40 gigahash computing performance per second, energy efficiency of 0.06 joules per gigahash design

BitFury Group, a company specializing in Bitcoin's blockchain infrastructure and transaction processing, announced today that it will mass-produce custom-designed 16nm technology-based ASIC chips that can improve the energy efficiency of the Bitcoin network.

Bitfury's new ASIC chip has demonstrated superior computing capabilities through rigorous testing. The chip is designed to deliver 40 gigahashes per second with an energy efficiency of 0.06 joules per gigahash. Measurements of the energy efficiency of engineering samples of this 16nm ASIC chip showed an industry-leading average of 0.055 to 0.07 joules per gigahash.

In addition, this 16nm ASIC chip is not only highly energy efficient but also operates at a low power supply voltage of 0.35V. The electrostatic portion of this chip can operate at a power supply voltage of 0.28V. Such excellent productivity could not be achieved with conventional silicon devices and silicon design methods in which transistors operate in active mode rather than at slow sub-threshold voltages. In operating mode, the linear relationship of J/Gh (Joule/Gigahash) was measured to be approximately 0.0011 in the range of 55 Gh/s (Gigahash per second) to 180 Gh/s, and the slope was measured to concentrate into a plateau (a part where the counting rate remains constant even when the voltage applied to the counter changes) at 40 Gh/s to 55 Gh/s.

Valery Vavilov, CEO of BitFury, stated, “We are very pleased to begin mass production of our Super 16nm technology ASIC chips. After much effort, we have achieved results that meet expectations. We believe it will be nearly impossible for existing technologies to compete with the performance of our company’s new 16nm technology. As a responsible company in the Bitcoin industry, we will work with integration partners and resellers to widely distribute our unique technology, thereby allowing the network to continue decentralizing and enter the exahash (10¹⁸ hash) era together. We welcome companies interested in and participating in our integration and resale programs.”

Jim Lai, President of GUC (Global Unichip), said, “We are pleased to have worked closely with BitFury’s experienced IC designers to help BitFury achieve such outstanding results.” “We are proud to be able to produce the first custom 16nm technology-based chip through the Bitfury-GUC partnership,” he said.

4 times higher computing power than previous products

With 16nm technology ASIC chips having a computing capability of at least 100 gigahashes per second, these 16nm ASIC chips compute at an average of 140 gigahashes per second using air cooling technology and at a maximum of 184 gigahashes per second using immersion cooling technology, the company's custom silicon chips are clearly ahead in computing efficiency per unit area of silicon.

BitFury is the first Bitcoin transaction processing processor developed to support the ever-increasing computing power as the “Exahash Era” approaches, where the Bitcoin network’s computing power reaches 1,000 petahashes per second. The BitFury 16nm ASIC chip provides up to four times higher computing power than the currently used BitFury 28nm ASIC chip at a specific energy level. As such, the BitFury 16nm chip can significantly improve energy efficiency and computing performance compared to current competing solutions.

Bitfury is continuously improving the energy efficiency of its data centers in accordance with its policy of minimizing carbon dioxide emissions. The company already powers its data centers using renewable energy, operating them at less than half the energy costs incurred by major internet companies, and continues to seek new ways to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As part of these efforts, Bitfury recently opened a 40MW data center in Tbilisi, Georgia, utilizing its proprietary immersion cooling technology.

All figures described above are the results of measurements taken from actual silicon samples. The performance of the manufactured devices (chips) may vary. Bitfury stated that due to the physical characteristics of silicon devices, chips either consume extremely low power or significantly enhance computing capabilities, but they do not provide both of these benefits simultaneously.