Despite the global chip shortage, Intel announced that it will be shipping it’s blockchain focused chip later this year.
They promised that the chip would be the first piece in their “roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators” where the company would “develop the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale”.
This move would put the company in competition with GPU makers like Nvidia Corp whose graphics cards are used widely for mining activities.
It also fits into Intel’s pattern of entering a market relatively late in an effort to expand it’s portfolio. Take the mobile market for example.
Intel’s Senior Vice President says in his announcement that its blockchain accelerator has over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining.
Among Intel’s first customers include Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square), and GRIID Infrastructure.
We should know more about Intel’s play into crypto at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. The company is set to make a presentation at the event on 23 February.
