Samsung has revealed that it’s working on creating specially designed processors for a Chinese cryptocurrency mining company, which the South Korean tech giant expects will boost its 2018 earnings significantly.
The company says that a specific devision within its semiconductor business called Foundry will head up the project. The news was first released in the tech giant’s fourth quarter earnings report, with Samsung stating that it will “benefit from cryptocurrrency demand increase” because of this initiative.
A company spokesperson also confirmed that it is working on hardware designed for cryptocurrency mining in a statement to South Korean publication The Bell.
“It is in the beginning stage so the proportion of profit from the overall foundry business is small… We are making progress with our foundry business that supplies to a virtual money mining company in China,” said Samsung in the interview.
“It is in the beginning stage so the proportion of profit from the overall foundry business is small yet.”
Cryptocurrency mining requires powerful computers that are capable of solving complex mathematical problems. On a very basic level, solving these problems then validates a transaction on the cryptocurrency’s network — sometimes referred to as a blockchain. The process often requires specially configured hardware and chipsets.
Samsung expects its Foundry division to eventually be so valuable that it will soon amount to the company’s number two most profitable business.
Given how useful specific GPUs are when it comes to cryptocurrency mining, many high-end PC graphics cards are difficult to hunt down right now, or have skyrocketed in cost.
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