ASICs that utilize 130nm or 65nm cannot compete because more silicon is required to make these chips. Plus, it generally takes more power and generates more heat. Any company that is utilizing 65nm designs won't last long term because they simply cannot compete with 28nm.
That's not going to matter until most of the profitability in mining is gone and the value you get from mining is close to the cost of electricity.
Right now, the goal when buying mining equipment is to have it pay for itself in a few months, $/Gh/s is going to matter more then Gh/J.
Since the NRE costs are lower for higher densities, the cost of the chips may be lower in the short run, and only after costs are amortized will 28nm be cheaper then higher densities.
Obviously in the long run we'll be running 22, 20nm designs.
Interesting. What I do know is that LabCoin uses 130nm and 65nm design versus HashFast's 28nm design. So, basically LabCoin is working on first and second generation ASIC bitcoin miners while HashFast is already working on third generation. It is possible long term LabCoin will not be able to compete with HashFast. What this may mean is IceDrill may be able to upgrade and put more efficient 28nm units in faster while LabCoin will still be working on their 65nm design which will be rendered obsolete.
Well, the difference is LabCoin (And ASICminer, BTCGarden and ActiveMining) pays whatever the fab charges for it's chips, while IceDrill has to pay whatever HashFast wants to charge them.
Anyway, the thing to keep in mind is that unlike a CPU, you can scale these out in a nearly completely linear way, since the necessary bandwidth between chips is so low.
Using
this profitabilty calculator an 82Gh/s, 110nm Avalon unit drawing 700w would make about $110/day until the next difficulty increase.
The power costs would be about $1.60, at $0.10/kWh.
That means in order for the unit to be unprofitable @ $0.10/kWh, the difficulty would need to be about 2.5 billionAnd in order for the unit to be unprofitable at $0.05/kWh, the difficulty would have to be over billion.
So think about it: You get a 400Gh/s HashFast chip @ $14/Gh That comes out to $5,600. Let's assume this magical 28nm efficiency lets it run at 100W.
At 2.5 billion difficulty, you only make $8/day, and it would take almost two years to earn back your investmentAt 5 billion difficulty, you only make $4/day and it takes you almost 4 years to earn back your investment!See the problem? While it's true that IceDrill might need to use less electricity then LabCoin today, that power cost is going to be far lower then the money they'll make though mining in the short run.
And on top of that, the money they'll make in the long run is hardly anything, compared to what they'll make in the short run.
The way things are going, I actually wouldn't be surprised to see a few TH difficulty in the early part of next year.