Intel To Create Efficient Chip For Bitcoin Mining

January 27, 2022 3:18 pm Comments

Chip manufacturing giant Intel has announced that it will be entering the cryptocurrency mining industry by announcing the reveal of a newly created efficient chip specifically designed for mining crypto.

The name of the chip has been nicknamed “Bonanza Mine” and will be featured at this year’s International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISCC) in February.

Intel will be showcasing the new chip which has been described as low voltage chip that is a incredibly energy efficient mining ASIC.

As of right now, the company has not announced when the chip will actually be released to the general public or if it will just remain a research project for company use only.

Last year in December, interviews with the company executives did indicate that the company is already highly focused on the blockchain industry from a hardware perspective and that they are actively innovating new technology to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in blockchain.

This new announcement from the tech giant is not the first time Intel has dived into the crypto and blockchain world.

Decrypt.co reports:

In October, Intel announced that the company’s upcoming graphics cards would not include restrictions on cryptocurrency mining in response to plans by rival NVIDIA to make its own cards “less desirable” for Ethereum miners.

“We’re not designing this product or building any features at this point that specifically target miners.

As far as actions we’re taking to avoid or lock them out, it’s a product that will be in the market and people will be able to buy it,” said Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager of client graphics products and solutions.

Last summer, Intel also disclosed in an SEC filing that it was holding nearly $800,00 worth of Coinbase stock.

This recent news about designing new chips does indicate a new shift for the company, however.

From recent reports, crypto mining today consumes almost 137 terawatt hours of energy consumption per year which means that it consumes more energy than some countries.

As a result, many companies are looking to make the process of crypto mining have less of an impact on the environment or the energy industry by designing new tech solutions from either a software or hardware perspective.

As the details of the new chip “Bonanza Mine” has not been released yet, it is unclear if the new chip will make any difference in regards if it will even make an impact in reducing the overall energy consumption of the crypto mining industry.

NDTV reports:

Raja Koduri, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) Group at Intel, said in an interview last month that being able to do much more efficient blockchain validation at a much lower cost with much less power is a solvable problem.

“And that’s not a GPU thing, so don’t try to confuse that as a GPU thing. GPUs will do graphics, gaming, and all those wonderful things,” Koduri stated.

“We are working on that, and at some point, in time, hopefully not too far into the future, we will kind of share some interesting hardware for that,” he added.

More details regarding the specifications of the chip will be revealed in the upcoming conference, but it is known so far that the company has been working on this project for several years already in Intel Labs.

Intel is not the only company that is looking to perform much more effective blockchain verification at a far lower price and solve the energy problem.

Block, founded by Jack Dorsey, also recently announced plans to create a fresh Bitcoin mining framework.

The system is designed to be more suitable for at-home usage and will assist with the decentralization of the industry apart from big-scale mining farmlands.

 

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