Innosilicon: the company and the T3, A9, A5 and A4 series

Innosilicon is a semiconductor developer for which miners were a side branch. The company's core business is interface IP for chips: memory controllers, high-speed transceivers, display outputs, die-to-die interconnects. The company was founded in 2006 and works out of Wuhan. Its staff runs to more than a thousand engineers, and it has offices in China, the USA, Canada, the UK and Korea.

The mining branch began at the end of 2013 with a chip for bitcoin. In April 2014 the company released the world's first ASIC for Litecoin on a 28 nm process. It all ended in 2022. The last model, the A11 series, came out at the end of 2021. There have been no new miners since then, and the miner sections have been removed from the navigation and the catalog of the official sites: today they carry only semiconductor IP blocks, custom chips and Fenghua series graphics cards.

The company never published a formal statement about leaving mining. It simply stopped: the last mining news item in the official archive is dated January 2020, the product pages have been deleted, and the firmware links in surviving copies lead nowhere. In practice this means that all eleven models in our catalog come with no warranty, no support and no updates.

Hence the tone of this page. We are not going to pretend that we are selling you a working tool for making money. Every Innosilicon miner in the catalog is hardware from 2016 to 2019 with efficiency that lags several times behind modern gear, and on Scrypt by tens of times. At the Spanish tariff that means a loss for every month it runs.

The history of the mining division fits into nine years and ends quietly. These are the milestones visible to a buyer of equipment, including the ones that do the company no credit.

• 2006The company is founded. It has nothing to do with mining: it is a developer of interface IP blocks for chips.
• 2013The company's first mining chip, for bitcoin. For the company mining is a side branch next to its core business in interface IP blocks.
• 2014The world's first ASIC for Litecoin on a 28 nm process and a reference miner based on it. Before that Scrypt was computed on graphics cards.
• 2015In November the A4 Dominator with a chip on a 14 nm process is announced.
• 2016The A4 Dominator goes into series production. This is the world's first Scrypt miner on a chip built on a 14 nm process.
• 2017In July the A5 DashMaster for X11 is announced: 30.2 GH/s at 750 watts on the spec sheet, with overclocking up to 38. In October the A4+ LTCMaster is released.
• 2018The densest year of the lineup. In January the A6 LTCMaster, in March the A5+ DashMaster at 65 GH/s, in April the A8+ CryptoMaster, and also the D9 for Decred on Blake256R14 and the S11 for Sia on Blake2B, in May the T2 Terminator for SHA-256, in June the A9 ZMaster for Equihash. In July a chip on a low-power Samsung process is announced, in November the Terminator 3 is announced.
• 2019The year of the T3 series and the last year of a real presence on the market. In January the A9+ ZMaster and the first batch of the T3-43T, in March the T3-39T, in April the T3+ 52T, in May the A9++ ZMaster, in July the T3 50T, in September the T3+ 57T and the first miner for Ethash. In May the company announces its entry into the Russian market.
• 2019In the autumn the story that damaged the brand's reputation begins. Shipment of the miners for Grin is moved from October to December, then to January. Buyers are offered vouchers as compensation for the wait.
• 2020In January the Grin project is canceled altogether, with production problems at the foundry named as the reason. Full refunds of the prepayments are completed only by the end of May, four and a half months after the cancellation. In the same year the company goes to court against its chip packaging contractor, demanding 25 million dollars for defects, and the contractor responds with counterclaims. No public ruling on the dispute could be found.
• 2020The January notice about the cancellation of the Grin project turns out to be the last mining news item in the official archive. After that the archive covers only semiconductor IP blocks and graphics cards.
• 2021In the autumn the A11 series for Ethash is released. The miners ship with 1500 MH/s instead of the promised 2000, roughly a quarter weaker than the announcement. The company reports a police investigation into fraudulent preorder sales and the dismissal of an employee. In November a Fenghua graphics card on a licensed graphics core is announced, and that one has nothing to do with mining.
• 2022In August all ASICs of the A10 series stop mining Ethereum once the network data file reaches a certain size. No official explanation and no fix followed. In September the Ethereum network moves away from proof-of-work, and the whole Ethash lineup loses its value in a single day.
• 2025The company is working and growing, but already without miners: in September the third graphics card of the Fenghua series for computing and artificial intelligence was presented. There is no mining section on the site.

The names read like this: a letter with a number is the family, and the word after it is the coin or the algorithm. A4 and A6 are Scrypt and Litecoin, A5 is X11 and Dash, A8 is CryptoNight, A9 is Equihash and Zcash, A10 and A11 are Ethash, T2 and T3 are SHA-256 and bitcoin, D9 is Decred, S11 is Sia. Our catalog holds four families from this list.

The asic.es catalog lists 11 Innosilicon models across four algorithms: five for SHA-256, three for Equihash, two for X11 and one for Scrypt. Every miner was released between 2016 and 2019, so the newest of them is seven years old and the oldest is ten.

Power draw is 620 to 3300 watts, and there is no home hardware in this lineup: even the most modest unit pulls more than half a kilowatt and runs at 70 dB.

