Intel announces 1000x more “blockchain accelerator” than GPUs used by digital miners

Shining well-known players like Bitmain, Intel is announcing major investments in blockchain technology, culminating in the development of a new ultra-efficient cryptocurrency processor.

Intel’s first cryptocurrency-centric processor is referred to as a generic blockchain accelerator. It will be delivered in the second half of this year, mainly to two large companies that have already funded this technology, GRIID Infrastructures and Block, the latter being controlled by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

“We expect our semiconductor innovations to deliver a blockchain accelerator with over 1000 times better performance per watt than regular mining GPUs based on the SHA-256 algorithm,” said Raja Koduri, Intel’s senior vice president at Intel. ad. referring to SHA-256 hashing. algorithm used to generate Bitcoin and a number of other cryptocurrencies. It is worth mentioning that nowadays no one uses SHA-256 mining equipment based on GPUs, this approach being replaced for many years with dedicated ASIC Miner equipment, already passed through several generations. In other words, the leap in performance of the new Bitcoin mining equipment with Intel chips will not be nearly 1000x, but we can expect a decisive advantage in terms of energy efficiency, motivating a new upgrade cycle for Bitcoin miners, very profitable for Intel as a hardware vendor.

The news that Intel will use its vast processor experience to accelerate bitcoin mining could be good news for everyone. On the one hand, mining with GPUs could finally be unprofitable enough to fall into disfavor, leaving huge collections of “almost new” graphics accelerators on the second-hand market. But perhaps more importantly, the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining could be brought under control, at least temporarily, by decommissioning energy-intensive mining rigs.