Design & Reuse

Cryptocurrency mining IC startup now a TSMC top-ten customer?

Bitmain Technologies Ltd. (Beijing, China), founded in 2013, was responsible for between 3 and 5 percent of TSMC's revenue in 1Q18 and became one of the foundry's top ten customers, according to a Digitimes report.

Apr. 11, 2018 – 

On its current growth trajectory and the expected early adoption of 7nm manufacturing process from TSMC Bitmain could soon rival Nvidia as a leading TSMC customer, the report said citing unnamed sources.

Bitmain is known as a vendor of Bitcoin mining ASICs and computer units based on those ASICs. The company started with the BM138 on a 55nm manufacturing process and the Antminer S1 mining machine in 2013 and has progressed to the Antminer S9 and Antminer T9+ using the BM1387 16nm ASIC chip.

According to the Digitimes report Bitmain is now a 'unicorn' – that is a startup company with a valuation of more than one billion dollars. It has been listed in a Chinese government report as one of two semiconductor unicorns, the other being Cambricon Technologies Corp. Ltd.

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