Bitmain Announces Two New ASIC Cryptocurrency Mining Rigs

Leading Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) producer Bitmain announced two new series 17 Bitcoin (BTC) mining machines in a blog post published on Oct. 9.

Bitmain: higher efficiency and hashrate

Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu announced the S17+ and T17+ mining machines at the World Digital Mining Summit (WDMS) in Frankfurt. Bitmain claims that the new ASICs feature improvements to power efficiency and hashrate. The post states that the new hardware is capable of performing tens of trillions of hashes per second (TH/s):

“The Antminer S17+ has a hash rate of 73 TH/s and operates with a power efficiency of 40 J/TH + 10%, while the T17+ offers a hash rate of 64 TH/s and a power efficiency of 50 J/TH + 10%.”

The announcement also mentions the dual tube heat dissipation technology featured in the new machines and claims that “the space between the air inlet to the air outlet has been reduced by 50%” which, in turn, improves both heat dissipation and fan noise. 

The introduction of ASIC miners changed the face of cryptocurrency mining, which previously relied on graphics processing units (GPUs) to solve the cryptographic puzzles in mining cryptocurrencies. 

ASICs are custom-built to a specific algorithm and can far outperform even the most powerful GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies, although some cryptocurrencies are ASIC-resistant. 

A global network for miners

In September, Bitmain announced a platform for connecting global crypto miners with farm owners. The World Digital Mining Map, which is also slated to launch during the WDMS, will purportedly connect mining hardware owners with mining farms who will provide the available power resources to host them for a fee.