Computer chip manufacturing giant Intel Corporation shared details of a new mining chip that will be coupled with a high-performance 3,600 Watt miner with the ultimate goal of improving Bitcoin (BTC) mining efficiency.
Intel revealed its second-generation BTC mining setup during the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2022, a conference dedicated to the electronics and chip manufacturing industry.
According to the company, Bonanza mine (BMZ2) is an ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC that can deliver 40 Terahashes per second (40 TH/s) performance.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, Intel’s patent related to “high-performance Bitcoin Mining†dates back to November 2018, which had proposed to reduce overall power consumption by approximately 15%. Intel representatives at the time showed confidence in competing against established players including Bitmain, MicroBT and Nvidia:
“Intel has done design work around SHA 256 optimized ASICs for several years beginning with pathfinding work done in Intel Labs.â€
The BMZ2 chips are expected to follow an architecture similar to its 1st-gen mining chip BMZ1, wherein over 300 chips, powered by a 3600W miner, work together to deliver up to 40TH/s in a balanced environment.
Intel’s next-generation BTC miner will be able to deliver a balanced performance of 40.4 TH/s by drawing 2,293W of power — recording a low energy consumption of 56.97 joules per terahash (J/Th).
In addition, the hardware will also have the option to operate in high-performance and power-saving modes to optimize the energy-cost ratio across various degrees of mining efficiencies.
Intel is yet to announce a date for its official launch along with the technical requirements of the 2nd-generation mining setup.
Related: Bitcoin difficulty reaches all-time high, hash rate up 45% in 6 months
The Bitcoin network mining difficulty maintains an upward trend, showcasing a strong indication of growing resilience against network attacks.
At its peak, Bitcoin recorded a hash rate of 248.11 EH/s on Feb. 13 after jumping 31.69% from 188.40 EH/s in just one day.
With the increase in the hash rate, BTC mining equipment needs to evolve for delivering higher performance while consuming comparatively energy.
