Intel Reportedly Making a Bitcoin-Mining Chip to Save GPUs for Gamers

Crypto mining is loathed by players and anybody who cares concerning the surroundings, however that isn’t stopping Intel from entering into the bitcoin-harvesting enterprise.

While the chipmaker hasn’t mentioned something publicly simply but, eagle-eyed reporters at Tom’s Hardware observed that Team Blue is about to present a presentation a few new “Bonanza Mine” processor on the 2022 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), which kicks off on Feb. 20. The chip is described as an “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient bitcoin-mining ASIC,” the place the acronym stands for an application-specific built-in circuit—a chip made for one particular objective.

Intel had, in a manner, already teased this chip final 12 months when GPU chief Raja Koduri stated in a live stream that the corporate was engaged on specialised crypto-mining {hardware}. And as Tom’s Hardware factors out, Intel had beforehand filed a patent for a processing system utilizing SHA-256, a cryptographic hash operate utilized by a number of cryptocurrencies, together with bitcoin, for verifying transactions.

If Intel does certainly launch its personal crypto-mining chip, it will likely be in direct competitors with Bitmain, a Chinese firm that makes a speciality of making ASICs for mining bitcoin. But Intel isn’t ranging from scratch—its SHA-256 Extensions are supported on Ice Lake processors and later, and as everyone knows, the corporate has in depth expertise optimizing silicon.

This is clearly excellent news for bitcoin miners, however what about players? If we dig into Koduri’s feedback a bit deeper, he means that discrete graphics for gaming needs to be separate from processing chips made completely for crypto mining.

“I think blockchain is a transaction thing that is run much more efficiently than the current burning of hardware cycles. It’s something we are working on.” Koduri mentioned. “And that’s not a GPU thing, so don’t try to confuse it as a GPU thing. No, no, no—GPUs will do graphics, gaming, and all those wonderful things.”

He continued, “But being able to do much more efficient blockchain validation at a much lower cost, much lower power, is a pretty solvable problem. And 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.”

While which may sound encouraging at face worth, Intel hasn’t sufficiently reassured players that it’ll proactively discourage folks from utilizing its upcoming Arc Alchemist GPU for mining. Sure, the chipmaker says it prefers to welcome players over crypto-miners, however except it implements a hash price limiter, as Nvidia and AMD have performed, nothing will stop miners from snatching up these chips en masse till they be part of each different “out of stock” GPU.

We count on to listen to extra about Intel Arc, the corporate’s first discrete GPU in many years, within the coming weeks. As for Bonanza Mine, we will solely assume the chipmaker will showcase the ASIC at ISSCC on Feb. 23 at 10 a.m. ET.