Bitmain Unveils Antminer E9 Ethereum Miner Equivalent To 32 GeForce RTX 3080 Graphics Cards
Chinese company Bitmain has released a teaser for its Antminer E9 cryptocurrency mine, which provides an Ethereum hash rate of up to 3 Gh / s, equivalent to 32 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. A launch date has not been specified, but it is reported that this will happen soon.
The use of gaming video cards for cryptocurrency mining, although it helps manufacturers produce an incredible number of high-performance accelerators, at the same time causes heavy damage to the traditional market of gaming systems. The solution to the problem lies not so much in artificial restrictions as in creating more efficient specialized solutions, which is done by NVIDIA and AMD and companies like Bitmain.
The Antminer E9 Ethereum compute modules are a special purpose integrated circuit (ASIC). Such solutions do not differ in universality, but they cope more effectively with the specific tasks they were created, and therefore, they are cheaper with equal effectiveness. An example is image processors – even in smartphones, they can easily cope with highly complex data streams from cameras.
Antminer E9 is the fastest ASIC miner available today, surpassing even the Linzhi Phoenix Ethash ASIC with a speed of 2.6 Gh / s. If crypto-raiders take advantage of the new product, they may refuse to purchase NVIDIA Ampere, and, perhaps, players will finally be able to purchase video cards at a reasonable price.
So far, Bitmain has not disclosed the details of the Antminer E9, except its performance and power consumption – at 2556 W (0.85 J / MHESh). Thus, the Antminer E9 is not only faster than the Phoenix miner but also more energy-efficient. For comparison, the Phoenix miner consumes 3000 watts. This means that the Antminer E9 is 35.5% more energy efficient.
Obviously, an ASIC mine that is equivalent in power to 32 top-end GeForce RTX 3080 video cards will not be cheap. Miner Linzhi Phoenix is sold at prices ranging from $ 11,300 to $ 13,700. Obviously, the price of the new solution will be over $ 15,000. But if it were twice as expensive, it would remain an attractive choice. For comparison, GeForce RTX 3080 video cards currently cost $ 2,500 and more, and the purchase of 32 such accelerators (excluding the rest of the farm components) will cost a whopping $ 80,000 – and the prospectors make these sacrifices. Of course, such complex ASIC solutions are not for poor cryptocurrency miners, but simple mathematics proves that they are the future. True, it remains to be seen whether Bitmain will mass-produce its systems amid a global shortage of electronic components.
NVIDIA, heeding the pleas of players, released in March its specialized accelerators Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP), which are focused on mining Ethereum. For example, the Palit- powered NVIDIA CMP 30HX retails for $ 724 and offers a performance of 26 MH / s with a power consumption of 125 watts. CMPs do not have video outputs and, therefore, can only be used as a math coprocessor. NVIDIA recently updated its CMP sales forecast for the first quarter, tripling its expectations to $ 150 million.
