Cryptocurrency mining giant Bitfury Group has recently revealed it launched new bitcoin mining hardware, with its Bitfury Clarke ASIC chip being the flagship product in the new suite.

The Bitfury Clarke chip, according to a Medium post the company published, is “unparalleled in performance and efficiency.” It’s set to be integrated into the firm’s “industry-leading bitcoin mining hardware,” which will include its mining servers and mining centers in Norway, Iceland, Georgia, and Canada.

Bitfury’s CEO, Valery Vavilov, was quoted as saying:

Bitfury is looking at all factors, including silicon packaging, chip efficiency, optimal power distribution, cooling designs and speed of development when designing our mining hardware. We think that this will lead to solutions that deliver the best ROI to our customers — regardless of ASIC size.

The flagship 14nm chip is reportedly fully customized for SHA-256 mining and “can execute a hashrate up to 120 gigahashes per second (GH/s).” Its power efficiency is of 55 mJ/GH, which means its required voltage supply “can be as low as 0.3 volts.”

The mining giant’s announcement comes at a time in which BTC’s hashrate keeps rising. According to available data, it went up form 8.5 million TH/s to about 49.5 million TH/s in the last 12 months.

In comparison, Bitcoin’s price dropped from a near $20,000 all-time high in December of last year, and is currently trading at $6,335 after rising 1.1% in the last 24-hour period. In the last 12 months, Biitcoin is still up from about $3,600, according to CryptoCompare data.

The flagship cryptocurrency’s growing mining difficulty coupled with its falling price has seen various miners struggle to maintain a profit. Given the circumstances, most are forced to do what they can to keep electricity costs down.

Bitfury itself, according to Bloomberg, has managed to lower costs at its mining plant in Georgia by immersing its equipment in a non-conductive liquid from 3M Co called Novec, which has been used to contain racing fires.

Per Vavilov, the cooling technology reduces both energy consumption and space requirements. Other miners have chosen to move their operations to more favorable environments.

As CryptoGlobe covered, Norway and Sweden are attractive for their cheap electricity prices. Japan’s countryside has also been attracting miners thanks to cheap electricity and government subsidies.