secondary titleBloombergAccording to the interview, nearly 40% of Bitmain's revenue will come from AI chips within five years. This reveals that Bitmain has great ambitions in the field of AI chips. From focusing on mining machine production to embracing artificial intelligence, why is Bitmain seeking to change at this time? Is the AI ​​field really a turning point for Bitmain?

It is difficult for mining machines to progress with blockchain technology

As we all know, the mining of cryptocurrencies is based on the "mining" technology that requires a lot of calculations and electricity consumption. With the rise of the mining boom, the number of miners continues to increase, and a technical competition has launched among the miners. In order to increase the speed, the CPU is replaced by the GPU, and many miners have also begun to try ASIC mining that is faster than the GPU and consumes less power, including Bitmain's products.

The boom in mining machines has made Bitmain go from obscurity to the C position on the mining stage,According to the Bloomberg reportAt present, nearly 80% of the world's cryptocurrency mining requires the use of chips produced by Bitmain.

In April this year, Bitmain released the ant mining machine E3 for ETH. Before the launch of the Antminer E3, ETH did not have a dedicated ASIC chip, and miners could only use GPU mining. The upsurge of Ethereum mining made AMD and Nvidia GPUs in short supply in the market, and their prices skyrocketed. After the launch, the market of AMD and Nvidia was hit, causing the stock price to fall.

This sparked a debate among ethereum developers about whether it should "fork" again. Every fork has a great impact on "miners". After the fork, a new protocol will be generated, which also means that miners need to update their equipment. With the continuous innovation of blockchain technology, Bitmain's mining machines will bid farewell to the stage sooner or later.

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Multiple reasons such as market and policy have prompted Bitmain to enter the AI ​​market

Jihan Wu is already planning for the company's next move: artificial intelligence.

Wu Jihan revealed earlier that, taking artificial intelligence as an example, Bitmain’s goal is an industry different from BTC. Bitmain headquarters accepted "Bloomberg BusinessweekDuring the interview, Wu Jihan and his executives believed that artificial intelligence chips and Bitmain are a natural fit. Artificial intelligence requires a lot of calculations, and Bitmain has sufficient experience in computing improvements, which will assist in the development of its AI chips.

In fact, Bitmain’s layout in the AI ​​field began as early as November 2017.

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on November 8, 2017, Bitmain officially launched the AI ​​brand SOPHON. Subsequently, Bitmain began selling an early prototype of the tensor acceleration computing chip "Sophon BM1680".

Although Google’s Tensor Processing Unit predates Bitmain, Google’s chips are only available to customers with cloud services. China's ban on Google's cloud services has given Jihan Wu's AI chip a strong presence in China. Acceleration cards containing ASIC chips will be more effective for deep learning of machines, and the price is cheaper. It can reduce the difficulty of industry + AI with high cost performance and AI computing power with performance-to-power ratio.

Last July, the Chinese government announced plans to transform China into a leading AI nation by 2030, investing in research and supporting related businesses. If this kind of support becomes a reality, Bitmain’s concerns about regulatory suppression and confusion about its self-positioning will become a distant past.

(I am Mo Xinnan, the author of Odaily. I am exploring the real blockchain. Please add WeChat: m15978294590 for communication. Please note your name, company, and position.)

(I am Mo Xinnan, the author of Odaily. I am exploring the real blockchain. Please add WeChat: m15978294590 for communication. Please note your name, company, and position.)