World’s leading microchip manufacturer firm, Intel, plans to get into the Bitcoin mining industry with a brand new chip dubbed “Bonanza Chip.” So far, Intel has not tapped this multi-million dollar industry. This year’s ISSCC event, Intel wishes to present its plans for revealing this new technology. However, an official notification is still due from the company. The announcement of Intel creating the new chip is appropriate considering the growing concern about mining. Mining has been an ongoing topic of debate due to environmental concerns.
The new chip is said to be “energy efficient bitcoin mining ASIC” conisdering the growing concern over Bitcoin mining. This innovation puts Intel in the same category as competing companies like Bitmain MicroBT and MicroBT. Bitmain is the manufacturer of the specialized ASICs employed for Bitcoin mining. Intel’s new processor will allow lower power consumption without compromising mining efficiency.
Bitmain is known for its specific silicon hardware for mining cryptocurrency, and Intel’s SHA256 Extensions are available on Ice Lake processors. It’s not a surprise that Intel is known for optimizing silicon. This puts Bitmain in a tough spot since it must put its own USP that Intel does not have to crypto mining. Intel is not expected to dominate it in the early phase of the launch, still growing need for an efficient processor would help Intel in procuring an initial market base. Bitcoin mining is getting banned in countries citing the wastage of energy in this process. Nevertheless, Bitcoin has no plan to move from its existing Proof of work structure to Proof of stake.
The idea is that Intel’s next version of Bitcoin mining ASICs will be manufactured by Intel, as mentioned by Raja Koduri earlier.
Intel had previously stated in December that it didn’t want to make use of available GPUs or CPUs but rather to attract a wide range of programmers by installing a base for its brand new ARC GPUs.