Intel Corporation is preparing to release its own energy-efficient chip for bitcoin mining called Bonanza Mine. The chip will be presented in February at the ISSCC conference.
Tom’s Hardware got access to Intel’s presentation schedule at the ISSCC conference. On February 23, the company will unveil the Bonanza Mine chip, which is described as an “Energy Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC Chip with Extremely Low Voltage.”
“Intel has been designing ASIC chips for the SHA-256 algorithm over the past few years as part of the Intel Labs work. We will provide more details later,” the company said.
Back in late December, the head of Intel’s video chip development division, Raja Koduri, said that the company was working on special hardware for blockchain and cryptocurrencies. In addition, in 2018, Intel patented a specialized “processing system” optimized to work with the SHA-256 hashing algorithm.
It is not yet clear if the Bonanza Mine chip will become widely available any time soon. However, Intel’s entry into the mining equipment market is quite logical. Manufacturers of ASIC miners are faced with a lack of chips in the market, as, indeed, manufacturers of any other electronics. The release of such a processor can immediately attract customers against the backdrop of a shortage.
Earlier it was reported that Intel does not plan to limit the hash rate when mining cryptocurrencies on the new Arc series GPUs.
