Now that Samsung just beat Intel for the top spot in chip making, it has its eyes set for another goal. Samsung has officially confirmed that it is going to go through with its plan of producing ASIC chips. The chips are more commonly known as to be used in a bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrency miners.
The South Korean based tech-giant, just recently became the world’s largest chipmaker, breaking the 25-year-old record held by Intel. According to a company spokesman, “Samsung’s foundry business is currently engaged in the manufacturing of cryptocurrency mining chips. However, we are unable to disclose further details regarding our customers.” When further questioned about specifics, Samsung refused to comment.
This statement was a result of a report which had originated in Korean media. The reported was quite clear that Samsung is joining hands with an unnamed Chinese distribution partner in relation to the production of ASIC chips. It is already known that a vast majority of Samsung’s chip-based revenue comes from its involvement in the smartphone sector.
For the record, some of the GPUs, (Graphical Processing Units), also make use of Samsung’s large capacity memory chips. The purpose of these GPUs actually is to provide for Graphics in a computer, but alternatively, they have also been used to mine bitcoin at some time and other cryptocurrencies as well.
Surely, the ASIC production needed some competition after all. Currently, Bitmain and Canaan Creative both are the world leaders when it comes to ASIC. Both have a collaboration with Taiwanese tech-leader TSMC. If Samsung were to step into the game, it would surely lead to a good competition after all.
Now with the crypto boom and all, which saw TSMC’s revenues going up by $350-$400 Million, Samsung would surely like to cap and exploit the cryptocurrency explosion as well, since everyone is now talking about these currencies and their potential.
As of now, it is hard to say how Samsung would actually enter the market. We can predict safely, that it is for sure going to go edge to edge with TMSC. Since Samsung has enough experience with battling its rivals like Cupertino Tech Giant Apple or the great Intel, it would not be difficult for Samsung to do so either, courtesy the vast resources it has access to.
On the contrary, if Samsung instead of just producing ASIC chips, went further to deploy a complete bitcoin miner hardware, then it can be a sign of worry to Bitmain and Canaan and others as well.
Though, even if Samsung succeeds in this new venture of theirs, it will still take some time to be a considerable part of its own revenue in chip sales.