Intel, the semiconductor manufacturing giant, is planning to present a new Bonanza Mine chip at this year’s International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISCC), which is likely an energy-efficient Bitcoin application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
Intel reportedly has a presentation prepared to outline the new Bonanza Mine chip, which is described as an “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC.” Unlike CPUs or GPUs which are geared towards a host of use-cases, ASIC is a type of chip designed for Bitcoin mining.
It is still not clear whether Intel will present a viable product or simply unveil a prototype chip. Earlier, the US Patent and Trademark Office awarded the chip giant a patent for efficiently mining cryptocurrencies that use the SHA-256 algorithm.
The impact that Intel's new "Bonanza Mine" will have on Bitcoin's energy consumption is yet unclear. One of Intel’s spokesperson said that the company has “done design work around SHA 256 optimized ASICs for several years beginning with pathfinding work done in Intel Labs.” He further quoted that the company will “share more details in the future.”
Entering in the race of Bitcoin mining, Intel will face stiff competition from Bitmain and MicroBT, the world's largest manufacturers of Bitcoin mining hardware.
Raja Koduri, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) Group at Intel, said 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. 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 said.
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