SHA-256, models: 5

Other algorithms, models: 6

Four algorithms across eleven miners. One of the four directions is still economically alive, Equihash, and the other three are dead.

Six coins across four algorithms. Not one of them gives these miners positive economics today at grid tariffs in Spain.

What is inside Innosilicon miners is known only in part, and the newer the model, the less data there is. For the early miners the process node was named in press releases, while for the T3 series and for the A5 and A9 it was never officially published.

What is known reliably: the A4 Dominator is built on a chip made on a 14 nm process, eighty dies per miner. For the T1 and T2 families the die index and the board layout are known: the T1 has sixty three chips across twenty one power domains, the T2 has sixty eight chips on the board, and the process is described as Samsung low-power technology. For the T3 and T3+ shops write about 7 nm, but no confirmation from the manufacturer or the foundry could be found, so treat that figure as unconfirmed.

Control boards

Every miner in the catalog has a built-in power supply and runs from 210 to 240 volt mains, except the A9 ZMaster: it needs an external power supply of at least a kilowatt with seven six-pin connectors, and the supply is not included.

Inlet operating temperature is 0 to 40 or 5 to 45 degrees depending on the model, and humidity for the T3 50T is given in the range from 5 to 95 percent. Noise is 75 dB on every ASIC except the A9 ZMaster, which is at 70. This is a normal industrial level, incompatible with a living space.

Miner weight runs from about 5.9 to 12.3 kilograms, and the dimensions are standard for an ASIC of that period. Two different sets of dimensions circulate for the T3+ 57T. The second one was most likely taken with the packaging or the power supply.

Innosilicon never had hydro or immersion miners. All units are air cooled, all are industrial, and there is not a single home model in the lineup.

The factory firmware is managed through a web interface at the miner address on the local network, and that address is assigned by the automatic configuration protocol. The manufacturer supplied a separate utility for finding the address. The factory credentials are common knowledge and identical on every ASIC, and some models have a second password variant. There is also terminal access on a non-standard port, and on some models it uses an unencrypted protocol whose passwords were published in open sources long ago. Change them immediately and keep the miner in a separate network segment.

There is nothing to update the firmware from today: the download sections on the official sites have been removed, and in the surviving copies the file links lead nowhere. Only the user manuals in document form still work.

The factory firmware has a known headache: a memory leak that makes the miner freeze once every few days. It is described in the documentation of a third-party management client, and the standard fix there is simple, a forced reboot on a schedule. If you take on such an ASIC, plan that reboot in from the start.

Full-featured third-party firmware for Innosilicon is practically nonexistent: independent build developers do not cover this brand, and our AsicBoost firmware is made only for Antminer. There is, however, a third-party fleet management client that supports the A5, A8, A9, D9, S11, T2 and T3 series, and it covers fleet monitoring and automatic reboot, which the factory interface lacks.

Official manufacturer supply channels for parts have not existed for several years. That leaves the secondary market and specialist suppliers of repair components, who still keep a separate Innosilicon catalog.

Repairability for Innosilicon today is determined not by the design but by age. The miners are seven to ten years old, there is no manufacturer behind them, and chips are almost impossible to buy. Detailed hash board repair guides do exist, and so do workshops that still take these ASICs on.

There are no official failure statistics for Innosilicon and there never will be: the product line is closed. There are detailed repair workshop guides, and the pattern of typical faults shows up well in them.

The workshops name resistance imbalance across power domains, voltage divergence between domains, chips not being detected and broken signal chains, failure of individual dies, along with related faults in power transistors, regulators and microcontrollers on the board. They also list separately the signs under which a repair is better not started: the breaker trips, a burning smell, melted power connectors, repeated loss of hash boards, visible corrosion.

One well-known problem lies not in the hardware but in the firmware: a memory leak that makes the miner freeze once every few days. It is dealt with by a forced reboot on a schedule.

It is not really the design that decides here. These miners are seven to ten years old, and in that time the thermal paste has dried out, the capacitors in the power supplies have aged and the fan bearings have worn out. Budget for servicing on the first day.

Efficiency is what decides whether the purchase makes sense. The figures are unpleasant, but there are no others.

Comparing efficiency across algorithms is pointless, so look inside your own group, and to judge how current a miner still is, compare it with modern miners on the same algorithm.

At the Spanish price per kilowatt hour all eleven miners run at a loss. For the T3 series to even break even, electricity has to cost around two or three cents per kilowatt hour, roughly six times less than the retail price in Spain. A single T3+ 57T on an ordinary tariff burns about two hundred and seventy euros of net loss per month.

With X11 and Scrypt the situation is worse still: there electricity has to be practically free, because the revenue of such an ASIC is measured in tens of cents per day. The one exception is the A9 series: it goes into profit up to roughly ten cents per kilowatt hour, but Spanish retail prices exceed even that.

Calculate the profitability of a specific model →

We compare Innosilicon with the brands still in business one criterion at a time, because on most criteria the gap is measured in multiples.

As an earning tool Innosilicon is no competition to anyone today: the line is closed, there is no support, and efficiency lags by multiples. The only group where positive economics is still possible is the A9 series on Zcash, and even then only with electricity cheaper than Spanish retail.

