Goldstrike 1: CoinTerra´s First-Generation Cryptocurrency Mining Processor for Bitcoin

Author

Barkatullah, Javed ; Hanke, Timo

Author_Institution

ASIC Eng., CoinTerra, USA

Volume

35

Issue

2

fYear

2015

fDate

Mar.-Apr. 2015

Firstpage

68

Lastpage

76

Abstract

There is an intense technological race underway to build the highest-performance and lowest-power custom Bitcoin mining appliances using custom ASIC processors. This article describes the architecture and implementation details of CoinTerra´s first-generation Bitcoin mining processor, Goldstrike 1, and how this processor is used to design a complete Bitcoin mining machine called Terraminer IV. Because of high power density in the Bitcoin mining processor, delivering power and cooling the die posed enormous challenges. This article describes some of the solutions adopted to overcome these challenges.

Keywords

application specific integrated circuits; cryptography; data mining; electronic money; Bitcoin mining appliances; Bitcoin mining machine; CoinTerra first-generation Bitcoin mining processor; CoinTerra first-generation cryptocurrency mining processor; Goldstrike 1; Terraminer IV; custom ASIC processors; Application specific integrated circuits; Computer security; Cryptography; Data mining; Energy efficiency; Online banking; Bitcoin; Bitcoin ASIC; Bitcoin mining; Blockchain; CoinTerra; GoldStrike; SHA-256; energy efficiency;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Micro, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0272-1732

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MM.2015.13

Filename

7045415