BW to Launch 14nm Chip and Miner for General Population

The quiet, behind-the-scenes juggernaut in bitcoin mining, Bi Wang (BW), is announcing the release of its 14nm chip that the company believes is at the cutting edge of bitcoin mining equipment.

In a Bitcoin Magazine exclusive, BW was introduced to the community. Now it wants impact that same community.

Along with the announcement of its bitcoin chip, the company has announced that it will be releasing a bitcoin miner for consumers that will launch in Winter 2016.

“The miners are now available for pre-order at a price of 0.87 BTC with a minimum order of 333 miners which is 1 petahash,” Virgilio Lizardo Jr., Head of International at Bitbank told Bitcoin Magazine in an exclusive interview. “This price will be available until November 11, 2015. This winter, the miners will be available with no minimum order required; the price at this time has not been decided yet.”

The revelation that BW would be offering its miners to the general population comes at a time when many other mining companies are bringing their products in-house to use for their own mining initiatives.

According to BW, each 14nm chip in the miner will be able to attain anywhere from 34.6-63GH/s. The power consumption is 18W based on a voltage of 0.59V to 0.76V. This efficiency comes on the back of nearly a year of research and development. Lizardo Jr. explained that the team spent nine months coming up with the chip.

Lizardo Jr. explained that the company’s plans are to use the chips in two ways. The first is in the above described bitcoin miner. The second will be use by its own mining farm.

“BW will produce the amount needed [in the first batch] to reach our goal of 48P [petahashes] per month at our newest mining farm currently under construction,” he said.

An additional 48 petahashes/second of computational power would account for nearly 10 percent of the current mining power available.

In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine when Bitmain announced the launch of its Antminer S7, Jacob Smith, head of North America, said, “It’s an unfortunate situation that we’re the only big ASIC manufacturer selling directly to consumers right now; we’d love to see more competition in this space and for the miners themselves to have more options available.”

If BW has anything to say about it, it appears that the competition is here.

Jacob Donnelly is a full-time product manager and freelance journalist. He writes about Bitcoin at Bitcoin Magazine and runs a weekly newsletter at CryptoBrief.com.

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