Intel’s New Crypto Mining Chip to be More Energy Efficient than its Competitors

Intel just unveiled a new crypto mining chip,  named Blockscale. This new chip promises to be more energy-efficient than competitors when it comes to SHA-256 hashing, which is most widely used in bitcoin mining. If you operate a bitcoin mining farm, this would be great news for you. Furthermore, Intel has made it very clear that the production of this new chip won’t compromise the production of its CPUs and GPUs.

Because of the “nature of the silicon powering this technology,” it is able to avoid any such compromise. Assumedly, this indicates the Blockscale chip’s process node will be different from those used by its CPU and GPUs. That could indicate that it’s utilizing older technology, but it’s more likely that it’s using a fairly modern node.

Intel’s New Crypto Mining Chip to be More Energy Efficient than its Competitors

Intel had previously announced two variants of the Bonanza Mine cryptocurrency chip. The first generation served as a prototype, while the second served as the foundation for today’s Blockscale Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC).

A 7nm process node was confirmed in the first-generation test unit. Though it is unclear whether this is Intel’s own Intel 4 node or that of a competitor, such as TSMC. Despite having its own manufacturing facilities across the world, Intel has purchased supplies from TSMC for its future Arc GPUs and other products, so that could be the case here as well.

Blockscale, formerly known as second-gen Bonanza Mine, is said to be built on TSMC’s 5nm process, though Intel has yet to confirm this news. This implies Blockscale might utilize a different process node than Intel’s CPUs, which are mostly made by Intel’s own foundries; and GPUs, which are made by TSMC. Rather it could use a different process node that does not have an impact on the company’s future chip capacity.

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