Intel To Enter Bitcoin Mining Market With Energy-Efficient GPU

Intel is entering the blockchain mining market with an upcoming GPU capable of mining Bitcoin. From a report: Intel insists the effort won't put a strain energy supplies or deprive consumers of chips. The goal is to create the most energy-efficient blockchain mining equipment on the planet, it says. 'We expect that our circuit innovations will deliver a blockchain accelerator that has over 1,000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining,' Intel's General Manager for Graphics, Raja Koduri, said in the announcement. (SHA-256 is a reference to the mining algorithm used to create Bitcoins.)

News of Intel's blockchain-mining effort first emerged last month after the ISSCC technology conference posted details about an upcoming Intel presentation titled: 'Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC.' ASICs are chips designed for a specific purpose, and also refer to dedicated hardware to mine Bitcoin. Friday's announcement from Koduri added that Intel is establishing a new 'Custom Compute Group' to create chip platforms optimized for customers' workloads, including for blockchains.

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