Samsung enters crypto-currency chips business The South Korean company overtook Intel to become the biggest chipmaker last year. Samsung Electronics has revealed in its latest earnings report of making chips designed specifically to set crypto hardware business with the intention to increase revenues.
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'Samsung Starts Making Crypto-currency Mining Chips'
In the reports Samsung forecast strong demand for its forthcoming Galaxy S9 smartphone, which is due to be revealed on 25 February 2018. Samsung Electronic’s fourth quarter net profit totaled 12.3tn won ($11.5bn; £8.1bn), which was roughly in line with analysts’ expectations. But its shares jumped nearly 9% after the company revealed that it was splitting its stock 50-to-1, which should encourage trade in the asset.
ASIC’s advantage
Samsung is providing little explanation about its new business. In a statement given to an international news agency the Samsung officials said: “Samsung’s foundry business is currently engaged in the manufacturing of crypto-currency mining chips,” “However we are unable to disclose further details regarding our customers.”
Bitcoin – the Revenue comes calling
Mining is the solving complex mathematical problems as a means to verify crypto-currency transactions – a task for which the owners of the computers involved are rewarded with new digital “coins”. The Bell, a Korean-language newspaper, has reported that the processors involved are ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips.
These chips are not able to perform general computing operations and are custom-designed “mining” Bitcoin or another specific crypto-currency. Previously these chips were associated with the TV industry. But in 2013, am American based business owner start selling processors custom-designed for Bitcoin mining with promise of better performance and lower energy use than GPU (graphics processing unit) chips, which are still more commonly associated with the task.
In last quarter of 2017 a shortage of high-end GPU cards has dragged their prices, making the rival ASIC technology even more attractive. Taiwan’s TSMC was the only other major processor-manufacturer engaged in the activity but now, according to The Bell, Samsung completed development of its own Bitcoin-related ASIC chip last year and began mass production earlier this month.
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Garrick Hileman, a crypto-currency researcher from the University of Cambridge said: “We don’t know how low Samsung can sell its chip for and still be profitable,” “But if Bitcoin’s price were to collapse and enter a bear market like in 2014 to 2015, one would wonder if Samsung would stay with this line of business through such a turn.” Another expert elucidated that Samsung’s move represented a bet that Bitcoin’s rise in value does not represent a bubble that is about to burst.
