The bitcoin mining industry is having an exciting couple of days.

Just a day after Bitfury revealed a new 14nm mining chip called the Bitfury Clarke, Bitmain has upped the ante with the announcement of a new 7nm application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) processor that it says offers better hashing power and energy efficiency over older models.

The ASIC – a powerful type of chip designed for specific types of computation – was announced Friday by Jihan Wu, CEO and co-founder of the Beijing-based firm, at the World Digital Mining Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Designed to mine cryptocurrencies using the SHA256 algorithm – a group that includes bitcoin – the "BM1391" chip will also be powering an upcoming range of Bitmain's Antminer series of mining machines, Wu said, according to a company blog post.

The company says BM1391 uses an advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology called 7nm FinFET, integrates "more than a billion transistors" and is optimized for energy efficiency. Wu further said said that, in tests, the chip "can achieve a ratio of energy consumption to mining capacity that is as low as 42J/TH."

So far the firm has not released detailed specifications for the new ASIC. However, Bitmain says it is now moving to mass-produce the new ASIC.

As reported by CoinDesk, Bitfury launched its 14nm Clarke chip Wednesday, saying it "offers the strongest performance among bitcoin mining chips and is unparalleled in efficiency." The ASIC is said to have power efficiency up to 55 mW/GH and a hashrate up to 120 GH/s.

In June, Japanese tech giant GMO also said it was launching the "world's first" 7nm ASIC, slating the first shipments for October.

According to a report at the time, the chip was to be fitted in a new miner called the B2. That machine will reportedly provide a hash rate of 24TH/s and power consumption of 1,950W per unit – which breaks down to 81W per 1 TH/s.

Jihan Wu image via CoinDesk