"This industry is very cruel, even if you are ahead of the lead, as long as there is a generation behind you, you are falling behind."

At present, the Bitcoin mining machine is entering the "7nm era." In the fierce elimination competition, the 7nm chip will become the battleground for the entire bitcoin mining industry. Although the 7nm war has just begun, the leading competitors have begun to lay out the next battlefield, putting the development of 5nm chips on the agenda.

Jia Nan is the world's second largest manufacturer of bitcoin mining machines and currently has a global market share of 20%. Chen Nan, director of marketing at Jianan, accepted an interview with Caijing magazine and talked with me about the latest developments in the company's chip and product development, as well as the opportunities and anxiety of the entire bitcoin mining machine market.

The chip enters the 7nm era and grabs 5nm

The Bitcoin mining machine is in the stage of competing in the "three generations of grandparents" chips - the first two generations of 16nm chips, the previous generation of 10nm chips and the latest 7nm chips. Although the 16nm chip is the most mature application, its physical limit is approaching the ceiling.

Compared with the development of the top 16nm, the potential of the 7nm chip is far from being tapped. The maximum computing power of the 7nm chip can reach 48T, and the power consumption can be reduced to half of 16nm. Not only bitcoin mining, but the large-scale application of 7nm chips in the entire high-end manufacturing industry is a trend, including Huawei and Qualcomm are gradually introducing 7nm chips.

At the beginning of August 2018, Jia Nan was the first to release a 7nm mass production chip, and at the same time released a mining machine Avalon A9 equipped with a 7nm chip, the computing power reached 30TH / s, its power is the mainstream of the market ant S9 mining machine double.

Nearly two months later, Bitumin, the world's number one bitcoin miner, also announced the launch of the 7nm chip BM1391, but did not announce the mass production time. The announced miner parameters are only laboratory data. If calculated according to the mass production time, in the 7nm competition, Jia Nan Zhizhi is likely to open the first bit of the mainland for months or even half a year.

However, despite the use of the most advanced 7nm chip process, the Avatar A9 mining machine's power consumption ratio is not the best on the market. The Avalon A9 is 85W/T, which is also higher than the Shenma miner M10 (66W/T) using 16nm chips, and the core moving machine T2turbo+ (69W/T) using 10nm chips. Chen Feng also admitted that the current 7nm chip mining machine still has a lot of room for improvement: "We are the first person to eat crabs at 7nm, it is a stepping stone, 7nm must have someone to break through to have the next optimization iteration."

Although the Shenma M10 uses a 16nm chip to achieve a computing power of 30T, power consumption is better than 66W/T. But if you want to increase your computing power and reduce power consumption, you will pay a lot of cost and no market value. Compared with the continued advancement of 16nm chips, most of the miners will put a lot of effort into the development and iteration of 7nm chips.

Chen Feng told me that he judged that every bitcoin mining company that survived the competition in the next stage will develop a 7nm chip mining machine. In order to take the lead in the competition, they will continue to deepen technology research and development on the 7nm chip. In addition to the Avalon A9, two 7nm chip miners with a power of 39T and 48T will be released. Within half a year, Jia Nan Zhizhi will have a big breakthrough in the development of 7nm chips, including computing power and power consumption.

At the same time, the 5nm chip has been put on the research and development schedule: "We started to lay out 7nm after 16nm, and now we have a part of the energy to do 5nm." He said that the iteration cycle of the chip is 2-3 years, and the lead in research and development must be advanced. layout. "This industry is very cruel, even if you are leading in front of you, as long as there is a generation behind you, you will fall behind. If you chase it, it will be difficult to catch up."

The AI Ambition behind "Digging TV"

Bitcoin mining giants are beginning to put their ambitions on the AI ​​chip into practice. They don't want to miss the opportunity to copy the R&D capabilities and experience accumulated in their digital currency chip field to the AI ​​chip field.

Blockchain computing and artificial intelligence (AI) deep learning have similarities, relying on the underlying chip for large-scale repetitive, parallel computing. Previously, digital currency mining companies' experience in designing blockchain ASIC chips has been highly compatible with the technology required for neural network chip design. Therefore, whether it is Bitland or Jianan Zhizhi, there are already many layouts on the AI ​​chip.

On the AI ​​chip, the mining giant's strategy is divided into two routes. Bitcoin previously focused on developing AI cloud chips, providing AI cloud services to enterprises, and recently launched terminal AI chips. And Jia Nan Zhi Zhi has gone faster in the application of AI chips, recently released two products that seem to have some "nonsense": mining TV sets and mining heaters. In fact, this is the landing attempt of its layout AI chip ambition.

According to data released by Jia Nan Zhizhi, the mining TV uses a 43-inch 4K screen with 2.8TH/s computing power and consumes 280W. The mining heater has a power of 15TH/s and consumes 1500W. "Maybe you dug and dig, and found that the money earned is enough to buy this TV, which is equivalent to white delivery." Chen Feng said.

It sounds tempting, but can you really make money while watching TV while roasting?

