Intel has plans to release a chip specifically designed for bitcoin mining, which will hopefully free up its gaming machines for those who wish to actually play games.
At the upcoming ISSCC conference, Intel will give a presentation under the ‘Highlighted Chip Releases’ where it will detail its new Bonanza Mine processor. The chip is described by Intel as an “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC.”
The company confirmed this to Tom’s Hardware, saying, “Intel has done design work around SHA 256 optimised ASICs for several years, beginning with pathfinding work done in Intel Labs. We will share more details in the future.”
Intel’s GPU Chief Raja Koduri confirmed as such during a livestream last month, where he explained: “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.
“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.
“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.”