Such ASICs are useful to people who strip them for parts, put them on a bench, study hash board repair or heat a room with them and take the side income. The only question is the price: you cannot pay for one as if it were a working miner.

There is no manufacturer behind it. This is where to start. The last mining news item in the official archive is dated January 2020, the miner sections have been removed from the sites, there is nowhere to download firmware, and the warranty expired no later than 2020. All servicing falls on you and on independent workshops.

Economics at the Spanish tariff. All eleven miners run at a loss at the retail price of electricity. The T3 series needs electricity at around two or three cents per kilowatt hour just to break even. Work out your own tariff before you send the money.

The age of the hardware. These ASICs are seven to ten years old. The thermal paste has dried out, the capacitors in the power supplies have aged, and the fan bearings have worn out. Servicing is needed the moment you receive the unit.

Original chips are not on sale. This makes chip-level repair of a hash board practically impossible. In reality the board is swapped for a donor one, so it makes sense to budget for a second miner as a parts source right away.

A memory leak in the factory firmware. The miner hangs once every few days. The problem is well known and is handled by a forced reboot on a schedule. But it is better to know about it in advance than to catch the third outage in a row.

Confusion in the A5 series names. Shop catalogs mix up the rated and the overclocked modes of different generations: the same figure can refer to a 2017 miner in overclock and to a 2018 miner at stock. Check the hashrate and the power draw on the product card. The model name guarantees nothing here.

Fake sites. There are resources on the web that copy the old official Innosilicon site together with its news and manuals and present themselves as official. One of them has a zero trust rating and trades in other companies' brands. The real company does not sell miners today.

Noise. 75 dB on most miners and 70 on the quietest one. That is the level of a working vacuum cleaner, around the clock. Not a single model of the brand is suitable for a living space.

Ten points written on the assumption that you are buying hardware with no warranty and no manufacturer support.

1. Calculate the profitability before buyingAt the Spanish tariff every miner of this brand runs at a loss. If the reason for buying is not earnings but a bench, spare parts or heat, none of that is a problem, but the decision has to be a conscious one.
2. Inspect the miner on deliveryPower connectors and terminals for scorching, heatsinks for dust, fans for play and noise, the board for traces of moisture and corrosion. All of that turns up regularly. These ASICs are seven to ten years old, after all.
3. Service it straight awayBlow it out, replace the thermal paste, check the speed of every fan. The thermal paste in these miners is certainly more than seven years old. Do not skip this.
4. Budget for a second miner as a parts sourceOriginal chips are practically unavailable, so a real hash board repair means swapping in a donor. One working ASIC with no donor is a risk of downtime forever.
5. Set up a reboot on a scheduleThe memory leak in the factory firmware hangs the miner once every few days, and a daily scheduled reboot settles the question.
6. Change the factory passwordsThey are the same on every ASIC of the brand and were published long ago, both for the web interface and for terminal access. Then keep the miner in a separate network segment. And do not forward its port to the outside.
7. Do not count on a firmware updateThere is nowhere to download it: the download sections have been deleted, and in the surviving copies the links are empty. If the miner works, leave the firmware alone.
8. For the A9 ZMaster look for a power supply right awayIt is external, it does not come in the box, and you need one from a kilowatt up with seven six-pin connectors. Confirm what is included before you pay.
9. Prepare a separate room75 dB and from 620 watts to a little over three kilowatts of heat. You need separated cold and hot air flows and proper extraction, the same as for any industrial ASIC.
10. Buy from a seller with a legal entity in the EUThe manufacturer's warranty does not exist, so your only protection is the seller's obligations. Inside the EU a common rule on liability for lack of conformity applies, and in Spain for used equipment that means a minimum of one year.

The figures from our catalog and from public data about the company.

• 2014The world's first ASIC for Litecoin on a 28 nm process: before that Scrypt was computed on graphics cards, and the arrival of a dedicated chip changed the economics of that coin.
• 2016A4 Dominator: the world's first Scrypt miner on a chip built on a 14 nm process, and two years earlier the same company's Scrypt chip was on a 28 nm process.
• 2018The year the brand covered seven directions at once: Scrypt, X11, CryptoNight, Equihash, SHA-256, and also Blake256R14 for Decred and Blake2B for Sia. The brand never had another year like it.
• 2018A chip on low-power Samsung technology, which is a process node meant for mobile electronics rather than for servers. This die, the T1558, sits in the T1 and T2 families, and the T2 carries sixty eight of them on a board.
• 2018A9 ZMaster: 50 kSol/s at 620 watts. It is still the miner with the lowest power draw in the Innosilicon lineup, and out of the whole line this series has held up best.
• 2019The T3 series, from 48.84 to 62 J/TH, with the T3-43T the best of them. The last generation of the brand that seriously competed with Bitmain in bitcoin.
• 2021The Fenghua graphics card on a licensed graphics core. At the time it looked like a side branch, and today it is one of the company's three pillars alongside interface IP blocks and custom ASICs.
• 2025The third generation of the graphics card for computing and artificial intelligence, now on its own architecture rather than on a licensed core. The company has not disappeared. It has simply moved on to something else, so there is no point waiting for support to come back.