Bitmain Sets Pace in Mining Industry with Ultra-Modern Data Center
Bitmain, a Beijing-based Bitcoin company, has announced plans for a 135-megawatt data center, making it number two on the list of data centers that consume the most electricity in the world.
Assuming that Bitmain’s Antminer S9 consumes around 1400 watts, this data center should be able to house a little over 96,000 ASICS. With each ASIC capable of performing at 14 TH/s comfortably, the new data center has a maximum potential processing power of around 1350 petahashes, or approximately 72 percent of Bitcoin’s aggregate hash rate.
Now before there are concerns about 51 percent attacks from Bitmain’s newly planned data center, note that the above calculations make several assumptions. However, this assumes that they can achieve perfect cooling, to where 0 percent of the total energy budget is used for cooling and that they are using the S9 ASIC. Data centers typically consume 30 to 50 percent of their total electricity capacity just for cooling, and it would be an impressive manufacturing feat in itself if Bitmain were able to produce that many chips.
This also assumes that Bitmain is, in fact, using the S9; as of now, we do not know what machine or chips they are using for this mining operation.
According to Bitmain’s blog post, the majority of the energy consumed will come from renewable sources, a combination of both wind and solar energy.
Bitmain has also provided their expertise from designing similar data centers in China and internationally, helping design the cooling system, as well as engineering it in a way that the data center will remain dust free.
Bitmain also plans to release thorough details regarding the construction and layout for the data center, to provide an example for the industry. According to Bitmain’s Co-CEO Jihan Wu:
“We have seen that most data centers in the mining industry are wasting considerable money or other resources. We want to provide a more professional and cost-saving example to the industry.”
Completion of the construction of the data center was originally scheduled by the end of the 2016 year, but the timeline may be delayed due to an unexpectedly cold winter affecting ability to continue construction at the site.
