Despite delays experienced in the manufacturing process, Chinese ASIC manufacturer startup Linzhi is ready to produce the first batch of its new Ethereum miners, compatible with both ETH and ETC.
The Shenzhen-based company was founded in February of 2018 by former Canaan Creative chip design head, Chen Min. Part of the team responsible for the Avalon Bitcoin miner, Chen reported that Linzhi was fully self-funded, with nearly $4 million of starting capital.
Linzhi originally announced its plan to produce Ethereum ASIC miners in September 2018, with the goal of creating equipment more efficient than any existing mining equipment.
Linzhi announced Wednesday that it had ordered 37 wafers from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the essential components required to build about 200 ASICs. TSMC is also presently responsible for manufacturing Apple’s new A13 CPU for the iPhone 11.
Although not the first of its kind, Linzhi is predicting impressive performance in its line of Ether-compatible ASICs. Chen’s target performance for the miners is presently 1400 MH/s, with electricity consumption of 1 KWh.
In a statement on the delay in the manufacturing process, the company said:
We underestimated the complexity of the chip and how long it would take to grow the team and make the company functional. We are cautiously optimistic that we can just move forward the rest of the schedule, which would mean 12/2019 for sample machines and 02/2020 for mass production.
These figures, while presently unconfirmed, would irreparably change the face of the Ethereum mining community. The Nvidia GTX Titan V graphics card is presently the most profitable ETH miner in an 8 card setup, working at 656 MH/s with energy consumption of 2.1 KWh. At 4.5x the efficiency, Chen’s estimations blow this card out of the water. Will the innovation be met with yet another ASIC-resistant fork?
Linzhi has been reported on in the past, when its testing of mining technology in January of this year led some to believe a 51% attack was in progress on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain.
This writer will be hearing more from Linzhi in October at the upcoming Ethereum Classic Summit in Vancouver, Canada.