Quote from: SecureErase on May 21, 2014, 03:46:48 AM

Quote from: rograz on May 21, 2014, 03:31:43 AM

Quote from: CanaryInTheMine on May 21, 2014, 12:12:58 AM

what size are the big gorillas on (and not even ASICs) here's some idea: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-processor-5nm,17578.html
why care about where big boys are? well, they tend to have an effect on what foundries are available for a specific nm size!!!

20 nm this year, 16nm next year (most TSMC customers are skipping 20nm since 16nm goes into production this year) and then it will take until 2016 at least before next shrink. If by magic Intel opens up their fabs to anyone with enough cash we could see 14nm during 2015 (not gonna happen unless Intel runs into cash/capacity utilization concerns). Intel alone spends more per year than the entire BTC network is worth on r&d (over 10b 2013) , a substantial part of that is directed towards fab tech. The costs of r&d and fab costs has risen exponentially for each new node and there is a good reason very few companies has their own fabs these days (and even fewer of them are on the bleeding edge).

Until the day btc mining becomes a multi billion dollar industry it will have little effect on the rest of the tech industry. The days of rapid improvements are over and soon we'll be stuck with the same 24~ month cycles as the rest of the industry. Sure there most likely are design optimizations that can be done, the question is who is going to fund a new chips designs on a bleeding edge process for (relative) small gains in a already saturated market.

rograz is 100% on the money. The semiconductor industry is massive shipping millions upon millions of chips of all different geometries, the BTC ASIC part of it is a small sideshow with relative low volume and only small players involved. See this news link of Altera chips on Intel 14nm process for bleeding edge semiconductor fabrication http://newsroom.altera.com/press-releases/nr-14nm-device.htm

All of the above +10. The fact that some of the chips (KNC?) were fabricated on 6" silicon lines, which are the back waters of the chip fab world, re-enforces the above. I would only add that if Intel decides to open up their fabs to outsiders, any crypto chip folks would get squashed in the stampede to get in line. A cheaper way forward in the crypto chip world might be some sort of low NRE 3D chip packaging trick.