ASIC development on SHA256 has been going on since 2011, with about 4-5 process node updates and 2-3 generation updates in between nodes.
Development for other algos is no older than ~2 years, and these all probably started at the very cheap 90nm node, so its very easy to get a 6x gain going from 90-45nm.
Its a little harder for SHA256 to see huge gains going from 16nm to 10 or 7. Bitcoin ASICs have pretty much caught up with the latest node tech, so there wont be any more crazy gains in the future.
I agree. the improvement of ASH256 relies more on the shrink of die now.
The s-7 to the s-9
Was 250 watts a th to 100 watts a th a solid leap done in 2016 say may or June.
We wont be seeing that improvement any more for sha 256.
Right now the m10 does 67 to 70 watts a th which is the best the 16 mn die does for btc/sha-256
The newest bitmain sha256 does about 50 watts a th I think it is 7mn.
Based on what was done with the m10 maybe those same guys can get to 35 watts a th
Lots of other asics are on 45mn and the code has not been worked on as much.