The technology of Scrypt mining ASICs has exploded in the past year and many believe that 2014 will be the year for mining scrypt based currencies like Litecoin, Dogecoin and Auroracoin. For a company like Bliss Devices, these advancements are providing individuals with innovative chips, faster hashing and lower cost of ownership. In fact, Bliss Devices has just announced what may be the highest performing Scrypt ASIC chip to date.
Bliss Devices was founded by Paul Chen and Steve Zhang, who were integral in the creation of 8 highly-complex ASICs at Fortinet, a global provider of network security appliances and unified threat management. Their background in the creation of high-tech ASICs and experience in network security and semiconductors have been pivotal to Bliss’ initial success and continued product development. Their newest endeavor is the Scryptr Mining Chip.
According to the company, initial testing has outperformed its original targets and has achieved the best power-to-performance ratio of any chip on the market, with a lower cost of acquisition per chip. For many miners in the industry, cost of ownership is most commonly the biggest barrier to entry, in addition to energy consumption. This is also one of the first times that a delivery date has been moved up rather than held back. Many Bitcoin miners experienced this in the early days of mining rigs, ordering rigs and ASICs that were either on backorder or not available until much later, which by that time ended up being obsolete.
However, it seems that Bliss Devices has come up with a product that has surpassed even their own expectations. “Our goal was to significantly improve upon the designs available today and push the limits of today’s advanced technologies, bringing the industrial mining market a solution that exceeds the expanding demands for both Scrypt-based and altcoin mining,” Co-Founder and CEO Paul Chen expressed in a recent press release.
Testing of the company’s newest scrypt ASIC chip began weeks ago and delivered very high performance metrics. Initial testing of the new Scryptr Mining Chip yielded a hash rate between 4.5 MH/s and 4.8 MH/s, while only requiring 18W of power per chip. The company will offer both a standalone Scryptr chip and Neon Mining Cards that each contain 8 Scryptr chips providing a total of 37 MH/s of hashing power. The devices have a variety of interface options including PCIe/PCI, SPI, or USB, which will be scalable to 127 cards on a single USB backplane. When mounted on a Neon Mining Card, the Scryptr consumes an industry low for power consumption of 4.5W per MH/s, giving it one of the lowest power-to-consumption ratios in the scrypt mining industry.
Today’s miners are constantly on the hunt for hashrate, but this often comes at a price. Industrial miners want the most cost effective mining equipment that has the highest ROI, and if it breaks the bank initially, they believe the performance will far outweigh the cost. Miners evaluate this ROI by taking a look at three main metrics: the price of hashing power, the cost to run it and the ship date. Abram Kottmeier, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Bliss Devices said, “Miners want to know much hashing power they can buy and what the total cost of ownership will be. I think miners will be blown away when they see the results of our FPGA (field-programmable gate array) prototyping tests.”
The full test setup and report, including a video of the testing, can be found at http://blissdevices.com/key-milestone-successful-fgpa-demo/
The Neon Mining Card could be the new benchmark for Scrypt mining and by providing cards with flexible interface options, Bliss Devices is providing differentiated solutions for miners to optimize their operations. The company can also provide solutions for mining projects of all sizes, with custom system designs which include Neon Mining Cards and their hardware development kit. For the company’s newest endeavor, Bliss Devices has expedited the availability of both Neon Mining Cards and the Scryptr chip from October 2014 to August 2014. Keep on the look out for some high powered and cost-effective scrypt miners to be coming out of California in the very near future.