Original author: Jaleel, BlockBeats
Original editor: Jack, BlockBeats
The news of Grayscales victory in the SECs first battle across the ocean is still being fermented. The release of Huaweis new generation flagship phone Mate 60 Pro in China instantly made the technology market boil. A piece of news about a Chinese mining company riding alone as a savior to promote the development of SMICs 7nm chips spread in the community.
The opinion of the super guy in the Benmo community on this matter has pushed the story of SMIC’s 7 nm chip to a new climax in the currency circle. There are even online articles claiming that domestic mining companies provided early orders for SMIC. , making it a training hero for domestic 7nm chips.
In this regard, BlockBeats interviewed many practitioners related to the chip industry. Avalon related sources responded that the online rumors were exaggerated, while Bitmain said it would not comment. Some practitioners said that only 30% of the relevant descriptions in online articles are facts. In addition, an employee who previously worked in Huaweis chip sales said that the components used in mining machines are actually not large in size, and the rumors on the Internet are a bit exaggerated. To be honest, just because a company gives you an order, it does not mean that You can survive stably.
Although the early orders provided by crypto mining companies to SMIC did not play a decisive role in the research and development of 7nm chips as everyone imagined, it is undeniable that crypto mining companies have indeed had an impact on the chip industry in various aspects in the past ten years. varying degrees of impact.
SMICs 7nm was born, and mining companies re-entered the public eye
There are also market rumors behind Huaweis new product launch. Due to technical problems with SMICs 7 nm chip, its final output may be limited. The industry has not yet made it clear whether SMICs N+ 1 and N+ 2 processes are equivalent to the 7 nmT process on the market. However, the industry has reason to believe that its N+1 process should be comparable to the 7nm LPE process, while the N+2 process is comparable to the 7nm LPP process.
SMIC is the only company in China that can mass-produce the 14-nanometer FinFET process. Its N+ 1 and N+ 2 processes are both derived from the further optimization of the 14-nanometer FinFET technology. Using DUV lithography machine technology, SMIC successfully circumvented U.S. technical sanctions. Although the current most advanced process uses EUV lithography machines, there are still companies exploring improvements based on 14 nm, such as Apple. Although its experimental results did not meet expectations, it was dubbed electronic waste by the industry.
For 5 nm technology, although the technical barriers to its manufacturing process are not absolute, its yield is a huge problem. Recall that Samsung only has a 60% yield rate with 7 NM technology, which means that up to 40% of its products need to be eliminated. If a direct leap from 14 NM technology to 5 NM is possible, the yield challenge may require huge investments and time to overcome.
The choice of technical process determines the upper limit of the product. Although this may not affect marketing promotion, for experts in the industry, process selection that does not pay attention to power consumption is no different from deception.
BlockBeats also interviewed Maxwell on the issue of whether SMICs 7nm chips can be produced. In the interview, Maxwell said that the development of 7nm chips is very difficult and is indeed a bottleneck. But in 2021, SMICs N+1 7nm technology has matured and is preparing for large-scale use. Now two years have passed. As Huaweis foundry, it is also a top company in the domestic chip industry. As long as there is demand for orders, SMIC will not be without progress and breakthroughs. So the current mass production news is based on evidence.
According to the MinerVa Semiconductor website, this IC began shipping as early as July 2021. It can be inferred that SMIC will be able to mass-produce the 7nm process in early 2021. After Huawei launched Mate 60 without any warm-up, the mining company that had disappeared for a long time once again entered our sights.
What impact do mining companies have on the chip industry?
As the technology and digital circle evaluation blogger said, mining machines are the most suitable orders for Fab to use for practice. SMIC’s 7nm chips really have to thank the miners for their unintentional intervention.
