Samsung introduced a deal on Monday, Jan. 29 to fabricate ASIC mining hardware with Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC. “Mass production” of the ASIC chip has already all started in January, in keeping with Korean information outlet The Bell.
An ASIC chip, which stands for utility-specific included Circuit, is a specialized piece of hardware designed to simplest mine cryptocurrencies based on a particular hashing algorithm, which includes SHA256 or Scrypt (which Bitcoin and Litecoin run on, respectively). It makes up part of a crypto mining device.
TSMC materials the ASIC chips wanted for cryptocurrency mining to Bitmain, a China-based totally Bitcoin mining employer. Bitmain additionally manufactures its personal hardware, having released two ASIC-style merchandise in September 2017 to pretty negative fanfare in addition to an surprising launch of a SiaCoin miner on Jan. 19.
in regards to the profitability of Samsung coming into the crypto mining marketplace, Hwang Min-seong, an analyst at Samsung Securities, instructed The Bell:
“Samsung Electronics could growth its sales via ASIC chip production however due to the fact the foundry handiest money owed for a small part of the company’s semi-conductor production plant, it's far hard to predict that the company’s mining mission can have a extensive effect at the agency’s sales.”
South Korea-based totally Samsung’s address TSMC comes after a turbulent month in the crypto markets in Asia, with exchanges banned in China and accusations of insider buying and selling and confusion over law in South Korea main to losses across the board.
