Taiwan SSD Makers to Sell Drives Directly to Chia Miners

Micron
(Image credit: Micron)

The ongoing Chia coin craze has already increased prices of high-capacity HDDs and SSDs in retail quite significantly. Since demand for storage devices is not going to get any lower, Taiwan-based makers of SSDs are developing special-purpose SSDs for Chia mining that they plan to sell directly to miners. Furthermore, drive makers expect Chia to consume considerable 3D NAND production capacities in the coming months. 

Adata, Apacer, Phison Electronics, and TeamGroup all reported significant increases of SSD orders in April when compared to March, according to DigiTimes. Adata said that demand for its SSDs increased by 400% – 500% sequentially last month, TeamGroup also saw an impressive increase and expressed optimism about the short-term Chia farming demand for SSDs. Other makers tend to agree that demand for SSDs will remain strong in the coming months.  

In a bid to meet demand and offer farmers the components they need to make the best Chia plotting PC builds, Adata, Phison, and TeamGroup have started developing  appropriate SSDs (or at least have created task forces). 

Since the majority of SSD makers have enterprise-grade drives designed for write-intensive workloads in their lineups, developing high-endurance Chia-optimized storage solutions should not pose a significant challenge for their engineering teams. Essentially, they will have to develop high-endurance SSDs based on consumer-grade 3D NAND (with loads of over-provisioning space) that do not have enterprise features. TeamGroup has already announced its first SSDs for Chia mining and expects to ship them in high volumes in Q3 2021. 

What is interesting is that Adata, Phison, and TeamGroup are looking at ways to ship their Chia farming SSDs directly to mining farms, so these drives may not end up in retail (just like we do not see many high-end HDDs and SSDs in retail). To some degree, this will ensure that large Chia farming operations will not get their drives from retail and inflate prices, which is good news. There is bad news too.  

High-capacity high-endurance SSDs for Chia mining will naturally increase demand for 3D NAND memory in general. Phison already told DigiTimes that Chia SSDs would "consume considerably all the available capacity" at 3D NAND makers. To that end, demand for both 3D NAND and SSD controller are set to increase, which will cause price hikes. 

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • InvalidError
    chip shortage intensifies
    Reply
  • evdjj3j
    Every time i read about cryptocurrency I feel a strong urge to kick Elon Musk in the nuts.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    evdjj3j said:
    Every time i read about cryptocurrency I feel a strong urge to kick Elon Musk in the nuts.
    i mean he has nothing to do with it.

    It was a thing long b4 he ever mentioned it.

    It will be a thing long after he is tired of it.
    Reply
  • OriginFree
    hotaru251 said:
    i mean he has nothing to do with it.

    It was a thing long b4 he ever mentioned it.

    It will be a thing long after he is tired of it.

    True, but let's keep the kicking of Musk's balls as a back-up thing just in case.
    You can never go wrong with a good nut shot to a nut-job.
    Reply
  • Co BIY
    Maybe the Chinese economy ( or the whole culture) is so repressed that all financial (and maybe some others) mania's can only get expression in the technology sphere because the CCP has been/is "laisse-faire" (or maybe naively boosterist) around technology.

    I know that other countries and cultures are involved in this crypto craziness but China does appear to be the epicenter.

    I am not committed to this idea and would love to hear better ones. I would also be interested hear what Chinese Crypto currency culture looks like to someone in China.

    In my circle it is the same people who are always chasing the latest get rich quick idea (pot stocks, house flipping without skills, ect...). Always just about to make so much money they can retire early but somehow always still back at work a year later.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Co BIY said:
    I know that other countries and cultures are involved in this crypto craziness but China does appear to be the epicenter.
    It is nearly impossible to get money out of China without getting it cleared by the government, so I can imagine the interest in ways to bypass government oversight by converting money to crypto via mining and then cashing it out elsewhere. With the Chinese economy being built like a house of cards, quite often literally as entire families lock their life savings into shoddily-built bare-concrete condos that may crumble only a few years down the line, it cannot afford money getting taken out of the economy in an uncontrolled manner.
    Reply
  • daworstplaya
    evdjj3j said:
    Every time i read about cryptocurrency I feel a strong urge to kick Elon Musk in the nuts.

    Totally, he's worn out all the good he's done IMHO.
    Reply