New Partnership: Samsung Will Start Building ASIC Crypto Mining Chips

A new partnership between Samsung Electronics and a Canadian firm named Squire Mining Ltd. is in today’s cryptocurrency news. Under this partnership, the tech giant aims to manufacture ASIC chips which will be used to mine cryptocurrencies.

This puts Samsung on the ASIC chip train and places it as a direct rival to many companies (including Bitmain). According to the press release, Squire Mining Ltd. has already established a design house in South Korea. Samsung, on the other hand, is also headquartered in the East Asian country and will lend its foundry services to the said design house to mass produce the crypto mining chips.

Meanwhile, ASIC stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit and is practically a random access memory chip that is widely used for its smaller size, computation power, and lower power consumption.

In May this year, Samsung confirmed that the growth in the demand for these chips contributed to 73% of its earnings in the first quarter of 2018. However, during that time, Bitcoin was maintaining its price support above $10,000 which explains why mining companies wanted to buy more ASIC machines.

Squire Mining Ltd., on the other hand, is also aiming at a mass scale production of ASIC mining chips. As the company revealed in its statement to the press:

“Our front-end development team of engineers and programmers is currently working with Gaonchips to develop the Company’s initial ASIC chip to mine Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, and other associated cryptocurrencies using a wafer process technology that, once confirmed and accepted as meeting certain prescribed specifications and criteria, will form the basis of an initial mass production test run of the ASIC chip by Samsung Electronics.”

We will wait and see if a mass scale production of the ASIC chips will also promise a mass scale adoption of the chips – something that Samsung certainly hopes to achieve with the new partnership.