Intel has offered to take a closer look at its new line of specialized Bitcoin mining processors.
First unveiled earlier this month, Intel's first-generation Bonanza Mine (BM) chip, BMZ1, received a detailed presentation at the ISSCC 2022 semiconductor conference.
At the show, Intel revealed that each BMZ1 die measures 4,14 x 3,42mm and houses 258 mining motors that run on an "ultra-low" voltage of 355mV. These little chips are said to consume 7,5 W of power each and achieve up to 137 GHash/s.
The company claims that it can pack 300 BMZ1 chips into a 3600W ASIC miner capable of achieving a respectable throughput of around 40 THash/sec. The system can also be configured to operate under different performance profiles, resulting in different levels of energy efficiency.
Intel gets into the bitcoin game
Although the creator of Bitcoin initially envisioned mining to take place on standard desktop processors, it quickly became clear that there were better and more efficient ways to mine. Today, all professional mining operations are based on ASIC devices, powered by specially designed chips to calculate the SHA-256 hash algorithm on which Bitcoin is based.
The ASIC machine market is currently dominated by players like Bitmain and MicroBT, but the emergence of Intel's specialized silicon could throw a shovel among the pigeons.
Although Intel focused exclusively on BMZ1 during its ISSCC presentation, the company previously revealed that second-generation BMZ2 chips are now available to select customers, including BLOCK (née Square) and Argo Blockchain.
So while Intel's 3600 W ASIC miner is well below the performance of Bitmain's best hardware (whose highest performing miner clocks in at 140 THash/s at 3010 W), it's possible that the mysterious BMZ2 is far more competitive.
Little is known about the company's intended approach to bringing BM to market, but Intel is expected to sell the chips to third parties who develop their own custom mining systems. Similarly, Intel may choose to market its own BM-powered mining systems as stand-alone products.
While the company's mining chips remain shrouded in secrecy, the initial promise of its first-generation ASICs and the formation of a dedicated in-house team to back the effort suggests there is much more to come from Intel.
Through Tom's Hardware