Bitmain Technologies Limited has officially announced its latest next-generation 7nm (nanometer) Bitcoin mining chip – the new BM1397 – claiming it “achieves new feats in performance, chip area, and energy efficiency for mining cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH)”.

According to its official blog (Feb 18), the chip can perform with lower power and offer energy consumption as low as 30J/TH. In comparison, this BM1397 is 28.6% more efficient than the previous BM1391.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the main manufacturer of BM1397 using TSMC’s 7nm FinFET process. Bitmain stated that it had researched chip architecture closely, and sought to deeply understand the most advanced technology in semiconductor production. Bitmain aims to “set a new benchmark in ASIC chip technology”.

Bitmain revealed in its blog that it is planning to include the BM1397 chip in new Antminer models S17 and T17, which will be announced later. Bitmain did not specify when.

Recently, Bitmain has been facing some difficulties, causing it to suspend its Bitcoin mining operations in Rockdale, Texas in January. It also let go of more than half its global operations in the Netherlands, and shut its development center in Israel last year.