Then community members also began to recall the past. In 2021, the Federal Reserve launched unlimited QE, and virtual currencies began to skyrocket. Mining bosses disliked the traditional graphics card mining computing power/energy consumption ratio for being too low, and ordered special mining machines from specialized mining machine manufacturers. At that time tsmc and Samsung are both guaranteeing supplies to NA, so they dont like it at all. So the mining machine factory found SMIC, which had just successfully tested 7nm. This 7nm process should be far inferior to Samsungs 8nm in the same period. It is the ultimate process improvement version of duv 14nm, but in this strange economic environment Under the circumstances, SMIC finally delivered to the mining machine factory (the money earned can cover the low yield rate). So, this somewhat unintentional move, 7nm began to be continuously updated, and finally it was given to the K 9000 s on Huawei mate 60 pro today! Its a breakthrough, not too big or too small.
Since the advent of mining machines, this market, which is basically monopolized in China, has formed a four-legged structure: Canaan, Bitmain, Microbit, and Yibang International.
Bitmain was co-founded by Jihan Wu and Ketuan Zhan in 2013. In a short period of time, it launched the Antminer S 1 mining machine based on the 55 nm chip BM 1380, starting its rapid growth. In 2014, it further launched the Antminer S 3 mining machine based on the 28 nm chip BM 1382. In addition, the company provides numerous mining-related services and products.
In 2011, Zhang Nangeng appeared on the Bitcointalk forum under the name ngzhang, and soon launched Chinas first FPGA mining machine - Icarus and Lancelot. For this reason, he is affectionately called Pumpkin Zhang. When Butterfly Lab announced the development of ASIC mining machines in 2012 and claimed that it was only for its own use, Zhang Nangeng decided to personally participate in the effort to stop the monopoly of Bitcoins computing power. He gave up his studies and concentrated on the research and development of ASIC mining machines. In 2013, he established Canaan Technology and launched Canaans first ASIC mining machine - Avalon. After various efforts, in 2019, Canaan successfully landed on NASDAQ, becoming the first stock of domestic mining machines.
MicroBT was established in July 2016. Compared with the other three companies, MicroBT was the latest to enter the market. Yang Zuoxing, the founder of Microbit, actually entered the mining industry as early as 2014. After experiencing the Roasted Cat Runaway incident and the Bitmain Equity Dispute incident, he decided to start his own company and establish Microbit. Its mining machine brand Shenma Mining Machine has also seen its market share soar after its launch. With its higher cost performance, it has begun to try to compete with Bitmain. In December of the same year, the 28 nm chip BT 1000 developed by it was officially taped out. In April 2017, MicroBTs Whatsminer M3 mining machine was officially mass-produced, and the sales of the first batch of M3 mining machines were nearly 10 million yuan.
The story of Yibang International began in 2010. Initially, the company was mainly engaged in the communication equipment business, but its founder Hu Dong had a strong interest in Bitcoin very early on. In 2014, when the communications industry was at a trough, Yibang International began to get involved in the mining machine business. After nine versions of improvements, it finally successfully launched the mining machine product in 2016. After being successfully listed on Nasdaq on June 26, 2020, it became the “second domestic Bitcoin mining machine stock” and has now gradually disappeared from the market.
Blood transfusion chip volunteer
By the end of 2020, BTC.coms global computing power statistics revealed an interesting fact: in recent months, mining power with a computing power above 80 TH/s has accounted for 16%; while mining with a computing power above 60 TH/s has Machines accounted for 27%. This means that a new generation of 7nm or 8nm Bitcoin mining machines has been put into use in large numbers.
The chip manufacturers behind it have also formed a triumvirate: TSMC, Samsung and SMIC.
In January 2013, the birth of the Avalon mining machine meant a significant increase in computing power, and even led the entire industry into the ASIC era. It was also in this year that Bitmain emerged and quickly rose to prominence, and formed a close cooperative relationship with TSMC.
For a long period of time since then, the global market has been facing a shortage of chips and oversupply, but TSMC has had endless business. Behind all this is the power of Bitmain. As early as the second half of 2017, Bitmain became TSMCs second largest customer in China and was included in TSMCs list of major customers, receiving a large number of orders from Bitmain every year.
