Yeah, you heard that right. Intel is investing in blockchain technology with a new chip that is designed to mine cryptocurrency. (We hope this helps us get chips on our hands) Intel is currently focusing on sustainability as cryptocurrency mining is always a thing that drains a lot of electricity and in turn, is harmful to the environment, but we think Intel is looking forward to changing that.
They said that they are developing the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale. Their first cryptocurrency-focused chip, Which they call blockchain accelerator, is set to ship later this year and two companies out there have already pre-ordered this tech, including the company GRIID infrastructures and Block (formerly known as Square, also owned by Jack Dorsey)
Intel Senior Vice President Raja Kodori Explained in the announcement referring to the SHA 256 Hashing algorithm used to generate Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies, “We expect that our circuit innovations will deliver a blockchain accelerator that has over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining,”
Intel also said there more information about the chip will become available at the ISSCC (International solid-state circuits conference) This event is starting on February of 20th, Intel is also scheduled to make a presentation, titled “Bonanza mine” So that makes it pretty clear that an ultra-low voltage electric efficient Bitcoin mining device chip is coming on February of 20th and more details will be available then.
You might ask, why is this a big thing? Well, if you didn’t already know or you weren’t in the market looking for PCs or any other gaming rig, you might have not known That there is a very big global silicon shortage and semiconductor shortage too. This was all started because of the cryptocurrency hype that was going on, and as many people got to know that they could use graphics cards to mine cryptocurrencies. They just went ahead and bought most of the stock from every company they could and now, Normal people who want to use those graphic cards to play games and use them for good or not able to get their hands on any graphics cards Which also led to the prices hiking this year and the previous year.
So the fact that Intel is coming forward with a chip specifically aimed at crypto miners is a great thing as they won’t eat up The Entirety of the graphics card and normal Chips. So there will be more graphics cards and chips for us to use.