Bitmain Announces Launch of Next-Generation Antminer S7 Bitcoin Miner

Bitmain, the Bitcoin mining ASIC provider, Sunday announced the release of its next-generation Bitcoin miner, the Antminer S7, using the recently announcedBM1385 ASIC.
The company argues that ‘this machine is not only our most efficient ever, using less than half the energy per gigahash of the S5, but it is also our most powerful miner to enter mass production.’ It had released the S5 in limited supply, which offers nearly 3,000 more GH/s than the announced S7.
‘It’s true that the S5 had a greater overall hashrate, but the S7 squeezes more juice from a smaller, more power efficient package,’ said Jake Smith, Bitmain’s head of North America, in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine. ‘When comparing hashrate to weight, size, or power consumption, the S7 comes out ahead.’
The Antminer S7 is a denser mining rig than previous models. Whereas the S5 used 60 chips per miner, the Antminer S7 uses 162 of the BM1385 chips. Each S7 will be able to generate upwards of 4,850 GH/s while only needing approximately 0.25 J/GH of power.
Part of the reason the chip is so much stronger is because the company went away from using standard design flow methods. ‘From the BM1385 onwards, we’ll be using full-custom design flow,’ Smith explained. While full-custom design flow is more work intensive and does have a greater margin of error, it results in greater efficiency, which is where profit can be found.

This post was published at Bitcoin Magazine on AUGUST 30, 2015.