Bitmain is indeed developing a new Ethereum ASIC

Recently there were unconfirmed rumors about Beijing-based Bitmain, one of the companies which produce special mining hardware, developing a new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for Ethereum miners. These rumors are now confirmed by the Chinese media.

According to the details provided by the local journalists, Antminer F3 will have 32 x 1GB DDR3 RAM slots and three motherboards with six GPUs on each. Mining Ethereum with the use of this device will be quite fast, approximately 200 MH/s. One Nvidia Tesla V100 video card which is considered to be one of the fastest on the market can only perform 94 MH/s.

This rig will be released this year, either during the second or the third quarter, reports tell. It will cost around $3000.

Recently it became known about the plans of Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, to develop its own mining rigs, which the observers called a good event which might lead to the demonopolization of the market. Kodak’s plans to issue brand mining rigs, however, were met with huge skepticism by the observers, as most of them deemed the rent terms unfair in comparison to other offers present on the market.