And why not nvidia or amd, nvidia new generation seems to be delayed for ever, what is doing nvidia?, as you can imangine nvidia like apple or other major hardware manufacturers usually plan the development and the deadline to launch a product some years before the product is launched.
Nvidia and AMD could be doing the same as bitmain is doing if they find that mining is so profitable, can you imagine the R&D department of Nvidia working to develop the fastest and more efficient gpu miner based on their techonology?, I don`t know if what they would develop would be as efficient as an asic, but sure it would be close to, with everything optimized to mine,optimized drivers and optimized cooling. I know, I have not any proof,is just a theory, but why not?
Nvidia has no interest in rushing out their next generation cards, as the CURRENT ones already dominate the market and are selling faster than they can make the GPUs.
They also aren't widely used in Mining compared to AMD, so they have a lot less incentive to bother wasting time on "mining specific GPU models" - so far ALL of the "mining specific GPU cards" have originated in 3'd party CARD manufacturers using standard GPUs.
Lead time on a new ASIC miner design is months, not years - but it's still quite a few months.
I suspect Bitmain started work on an ETH ASIC miner probably around mid-year 2017 timeframe, possibly a bit later, when the altcoin "price jump" proved to have some staying power.
What I DON'T understand is their SIA and CN miners - the SIA one swamped the VERY TINY market in no time flat, and the CN miners are going to be pretty much "dead on arrival" given Monero's long-stated OPPOSITION TO ASIC.
I'd have figured they'd target equihash LONG before SIA and that they'd have been smart enough to avoid CN entirely.
Given that AMD was sold out for MONTHS despite very high pricing during the ETH hashrate growth this fall/winter/early spring timeframe, it's VERY EASY to account for that growth without needing some hypothetical and PROBABLY DID NOT EXIST IN QUANTITY ASIC miner.
Also don't forget the Nvidia 1060 and possibly some 1070 cards mining ETH, *AND* some folks switching from other algorithms due to ETH getting more profitable on their EXISTING cards.