw ro wait and see.

1 wafer = $3500 I am not sure that bitmain order 350 million dollars in chips

3500 x 100000 = 350,000,000 I think that is all wafers for all companies but if it is just for bitmain that is very impressive

Is there somebody who knows what is BM1387 chip size? And what is TSMC 12nm wafer size?

maybe some deeper search on the internet can help to figure estimated chips amount

The main question is: is it only for BM?
In case of $350m invest, I'm not skeptical, because they made a lot of money via BCH hype.

Some fast digging for 16nm:

Quote from: @jimmyson

If you know the die-size of the chip, you can figure out exactly how many chips you can print per wafer. The Bitmain BM1387 chip is somewhere below 20 mm² in die size, and though it isnt published, looks to be 3mm x 4mm by measuring the inside.

We can plug in these numbers to a die-per-wafer calculator and get 5158 chips per wafer (were using the 300mm/12" wafers as is industry standard). Each S9 miner uses 189 such chips, so each wafer can make enough chips for a little over 27 S9's. Each wafer costs around $8000, so the chips for each S9 costs roughly $300.

source: https://medium.com/@jimmysong/just-how-profitable-is-bitmain-a9df82c761a

So if 12nm would be the same size (probably should be even smaller?), this is for 27*100.000 = 2.700.000 units
If it stays on same hashrate (14TH/s) they have: 2.700.000 * 14 = 37.800.000 TH/s = 37.800 PH/s
This would be >100% attack Shocked

BTW. its not bad to overtake $16.279.200.000 total network cap with $350.000.000 investment Wink

In other side, if I would overtake whole BTC network, I would not get this message leaked