Exclusive: SMIC or the first entry miner to cooperate with Jianan to ship Q2

Wu said that the blockchain has been exclusively informed that SMIC, the largest chip manufacturer in mainland China, may use its products for the first time in cryptocurrency mining machines that are mass-produced and shipped. It is reported that the 14nm mining machine chip cooperated by SMIC and Jianan Technology has completed testing and will be mass-produced and shipped in the second quarter of this year. The specific chip type or a certain small currency miner.

SMIC is an integrated circuit manufacturing enterprise group with the most advanced technology, the most complete support, the largest scale, and multinational operations in mainland China. It has fabs in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and Jiangyin. The highest chip process currently available is 14nm, it is expected to start trial production of 7nm in the fourth quarter of this year.

According to industry insiders, this is not the first time SMIC has attempted to enter the field of mining machines. At the beginning of 18, SMIC had cooperated with celebrities in the Dongguan currency circle. However, due to the sharp decline in bitcoin prices, which led to the withdrawal of investors. No mass production. SMIC has been actively entering the mining machine industry, and has cooperated with other mining machine manufacturers, but there is no main production model.

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SMIC has very close cooperation in the IP field with mining machine manufacturer Core Motion Technology. Core Motion has won the Best IP China Partner Award from SMIC for four consecutive years. However, the core mining machine is temporarily not using chips manufactured by SMIC.

SMIC has the strong support of the Chinese government. The big fund (National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund) is the second largest shareholder of SMIC. At the same time, governments in various places have given subsidies, so the product price has certain advantages. However, there is still a certain gap between the performance of TSMC and Samsung products, and there are also great patent barriers in IP authorization.

Jianan chose SMIC more because of cost considerations. In the fourth quarter of 2019, because of the decline of Bitcoin and the removal of inventories, Jianan suffered a significant increase in revenue while revenue increased by 66% year-on-year. Zhang Nan Geng, chairman of Jianan, said that 2020 will focus more on improving the efficiency of R & D budget usage. In terms of management costs, this year we focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency, and reducing costs overall through refined management methods but completing more projects.

As the first listed mining machine company, Jianan once said that listing would help the supply chain with its brand. At present, Jianan is also a rare mainstream mining machine manufacturer that has reached cooperation with Samsung, TSMC and SMIC. Products based on Samsung 8nm have been mass-produced and shipped in the first quarter, and products based on TSMC's 5nm technology are also under intense development. Historically, mining machine manufacturers and chip manufacturers will have certain exclusive cooperation, such as the binding relationship between Bitmain and TSMC, and they cannot cooperate with Samsung. Shenma and Xindong are currently mainly acquiring production capacity from Samsung.

SMIC has a very legendary history and grudges with TSMC, and also carries the hope of the Chinese chip industry. TSMC has repeatedly sued SMIC for patent infringement, forcing its founder Zhang Rujing to leave. In 2009, the two parties signed a settlement agreement. SMIC will pay TSMC 200 million US dollars in cash in installments for 4 years. TSMC will also hold 10% of SMIC's shares.

Against the backdrop of the Sino-US trade war, SMIC's status has also become more prominent. The US export control requirements require that if the technology derived from the US meets certain standards, it is not allowed to be exported. If strictly follow this guideline, TSMC and Samsung may not be able to provide services to Chinese chip companies. Some analysts believe that SMIC will benefit from "domestic substitution" in the context of the trade war, and future cooperation with more mining machine manufacturers will be the trend.

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