By Landon Manning
In a move that could spell dramatic change for the bitcoin mining industry, American tech conglomerate Intel (INTC) is moving to execute newly-released plans on an “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC” chip.
This news first appeared on January 18, with the ASIC — or application-specific integrated circuit, a computer chip that is central to the machines that “mine” bitcoin — and Intel reportedly plans to present more details on the chip at the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
The schedule for the 2022 ISSCC conference was released on January 18 as well, including among its features a presentation from Intel set for February 23. Titled “Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC,” the talk is notably being presented by three different campuses and research centers run by Intel, all scattered across the West Coast. Already, this announcement has created a stir among the Bitcoin community.
This information comes on the tail of an interview conducted with Raja Koduri, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group, in late December 2021.
“GPUs will do graphics, gaming, and all those wonderful things,” he said. “But being able to do much more efficient blockchain validation at a much lower cost, much lower power, is a pretty solvable problem… We are working on that, and at some point in time, hopefully not too far into the future, we will share some interesting hardware for that.”
However, whether this ISSCC presentation will truly fulfill this promise of presenting “interesting hardware,” or will only offer some smaller piece of conjecture or proofs of concept, is not immediately clear.
However, on January 19, paperwork filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in September finally became public record, and more details emerged. According to Fox Business, an Ohio-based crypto mining company GRIID is set to go public on the New York Stock Exchange in upcoming weeks, with an initial value around $3.3 billion. In an S-4 filing with the SEC dated September 8, “GRIID entered into a supply agreement… pursuant to which GRIID may purchase Intel-designed BZM2 ASICs,” with the acronym BZM2 referring to Intel’s Bonanza Mine ASIC chips.
In other words, rather than just providing some technical demonstration, it is becoming increasingly clear that Intel’s Bonanza Mine project will be hitting the market soon, with a first major buyer already lined up. GRIID is, according to the agreement, entitled to buy at least a quarter of these BZM2 chips produced from now until 2025, with Intel agreeing to provide an initial shipment of chips in 2022. Many of the other details, such as the chips’ exact specifications or some of the financial underpinnings of this deal, remain yet unpublished, however.
Still, it appears that this new chip could have a major impact on Bitcoin’s most critical industry. The COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on supply chains and the burgeoning interest in bitcoin has had a substantial effect on the availability of chips capable of mining bitcoin, and a new offering from a company like Intel could crack that dilemma wide open. And there are still questions as to just how low-voltage and energy efficient this new chip could really be. Regardless, it seems clear that the development and rollout of Intel’s new project will be nothing but good news for Bitcoin.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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