Brief
ASICMiner Prisma is based on a proprietary X48 design for BE200. It greatly reduces power
consumption of the device per GH/s compared to the X24 design.
...
Power consumption: ~0.67 W/G board-wise. On-wall power consumption relies on PSU
efficiency. (typically 1050-1100 W per full device, 0.75-0.78 W/G)
Nice. I wonder how they managed to squeeze improve power efficiency by ~25% compared to the X24 design.
But even though this further destroys the mining competition, it probably requires nerves of steel to continue investing in miners at this time.
I'm also very impressed by this. Not only that they managed to squeeze so much power efficiency, but also the size of the device.
Regarding efficiency: Do I understand correctly that 0.75 W/G puts the Prisma at the top in terms of efficiency among devices that are currently shipping?
Is there any other company currently shipping devices with efficiency equal or greater to 0.75 W/G?
There is nothing so surprising about this design. They have simply down-clocked the chips and doubled the number per board. They could have done this in June and had the most efficient machine on the market but the chips were worth more at the time (at least that was the thinking) so it didn't make sense.
Here's the math:
240MHz/270MHz(clock ratio or prisma to tube) * 800(1 Tube hash rate) * 2 (for the doubling of the chips) =1.4 TH/s
With some extra cooling and a little know-how, you can run at 1.6+ THs with Tube-like effifciency. (NB over-clocking the proprietary design is not recommended as it could result in a damaged product)
While I'm not impressed by the new design, I am immpressed with AMs ability to maximize the value of their product as computational difficulty rises.