Great news for Bitcoin miners and ASIC rig fans – Bitmain just released firmware for the Antminer S9, one of the most enduring and popular cryptocurrency mining rigs on the market today. The new firmware is designed to enable “overt AsicBoost”, according to a recent blog post by Bitmain.
The recent release was delayed largely due to concerns about the use of AsicBoost by miners and how that use could impact the brand:
“Initially, we decided against activating this mathematical function in mining hardware produced by us, largely because of the legal uncertainty surrounding the use of AsicBoost. As an organization, we didn’t want to violate patent laws or act in any way that was untoward. Instead, we continued to focus our efforts on R&D and building the industry’s most efficient mining chips.”
By spring 2018, though, Bitmain began to notice that new hardware manufacturers were advertising an “AsicBoost” product and that blocks were appearing on the blockchain that had been mined using the product. According to the brand’s recent post, they released an overt version of AsicBoost to give Bitmain users official support and to allow them to stay competitive in the increasingly volatile cryptocurrency mining space. There is support available now for this firmware on both BTC.COM and Antpool.
