Text—Wang Shuyi
Figure—Network
Recently, from a topic announced in the agenda of the 2022 International Solid-State Circuit Symposium (ISSCC), it can be seen that Intel's rumors of vigorously developing digital cryptocurrency chips have been confirmed. According to the agenda set by the ISSCC, Intel Corporation will give a keynote speech on "Bonanza Mine, an ultra-low voltage and high-efficiency Bitcoin dedicated chip" at the conference on February 23.
Gridd, a bitcoin mining company that is preparing to go public in the United States, announced in its prospectus that the company signed a four-year supply and marketing contract with Intel on September 8, 2021, and Intel will supply GRIID with BZM2 mining chips at a fixed price until May 2023. In addition, the two sides also agreed that after triggering certain conditions, by May 2025, GRIID will purchase at least 25% of Intel's dedicated mining chip.
If BZM2 is the model of the mining machine chip that Intel will announce at issccumb, it is at least Intel's second-generation Bitcoin chip. At the latest in 2016, Intel began to apply for a patent for a bitcoin mining machine chip, and according to foreign media AnandTech, Intel's first-generation mining machine chip BZM1 uses Intel's 7-nanometer process, with a hash rate of 137GH, power consumption of 2.5 watts, and an energy efficiency ratio of 18.2W/TH.
The media also quoted a single source saying that Intel's second-generation miner chip BZM2 will use TSMC's 5-nanometer process.
In response to the rumors, an Intel spokesperson responded as follows: "The SHA-256 ASIC mentioned in the paper published at the ISSCC next month is the first generation of Intel's exploration of mining machine chips from 2018. While the products mentioned in the supply agreement disclosed in the prospectus of our customers (referring to GREID) make us second generation products, we will provide more details of the second generation products as soon as necessary. ”
Intel personally went down to do mining machine chips, which aroused industry concern. Matt Bryson, a chip analyst at Wedbush Securities in the United States, estimates that the dedicated chips (ASICs) and GPUs in the crypto field have quarterly revenue of about $1 billion, intel has a 30% market share, and only generates $300 million per quarter and $1.2 billion in annual revenue, which does not contribute much to its total revenue. According to its latest earnings report, Intel's revenue will reach $74.7 billion in 2021.
Domestic industry experts and analysts are also highly concerned about Intel's entry into the cryptocurrency market.
The public account "Wu said blockchain" said: Industry insiders revealed to Wu that the quality of Intel samples is more critical, and the current chip energy efficiency ratio should be about 35J/T (the energy efficiency ratio of mining machines should be increased by at least 10%). On the other hand, the size of Intel's investment at the corporate level will also determine whether this move can challenge the status of Bitmain and Shenma. It can be expected that Intel's shipments of this chip will not be large this year, but if it goes well, it may pose a certain challenge to the current bitcoin mining machine chip pattern in 2023. From a business perspective, it may not be a good time for Intel to join the war at this time. Industry insiders judge that this year will ship 1.5 million-2 million bitcoin mining machines, coupled with the domestic idle mining machines continue to go to sea, the network's hashrate will reach a minimum of 300-350EH/s, the highest more than 400EH/s. In terms of Bitcoin price, due to the Fed's interest rate hike expectations, the market is currently leaning to wait and see with slight bearishness.
Zhu Jing, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Semiconductor Industry Association, believes that Intel's original product layout is Yangchun white snow, and now it is also grounded in order to make money.
A senior industry analyst even more unceremoniously said that Intel, which makes mining machine chips, is "crazy to make money."
For Intel's entry into the bitcoin chip market, Wang Shuyi, chief analyst of Exploration Technology (ID: techsugar), has a different view. On the one hand, I support Zhu Jing's view that since the new CEO Pat Gelsinger took office, Intel has become more and more pragmatic, in order to make money, you can put down your face, and everything is considered from the perspective of interests. For example, actively expressing its position to the US government to obtain more resource support, announcing a hundred billion-dollar investment plan to bind the US government and reduce support for rival TSMC, he said half-jokingly at the opening ceremony of Intel's new production base in New Albany, Ohio, on January 21: "If there is a concrete engineering vehicle in Ohio next year that does not work for Intel, I want to know what the reason is." This sentence has the meaning of saying to TSMC.
On the other hand, the development of mining machine chips is a double victory for Intel. First of all, digital cryptocurrencies have grown into a chip application market that cannot be ignored, and at the peak of 2018, about 5% to 10% of TSMC's revenue came from mining machine chips, much higher than automotive electronics. Later, TSMC no longer announced the proportion of cryptocurrency revenue, according to the outside world speculation, in 2020, mining machine chips accounted for 4% of TSMC's revenue, still higher than automotive electronics. No matter how much or how little $1.2 billion is, this part will be real revenue in the future.
Secondly, the mining machine chip only uses advanced processes, and the utilization rate of advanced processes in the boom period is very high, and the mining machine chips are very simple, so it is very suitable for the "test" and production capacity filling of advanced processes. In the foreseeable future, Intel in the personal computer and server market share of the opportunity to increase is not large, then Intel also continues to invest in the most advanced process, with similar to the mining machine chip such a simple but need for advanced technology products to "test the car", obviously more suitable than the use of complex PC processors or server chips, and the new production capacity is released, PC and server filled, can be filled with mining machine chips.
So AnandTech speculated that BZM2 uses TSMC process, and I have doubts. Of course, from whether Intel has the intention of using mining machine chips to occupy TSMC's production capacity, it is easy to speculate.
From the above two perspectives alone, making mining machine chips is simply an inevitable choice for Intel.