Intel confirms its intention to enter the Blockchain accelerator market this year
Intel's investing in custom computing solutions, and that includes Blockchain
Published: 11th February 2022 | Source: Intel - Raja Koduri |
Press Release - Intel - Blockchain and the New Custom Compute Group
Digital computing continues to enrich our lives in more ways than we can imagine. We acquire, consume, and create content and services with a few clicks or taps of our fingertips. Exponential increases in compute performance, enabled by Moore’s Law, play a significant role in making these experiences seamless. Moore’s Law is also enabling us to democratize access to this enormous pool of processing power. Amazing things happen when a lot of compute is available to a lot of people without much friction.
We are looking forward to the next set of amazing things.
Blockchain is a technology that has the potential to enable everyone to own much of the digital content and services they create. Some even call it an inflection point in computing, fundamentally disrupting the way we store, process and transact our digital assets as we usher in the era of metaverse and Web 3.0. No matter how the future evolves, it is certain the availability of a lot more compute to everyone will play a central role.
Today, we at Intel are declaring our intent to contribute to the development of blockchain technologies, with a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators. Intel will engage and promote an open and secure blockchain ecosystem and will help advance this technology in a responsible and sustainable way.
We are mindful that some blockchains require an enormous amount of computing power, which unfortunately translates to an immense amount of energy. Our customers are asking for scalable and sustainable solutions, which is why we are focusing our efforts on realizing the full potential of blockchain by developing the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale.
Our blockchain accelerator will ship later this year. We are engaged directly with customers that share our sustainability goals. Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square) and GRIID Infrastructure are among our first customers for this upcoming product. This architecture is implemented on a tiny piece of silicon so that it has minimal impact to the supply of current products.
Intel Labs has dedicated decades of research into reliable cryptography, hashing techniques and ultra-low voltage circuits. 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. You will be able to learn more about our circuit innovations at the International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) this month.
To support this, and additional emerging technology, we have formed the new Custom Compute Group within Intel's Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics business unit. The objective of this team is to build custom silicon platforms optimized for customers' workloads, including blockchain and other custom accelerated supercomputing opportunities at the edge.
Onward, we aspire to leverage technologies from our zetta-scale computing initiative to deliver energy-efficient solutions that make our tomorrow better than our today.
- Raja M. Koduri is senior vice president and general manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group at Intel Corporation.
You can join the discussion on Intel's Blockchain plans for Blockchain and their new Custom Compute Group on the OC3D Forums.
Most Recent Comments
Most mining is done with ASICs. Ethereum is what made GPU mining popular but it's dying off as Ethereum 2.0 pays very little for GPU mining.Quote
| over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining |
| We are mindful that some blockchains require an enormous amount of computing power, which unfortunately translates to an immense amount of energy. |
So yes, a press release that says "mining is a great opportunity for Intel to make money off pointless waste of energy" most likely won't go down that well, but still...Quote
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Originally Posted by NeverBackDown
The thing is they are selling for non crypto reasons, though I'm sure they will still sell those, most of their customers are probably in the commerical and enterprise market for developing new ways to leverage Blockchain technology in existing IT fields.
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Originally Posted by ET3D
Their customers, as listed in the press release, are Bitcoin miners. Nobody doing actual blockchain work will be using mining, let alone SHA-256 mining.
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If this helps refocus the mining crowd to ASICs instead of GPUs why are you so against that? It only helps. ASICs are far more efficient than a regular PC doing the same work. Even if it takes longer to mine in this context, it'll still use less power and do it faster.Quote
CSS Valid
Why has no one created a new ASIC yet, can they even be used for new crypto?Quote