Bitmain to release Antminer F3 Ethereum ASIC miner with 72GB DDR3

Archaea said:
It would --- yes.

For example.

I bought one of the Bitmain A3. It is my first ASIC.
The A3 computes siacoins' algorithm at 815GH/s at stock speeds and cost $2,400.
A 1080TI computes siacoin's algorithm at 3GH/s at stock speeds and costs $800. ($700 MSRP - but can't buy them for that)

That's a 270:1 ratio to the fastest current gen CPU, at only a 3:1 price difference.

Most people seem to overclock their A3's and push the needle towards 900GH/s.

The A3 uses 1300 watts. If you undervolt GPUs you could run 6, 1080TI ~ 1300 watts. So even from a power perspective an ASIC blows GPU's out of the water. With 1300 watts total draw you can get - 815GH/s or 18GH/s with 6, 1080TI.

So yes -- everything you mined on a small operation for the last year, might be outdone in one day by a single ASIC. Difficulty will skyrocket, and a GPU will make basically nothing subsequently.
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Yeah, but you're stuck mining Siacoin. Nobody in their right mind has been mining Sia with a 1080Ti for a long time now. How much are you currently making a day with your A3?
 
Parja said:
Yeah, but you're stuck mining Siacoin. Nobody in their right mind has been mining Sia with a 1080Ti for a long time now. How much are you currently making a day with your A3?
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Right at this moment $36 a day. It ranges from $35-$40 typically.

I recently put a VERY slight overclock on the A3 (this past weekend). 600mhz to 619Mhz. It's been stable, temps are indifferent, and hash rate is up to 850,000 now.
https://whattomine.com/coins/161-sc...00&fee=3&cost=.06&hcost=2750&commit=Calculate

Here's my stat page.
https://siamining.com/addresses/277...5a9f18c9f38151a767ae03725548339d243653ace7c8c
 
That's pretty good. Bitmain have them for sale and in stock at $980.

My S9's are down to right around $10/day right now. I paid $1,430 for each of those. They were doing about what you're getting right now on your A3 when I first brought them online back in late December.

I guess the big question is, how long before the A3 will be down to under $10/day?
 
pclausen said:
That's pretty good. Bitmain have them for sale and in stock at $980.

My S9's are down to right around $10/day right now. I paid $1,430 for each of those. They were doing about what you're getting right now on your A3 when I first brought them online back in late December.

I guess the big question is, how long before the A3 will be down to under $10/day?
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Yeah - I don't think I'll ROI on this A3 unless SIA coin goes up.
 
Thus the "...in their right mind...".

Even better, he was dual mining Eth and Sia. Talk about out of the loop.
 
Parja said:
Thus the "...in their right mind...".

Even better, he was dual mining Eth and Sia. Talk about out of the loop.
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hehe - if you keep reading down - he's like oh well then. I guess I'll move to ETH + DCR

countdown to next similar thread with DCR in 3 months. :)

(DCR is getting a asic soon too)
 
Wonder how much its going to cost. Seems with memory prices its going to be a pretty penny.
 
Depends on how many channels you pull it out to. Really you are just stacking asic+memory modules, so those need to be sized to each other optimally. Then parallel modules. Large number of parallel asics = very very wide pipe (in essence) = high bandwidth capability.
 
So one of the most recent cards I can think of with DDR3 is the hd 7750 2gb. DDR3 at 1600mhz and a 128 bit bus provides 25gb/s. So I don’t know if my math is correct, but you would need like 2048 bit bus to get 200gb/s.
 
seriously? does no one read what I post. feel like a ghost.

read previous page for DDR3 answers.
 
hang on to your amd cards. even if this came true, it would not be too late to sell them to gamers.
 
Really disappointed. I'd hope that ETH, as I understood it, was basically resistant for ASIC to the point it wasn't worth it to create one. As far as I'm concerned, ASICs are pretty much a virus when it comes to just about any crypto today - they often cost a relative fortune ensuring only those with a significant amount to invest get ahold of them, they skyrocket the difficulty to the point that anyone NOT using an ASIC very soon will no longer be viable, they're developed and fabricated in a proprietary manner (often the developer can pick a late ship date and run them privately to max profit before selling them which also gives them potential for "insider trading" of sorts, plus meaning that those who do buy them may never/take a long time for ROI etc), and are generally yet another tool to ensure that a relative few can profit damn everyone else and damn the crypto ecosystem as a whole. I am to understand it is even worse given that this is Bitmain who are somewhat of a monopoly.

I really hope this does not come to pass - it was disappointing enough to see X11 type algo fall to ASIC but even those like ETH... it really sours the experience
 
Xaeos said:
Really disappointed. I'd hope that ETH, as I understood it, was basically resistant for ASIC to the point it wasn't worth it to create one. As far as I'm concerned, ASICs are pretty much a virus when it comes to just about any crypto today - they often cost a relative fortune ensuring only those with a significant amount to invest get ahold of them, they skyrocket the difficulty to the point that anyone NOT using an ASIC very soon will no longer be viable, they're developed and fabricated in a proprietary manner (often the developer can pick a late ship date and run them privately to max profit before selling them which also gives them potential for "insider trading" of sorts, plus meaning that those who do buy them may never/take a long time for ROI etc), and are generally yet another tool to ensure that a relative few can profit damn everyone else and damn the crypto ecosystem as a whole. I am to understand it is even worse given that this is Bitmain who are somewhat of a monopoly.