Under the full network of October 18, 2018, if the TV is turned on all day, it can earn about 0.0001 bitcoins per day. The heater has a higher income and earns 0.0005 bitcoins per day. According to the current price of Bitcoin of about 46,000 yuan and the electricity fee of 0.5 yuan / kWh, the daily income is 4.6 yuan and 23 yuan, and the electricity cost is 3.36 yuan and 18 yuan respectively. This also means that the daily net income is 1.24 yuan and 5 yuan respectively.

Although there are a few dollars in income every day, this is only a temporary situation. The computing power of Bitcoin will increase sharply every month. Maybe after a few months, the revenue of TV and heaters will not be able to meet the electricity bill.

The family blockchain has also begun to become the next layout direction for Bitcoin miners. Obviously, miners are no longer satisfied with miners and mines with a relatively narrow customer base, and they want to expand the market to more ordinary C-end consumers.

For the mining machine manufacturers, the final home application will be very extensive, and the AI ​​chip will be applied to medical guards, smart homes and so on. Chen Feng believes that this is a very huge market. "The heaters and TVs are mainly considered from two aspects: when the price of the currency is low, the electric heaters used to mine the electricity needed for the mining have become the heat needed for heating, which is equivalent to the scene that needs to be warmed. On the other hand, we believe that the future of blockchain and artificial intelligence development, the family is one of the important scenes, so use these two products to cut in and layout the future."

In August 2018, Bitland launched the ant mining machine S9Hydro. This mine has a water-cooled unit on the S9. Officials claim to reduce noise and speed up heat dissipation, helping to reduce mine operating costs. At the same time, the requirements of mining for the professional mine environment are reduced, and the miners can also mine at home. Some mines and miners believe that this is an attempt by Bitcoin to try to transfer mining from a professional mine to a home. Unfortunately, the actual results are not satisfactory.

Since 2016, Jianan Zhizhi has developed ASIC chips for artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, including smart home, smart city, intelligent monitoring, voice and image recognition in smart toys and Internet of Things applications.

Does this mean that in the future, Bitcoin mining companies may compete directly with smart home manufacturers such as Xiaomi? Chen Feng indirectly denied this inference. He emphasized that smart homes and smart home appliances are mainly used to find landing scenes for AI chips. The AI ​​chip is the key layout of Bitcoin miners.

Overseas market bear market

Bitcoin mining machine manufacturers have encountered difficulties in the bear market that has been in the past six months. The bear market is directly related to market demand and the gross profit margin of mining machine manufacturers, which will directly affect the income at the mine airport.

For example, the mainstream mining machine ant S9 on the market, the price has dropped from the highest point of more than 30,000 yuan to the current 2000-3000 yuan, and some US mine owners said that they sell in overseas markets even below the cost price. This is also the dilemma faced by all miners including Jia Nan Zhi Zhi.

At present, the cryptocurrency market also makes Chen Feng feel anxious. In his view, the market determines the state of the entire industry, and also determines the enthusiasm of the entire market for the industry.

During the bear market, companies in the cryptocurrency sector got together. Bitian and Jianan Zhizhi are the first and second places in the global mining machine market, monopolizing nearly 90% of the mining machine market. Jia Nan Zhizhi submitted a prospectus to Hong Kong in May this year, and Bitumin also completed the prospectus submission at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the end of September. Fire coins, one of the world's three largest cryptocurrency exchanges, are trying to get listed on the backdoor. According to the announcement disclosed by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, on August 21, 2018, HUOBIGLOBAL acquired 71.67% of the shares of Tongcheng Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed Main Board listed company, with a total purchase price of approximately HK$590 million.

Many people in the industry believe that cryptocurrency companies have been listed in the past few months in order to achieve bear market transfusion through IPO. However, Chen Feng denied this view, saying that for them, listing is a process that takes 2-3 years to prepare, and the arrival of the bear market is only about half a year. In addition to the development of the company, the listing foothold also wants to bring a more recognized business environment to the industry.

Although the demand for mining machines and gross profit margins have been affected in the bear market, the overall revenue of mining companies including Bitian and Jianan Zhizhi has generally increased significantly this year. Chen Feng told me that this is because after the enthusiasm of the cryptocurrency bull market in the second half of last year, the influence of the industry has risen, and a number of new investors have entered, bringing more demand.

Among the new demand, overseas markets have become a new source of demand, with the hottest regions including North America and Southeast Asia. Chen Feng revealed that many orders in these two markets were tens of thousands of orders, which promoted the upgrading of the industry. However, due to limited chip production capacity, the supply of mining machines in the second half of last year and the beginning of this year was in short supply. Jianan Zhizhi has not achieved a large market share in overseas markets. This year's overseas market will be the focus of its attention.

Bitcoin also has a tendency to target overseas markets this year. Since 2015, the company has set up R&D centers in San Francisco and Israel. However, its overseas layout has suddenly increased in 2018, and the United States has also become a focus. In July, Bitcoland opened a 20,000-square-foot office space in SanJose, Silicon Valley, USA, and launched a new blockchain data center in Rockdale, Texas in August.

Previously, most of the global mining machine demand came from China. Under the influence of this round of bear market, the overseas market may become a hot spot for the new round of competition among mining machine giants.

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