As we reported last week, Samsung has entered volume production of a crypto-currency mining ASIC. These reports have been confirmed today by Samsung themselves, stating that they have entered the mining ASIC manufacturing market. The report last week mentioned an “unnamed client from China”, who placed a massive order for a crypto-currency mining ASIC. This news was later somewhat confirmed by Samsung’s latest earnings report, which did mention a higher than expected revenue in the semiconductor business due to “Samsung’s acquisition of new China clients”.
The crypto-currency mining ASIC market is very new and could prove to be very lucrative. TSMC, another large semiconductor manufacturers has been producing mining ASICs for small players like Bitmain and Canaan Creative. These companies create the crypto-currency mining ASIC design and then TSMC produces it. With Samsung entering the scene this could increase the number of ASIC systems in use, which could in the future help with the overpricing and shortage of graphics cards.