I really hope this does not come to pass - it was disappointing enough to see X11 type algo fall to ASIC but even those like ETH... it really sours the experience
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it wasn't worth creating an asic... until it hit $1k

Dude I bought some CPU's to bitcoin mine with back in the day. GPU's wrecked the good ole days.
 
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mkrohn said:
it wasn't worth creating an asic... until it hit $1k

Dude I bought some CPU's to bitcoin mine with back in the day. GPU's wrecked the good ole days.
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not sure that's the case.

They built one for Sia coin and the highest it's ever been historically is 10 cents

(it does often trade in the top 25 by volume - and I'd guess that's a better soft target for an asic)
 
Xaeos said:
Really disappointed. I'd hope that ETH, as I understood it, was basically resistant for ASIC to the point it wasn't worth it to create one. As far as I'm concerned, ASICs are pretty much a virus when it comes to just about any crypto today - they often cost a relative fortune ensuring only those with a significant amount to invest get ahold of them, they skyrocket the difficulty to the point that anyone NOT using an ASIC very soon will no longer be viable, they're developed and fabricated in a proprietary manner (often the developer can pick a late ship date and run them privately to max profit before selling them which also gives them potential for "insider trading" of sorts, plus meaning that those who do buy them may never/take a long time for ROI etc), and are generally yet another tool to ensure that a relative few can profit damn everyone else and damn the crypto ecosystem as a whole. I am to understand it is even worse given that this is Bitmain who are somewhat of a monopoly.

I really hope this does not come to pass - it was disappointing enough to see X11 type algo fall to ASIC but even those like ETH... it really sours the experience
Click to expand...

ETH is very resistant to asics. this is fud

mkrohn said:
it wasn't worth creating an asic... until it hit $1k

Dude I bought some CPU's to bitcoin mine with back in the day. GPU's wrecked the good ole days.
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profitability didnt really increase that muhc. its about the same now as it was when i was mining last november @ $8 a coin
 
Archaea said:
doublejack

I don’t think anyone should hastily dismiss what bitmain can do with an asic of their own design —- and assume it can’t spank current GPUs.

Every asic they’ve released in the last couple years has outright spanked GPUs. What GPU now mines anything that bitmain asics mine? Nothing...

As I mentioned. One A3 is the equivalent to roughly two hundred and seventy 1080tis at mining Blake2b. No longer do GPUs mine Litecoin, dash, or bitcoin. Bitmain is getting bigger and stronger every quarter. Hiring more talent, and upping their capability.

ASICS are end game in crypto and GPUs will move on to the next CPU mined coin that gets popular enough to have some devs wrote code to mine it.


CPU -> GPU -> ASIC
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You've made a bad assumption. Actually a couple of them.

First, just because CPU -> GPU -> ASIC was the progression for bitcoin does not mean that is the natural progression for ALL cryptocurrencies. SHA256 is not X11, which in turn is not Blake2b, which in turn is not Ethash, which in turn is not Cryptonight. Not every problem can be solved with a hammer. The latter two algorithms, in particular, were deliberately chosen because building an ASIC that can solve them efficiently is nigh impossible with current technology. If bitmain wants to throw money down that rabbit hole, then go ahead. I'll be betting against them.

The other bad assumption you've made is that ASICs are the end game. Nope, that's just where we are now for SHA256 and other "solved" algorithms. Quantum computing will, someday, change the game in a far more profound way than ASICs ever have.


Archaea said:
hehe - if you keep reading down - he's like oh well then. I guess I'll move to ETH + DCR

countdown to next similar thread with DCR in 3 months. :)

(DCR is getting a asic soon too)
Click to expand...

There's already an ASIC-esque device for Decred. It is the Baikal Giant B. It is really an FGPA and not a true ASIC, but either way it lays waste to what a GPU can do. I used to dual mine ETH and DCR. That ship sailed a month ago when the Giant B started showing up in the wild.

In all reality, though, Decred has not been great to mine with a GPU for a good 2-3 months. Even before the Giant B hit the market, it was clear that someone or something was "testing" far more powerful miners. The DCR network hashrate would sporadically see huge spikes, and all of it was solo miners. There's a video on youtube I saw a couple weeks ago of someone testing a DCR ASIC. We can't buy one, yet, but the creators of them are already using them, and reaping the benefit of it.

mkrohn said:
This right here is incredibly foolish to even think.
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Why? Please enlighten me.

Ethash is incredibly memory intensive. So either bitmain is going to defy the laws of physics and make a better Ethash calculator using slower / cheaper memory, or like I said anything they come up with will - at best - be on par with GPUs at it.

I'd love to hear why you think that's a foolish thought.
 
Nebell said:
Isn't RoI on A3 about 2.5months with the current SIA price?
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At this precise moment yes.

But we’ll see what happens when the next batch of a3s comes out on March 15th and doubles (or more) difficulty.

Of course the ROI also depends on siacoin value. I’ve been holding all mine. I have 31,000 right now as a a3 batch one owner.
 
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