Samsung is very well know for its semiconductor business and how well it’s doing. The company recently took over Intel as being the world’s biggest chipmaker. Samsung is not going to take rest even though it’s doing very well.
The South Korean firm is looking to expand into the cryptocurrency mining area, according to a report from TechCrunch. According to the report, Samsung has confirmed that it’s in the process of building hardware that is specifically designed for cryptocurrency mining. Yes, this hardware will help you with mining for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
A Samsung spokesperson told TechCrunch: “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.” These chips are known as ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits. These processors are specifically designed for a single computational task, as opposed to the multi-purpose processors we currently use in our phones and computers.
Demand for these sorts of chips has constantly gone up as the valuation of cryptocurrencies continues to rise. For example, in the case of bitcoin, the currency is created by solving math problems, and these calculations also maintain the integrity of bitcoin transactions. As the mining for bitcoins increases, the math problems are also becoming increasingly difficult. This created a trend on the market where miners started to move from normal integrated graphics cards to using GPUs designed for gaming. The prices for gaming GPUs has skyrocketed in the recent months.
Right now, it’s unclear how exactly Samsung will be going about this, but reports from Korean media suggests that the company will be working with Taiwanese firm TSMC. The company is currently supplying several firms that are setup specifically for cryptocurrency mining, including the China-based Bitmain. TSMC added that meeting the demand for these chips is alone bringing around $350 million to $400 million in its quarterly revenue. Needless to say, Samsung is looking to add that extra cash to its pipeline of income.
