Quantum Blockchain Technologies PLC (AIM:QBT) announced the first phase of its FPGA (field-programmable gate array) development is complete, marking an important step in its goal to find faster and more energy-efficient ways to mine cryptocurrency.
It is now moving to develop its ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) protype.
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The current technique used by miners is manufacturing single purpose, customised ASIC chips, which can perform only one wired function, which is the computation of an algorithm used to extract Bitcoins.
Quantum said the faster the algorithms are computed and the more ASIC chips deployed, the more chances a miner has to extract Bitcoins.
Before manufacturing an ASIC chip, which is an expensive operation, there are usually two initial steps.
Firstly, to develop the logic gates architecture which will be used by the final ASIC chip – this is performed on a cheaper but slower chip, called an FPGA, which already contains some pre-defined functions – and secondly by customising the design, initially by manufacturing a prototype in a small batch, to keep costs low.
The final stage, manufacturing the completed ASIC chip, is an expensive process, but the result is a very small scale (currently up to 5nm) processing chip, which is significantly quicker.
QBT has now completed the FPGA development phase and is moving to develop its ASIC protype.
Initial estimates from internal testing indicate that Quantum’s ASIC prototype design could outperform the fastest ASIC chip in use in the crypto industry by at least 24%.
The firm has also carried out AI analysis that showed its FPGA could become a competitive Bitcoin mining tool.
This same principal would apply to ASIC and other existing commercial mining tools, Quantum said. Tests will continue over the next three months.
“Our R&D has delivered some very impressive results in a very short time: in only four months since the programme commenced, we have filed a patent application where we believe the ASIC ULTRA Boost has improved the standard mining algorithm, after five years of little or no progress following the publication in 2016 of the ASIC Boost paper,” said chief executive and chairman Francesco Gardin.
“We will soon be ready to start the design of our ASIC Bitcoin mining chip which, on paper, already outperforms, in speed, the current best in class ASIC Bitcoin mining commercial solution. This significant improvement is before the implementation of the new optimisation from ASIC ULTRA Boost and we are confident that our second patent application, which is under development by our cryptography expert, will add a further radical improvement to the process, including also a reduction in energy consumption.”