There have been rumors circulating concerning a new Scrypt miner, the Antminer L3. The Antminer L3 is rumored to allow 250 MH/s with 400 watts at the wall. This was leaked from Bitmain apparently.
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If the rumors are true, then this will change the face of Scrypt mining forever. The difficulty for Scrypt has been very stable until the A4 machines from innosilicon pushed the difficulty up which dropped a bit as older unprofitable machines dropped off the network.
The KNC Titan still ties with the Innosilicon devices in terms of power use and raw hash rate, but if this is true, both devices will be rendered obsolete, as the innosilicon model has more than double the power usage and many problems with it’s circuit boards.
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As Bitmain is likely to sell any such machines like toasters, it is going to push the difficulty up, and unless the price rises to match it is likely that many devices such as the KNC Titan or the instantly obsolete A4 would drop off the network unless the power costs are cheap.
It is likely the price will rise, as no serious company like Bitmain would put the effort into 16nm Scrypt mining unless they felt it was worth their while. It is likely difficulty jumps will not be felt until after the Chinese new year, as many manufacturers have halted production until then.
This is what it has been leaked that it will look like, however until an official announcement from Bitmain is heard we can only speculate. It is likely that if it is true, the A4 Dominator will be useless early on in the lifecycle, and the KNC titans ROI will be greatly reduced after a year although many of these have since ROIed already.
The KNC Titan had a good run, but this is not looking good for the A4 Dominator, we will update when more information becomes available!