Scrypt miners arrive The advent of powerful scr
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The advent of powerful scrypt ASIC miners has raised additional concerns in the litecoin community. The first scrypt ASICs are now starting to appear and the biggest names in the industry are set to join the fray.
KnCMiner’s Titan is a good example. The chip has already taped out and the first batch is expected to ship sometime in the third quarter of this year.
The Titan can deliver up to 400MH/s, which means it is as powerful as 400 high-end Radeon GPUs (graphic processor units) of the sort found in gaming PCs. Alpha Technology is promising 250MH/s out of its Viper scrypt miner.
Both cost about $10,000, which gives them an advantage over GPU miners in terms ROI, or dollars per MH/s. The difference is even bigger when efficiency is factored into the equation, as GPU miners waste a lot more energy.
We can only speculate on the number of scrypt ASIC miners bound to join the litecoin network over the next few months, but their effect is likely to be be substantial nonetheless.
Earlier this year KnC said it was planning to build and sell as many as 2,500 Titans in the first production run. The company confirmed it had $2m worth of pre-orders earlier this year.