Today, Bitmain announce sales of new batches of S9 miner with price ranging from 6,500 to 7,000 CNY. Meanwhile, 700-2600 yuan worth of coupons will be distributed to buyers of earlier batches. The company also states 10-day advancement of the batch that should be to be delivered between 10 May and 20 May. Given the existing number of miners, there is already active OTC dealing of coupons at a discount rate. Therefore the actual price of S9 miner is lower than the official statement. According to industrial news, Bitmain will roll out ASICs based on TSMC’s 7nm and 10nm process in the second half of this year. The price cut of S9 miner  helps clear way for the new models.

According to Jiweiwang, Bitmain’s order will be introduced into TSMC’s 7nm process in the second half of 2018 along with Hisilicon, Cambricon. The three companies have become the icon of IC design companies in China.
It is said that Bitmain has ranked among the top 5 TSMC customers in Q1 this year. Although the prices of BTC and ETH has gone through major fluctuations, Bitmain’s order was not affected. Instead, it has accelerated its progress toward more advanced processes. Bitmain has contracted the total production capacity of the Nanjing Fab of TSMC. The company will roll out a variety of ASICs based on TSMC 10nm and 7nm process in the 2nd half of this year.
Bitmain is also working on AI chips: sophon. But Cambricon, the AI chips leader in China, released two AI chips last week, including the Cambricon MLU100 cloud smart chip and board products, and the Cambrian 1M terminal smart processor. MLU100 is based on Cambricon’s latest MLUv01 architecture and TSMC’s 16nm process, and has been adopted by many companies. The Cambricon also announced 1M terminal intelligent processor IP is based on TSMC’s 7nm process and capable of performing 5 megaflops at 8-digit computing per watt.