Intel will launch a Bitcoin mining "Bonanza Mine" chip

IFTNews: Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) will reportedly launch a new dedicated Bitcoin mining chip at the International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) next month.

The chip launch conference will take place on February 23 under the title "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC." Intel spoke about the upcoming Bitcoin Mining ASICs at a recent media conference: "Intel has been designing for SHA-256-optimized ASICs for years, starting with pathfinding at Intel Labs. We will share more details in the future. ”

Still, Intel's entry into the crypto mining hardware business means that the chipmaker may soon be competing with Bitmain for specialized bitcoin mining chips. In addition, another well-known company that Intel may also compete with in the market share of ASICs is MicroBT.

Thanks to Intel's extensive experience in hardware-assisted SHA-256 algorithms. The cryptographic hash function set stands out in the central processing unit (CPU) product. Another relative advantage of Intel entering this market seems to be its silicon production capacity. Especially considering low-power, high-efficiency operation.

Last December, Rajakodori, senior vice president and general manager of Intel Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG), first revealed the development plan. In a live broadcast, Kodori explained that the chip giant is working on a dedicated chip for crypto mining. According to Koduri, the available graphics processing units (GPUs) do not have the working advantage of performing such tasks efficiently. As Intel executives put it:

"GPUs can handle images, games, and all those wonderful things, but being able to do more efficient blockchain verification at a lower cost and lower power is a fairly easy problem to solve."

At the time, Koduri also said that Intel planned to share more information about the project's hardware sooner or later. However, Intel has previously stated that it does not plan to add crypto mining restrictions to its graphics.

Bitcoin mining is usually done on asic, a dedicated processor specifically designed to perform a workload. Compared to more complex chips, including CPUs and GPUs, ASIC has higher efficiency and performance advantages. Both chips are basically capable of performing the same tasks as the ASIC, but the performance cost is higher.