In 2021, TSMCs fourth-quarter and full-year financial reports showed that its revenue reached US$15.74 billion, a new high. It is worth noting that Bitmain placed 50,000 orders with TSMC in the second half of the year, which is estimated to bring in a profit of US$1.2 billion. At that time, some media said that TSMC paid more attention to this, and some TSMC executives even went to Japan to purchase key equipment for this order.
However, with the decline in Bitcoin prices and domestic restrictions on mining, Bitmains order volume has decreased, which has had a certain impact on TSMCs operating capabilities. Despite this, Bitmain remains a large customer of TSMC, maintaining its position in the top ten.
Let’s go back to the SMIC 7nm chip behind Huawei’s new generation flagship phone Mate 60 Pro. In 2020, SMIC officially announced for the first time that it would apply its products to mass-produced cryptocurrency mining machines. According to reports at the time, the 14 nm mining chip developed by SMIC and Canaan Technology has completed testing and will be mass-produced and shipped in the second quarter of 2020. Specific chip type or a certain small currency mining machine. The highest chip process that SMIC can provide that year is 14 nm, and it is expected to start trial production of 7 nm in the fourth quarter of 2020.
According to industry insiders, 2020 is not the first time that SMIC has tried to enter the field of mining machines. As early as the beginning of 2018, SMIC had cooperated with well-known figures in the Dongguan currency circle. However, due to the sharp decline in the price of Bitcoin, investors withdrew their investment. Although the chip Design completed but not mass produced. SMIC has been actively entering the mining machine industry, and has cooperated with other mining machine manufacturers, but there is no mainstream mass-produced model.
Low-voltage chip pursuer
The core technology of the mining chip at that time lay in two directions:
First, the calculation of SHA 256 is a fully customized mode. The so-called full customization is not to synthesize the circuit through the hardware description language, but to manually customize the macro-modules of the SHA 256 calculation directly through the NAND gate, and then copy tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of these macro-modules in the same chip. , thereby achieving high-speed processing capabilities;
The second is low-voltage technology. Since the Bitcoin chip needs to be working all the time, it is useless to turn off the clock (clock gating) and partly turn off the power (power domain), and low voltage is one of the core technologies of the Bitcoin chip; the dynamic power consumption of the chip The operating frequency (F) and the square of the power supply voltage (VCC^ 2); it is impossible to reduce the frequency, and if it is reduced, the coin mining will be slow; so low voltage is the core technology of Bitcoin chips.
At that time, Canaan Technology also issued a document stating that it has noticed that the process is only a factor in the performance of the top chip. Therefore, Canaan Technology has made great efforts in the fields of low voltage, standard circuit unit design and optimization, high-performance computing, and heat dissipation solutions. A lot of hard work has been done and a lot of underlying technology has been accumulated.
Bitcoin miner peicaili (@pcfli) believes that low-voltage technology has also been extended to other industries such as mobile phones, benefiting the entire chip industry.
NVIDIA graphics card Savior
On May 19, 2017, the price of Ethereum exceeded the $100 mark for the first time, and a new round of crypto bull market was about to begin. In this bull market, the most profound thing is the prevalence of ICO.
It was also during this period that from 2016 to 2018, the market value of Nvidia increased from 14 billion US dollars to 175 billion US dollars. The value of this Silicon Valley giant doubled tenfold in two years, shocking the jaws of all investors. In 2017 alone, NVIDIAs operating revenue reached US$9.714 billion, a month-on-month increase of 40.58%. It is no exaggeration to say that the 17-year crypto bull market has brought Nvidia quite substantial returns.
