More recently, Avalon was the only processor, specially sharpened on the calculation of Bitcoin. Since then, Butterfly Labs seems to have finally started sending out something (but we haven’t yet been able to get a sample of their microcircuits), and what is much more interesting - Bitfury Bitcoin engineering crystals have been obtained.

Bitfury is radically more efficient (in terms of power consumption on Mhash) Avalon-a and BFL, due to the fact that it is produced using 55nm technology (at the TSMC plant in Taiwan), and the scheme is completely drawn by hand, without using automatic synthesis from standard cells. So, 1 Avalon crystal, as we remember, gives about 282 Mhash / sec, while Bitfury produces about 2-3 Ghash / sec (the exact numbers will be clear when the chips are delivered to the finished mining devices).

Bitfury Chip is notable for the fact that it was developed by our compatriot from Ukraine. However, he does not disclose his name in order not to attract too much attention. This was his first integrated circuit design — before that, he had been briefly involved in FPGA. What may surprise many - they did not test the crystal in the shuttle / MPW (test production start from several customers at the same time) - it would take a lot of time, although the cost of the error would be less. The project was immediately sent to mass production. Surprisingly, it all worked the first time. The final assembly of devices will be organized by the Moscow company Metabank.
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Photo

The chip itself, like the Avalon, is in the QFN package due to a good heat sink and a short distance from the crystal to the terminals. Do not kick the photo - the inscriptions are extremely difficult to read, so the lighting is so ... unusual.


We get the crystal from the case:


The top layer of metal - has a very original grid of distribution of power on the chip area:


Chipart "Nanoflower":


We poison metallization:


The regular structure of the crystal is clearly visible, consisting of a set of similar blocks of hash calculation.


55nm is already at least 5 times smaller than what can be seen with an optical microscope, so that the smallest details of the implementation will remain hidden from us….

Summary

Bitfury - a real product, and the performance of 1 crystal - turned out to be an order of magnitude better than existing competitors. It turned out that with a neat approach to business, you can run the chip from the first time, even if it is the first project. The developer’s experience can only be envied :-)

Also, Bitfury is probably one of the few (if not the only) large-scale microelectronic projects in the former USSR, which was launched without government funding, and not in the interests of foreign customers.

We can only wish success in the implementation of this project, and spit three times over the left shoulder to go through customs without additional quests.