Ethereum uses the Ethash encryption algorithm. During the mining process, it is necessary to read the memory and store the DAG file. Since the bandwidth of the computer to read the memory each time is limited, and it is difficult for existing equipment to make breakthroughs in this technology, no matter how the miners increase their computing power, the mining efficiency will not be significantly improved, which means Make Ethereum’s PoW mechanism “ASIC resistant”.
It can be said that Ethereum, the worlds largest decentralized development network, has created an extremely huge market for Huang Renxuns graphics card sales, and even helped to completely rewrite the life curve of Nvidia.
For Ethereum mining, Nvidia launched the GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card with no output interface. The first batch of supply was 300,000 yuan, and later even stopped the normal market supply of graphics cards with output. At the end of the year, the performance of the graphics card was optimized, and a series of professional mining cards with stronger computing power and lower prices were launched, such as P 106 and P 104. This series of graphics cards does not even have an IO output interface, and users even Cant use it to play games.
In order to seize the chip supply in the mining market, Nvidia even did not hesitate to cooperate closely with AMD, its number one mortal enemy, to accelerate the development and production of mining products.
In 2018, Nvidia CFO publicly disclosed the fact that he relied on selling mining cards to make money, while Huang Renxun revealed his interest in the mining industry in words: Nvidia actually buys GPUs for users. To control it... We must pay attention to the existence of it (users buying graphics cards for mining) and ensure sufficient inventory to deal with it.”
When Ethereum also ushered in the second wave of mining, Nvidia did not miss the start of a new round of bull market and dispatched again. Under the pressure of the global core shortage tide and the demands of players, the CMP series mining cards were developed for graphics card miners. In order to obtain the highest mining efficiency, CMP directly discards the graphics processing function. Later, under pressure, it was announced that the newly launched GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards would limit mining performance, causing the price of graphics cards to rise again.
Huang Renxun shows off the RTX 30 series graphics card, the picture comes from the Internet
At this time, the price of Ethereum has approached $3,000, and PoS mergers are no longer considered a potential threat in the face of rising prices. Huang Renxun has become a full-fledged advocate of cryptocurrency, publicly expressing his long-term optimism about the market upsurge and the value of the blockchain. The miners also bought it, and the graphics cards were all sold out. According to insiders, some large mining farms even directly pick up goods from Nvidia without going to the primary and secondary markets.
For a time, the rise in graphics card prices became a subject repeatedly reported by CCTV and self-media. According to agency reports, Nvidia generated approximately US$3 billion in revenue in 2021 by selling graphics cards to miners. In the same year, Nvidia’s market value exceeded US$500 billion. In the financial report for the fiscal year in February of the following year, the company’s annual revenue hit a record of US$26.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 61%, achieving seven consecutive quarters of revenue growth. .
What is the point of mining?
Regarding the relationship between mining companies and chip manufacturers, the outside world has more or less misunderstandings and discrimination. Many people question What is the significance of mining? or think that mining machine chips are a low-end industry. But in fact, the story behind this is much more complicated than imagined.
China’s mining equipment companies already dominate the world, a position that is no different from the United States’ dominance in the field of operating systems. However, outside perceptions are often conflicting. On the one hand, they admit that this is true; on the other hand, they seem to be dismissive of it.
The orders provided by the encryption mining industry for chip companies serve as a proving ground, which has helped the rise of chips; the research and development achievements of mining machine manufacturers, such as low-voltage chip technology, have been widely used in mobile phones and other industries; The rescue made by Nvidia, the king of the industry, is obvious to all in the industry. These facts all prove the great contribution of the mining industry to technological progress.
The mining industry uses cutting-edge chip technology and employs top RD personnel. If mining is “useless,” isn’t the same true for many other industries? For those who criticize, everything they use should also be considered useless.
Although mining companies are not all of SMICs RD, and may even only account for a small part, their impact on SMIC is indispensable. Crypto mining companies have promoted the advancement of chip manufacturers and graphics card manufacturers in the wave of technology, and have also brought huge commercial value. This is the significance of mining.
