Intel’s Blockchain Accelerators Perform Better At Mining Than Mainstream GPUs

Everyone is “getting in” on the crypto craze stemming from the popularity of cryptocurrency and NFTs. Intel has decided to jump on the bandwagon by investing in blockchain technology. The company believes that it has the potential to help users own as much as possible of the digital content and services that they create.

The chipmaker is investing in the platform by introducing its energy-efficient accelerators. For the blockchain to work, it requires a pool of mining systems to continuously crunch through the numbers. This requires a lot of computing power and in turn a substantial amount of energy to operate, which is why the company believes that its energy-efficient chips may be the answer.

These blockchain accelerators will ship later this year with the first recipients being Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square) and GRIID Infrastructure. These accelerators are the result of decades worth of research into cryptography, hashing techniques and ultra-low voltage circuits.

The architecture is built on a tiny piece of silicon to minimize the impact it has on the supply of current products. Intel believes that these blockchain accelerators have the potential to deliver 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining. If proven true, it could help limit the strain on the GPU supply chain that has plagued gamers in the past few years.

Regarding this type of tech Intel said the following:

“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.”

Intel is investing a great deal in scalable and sustainable solutions, which have bearded fruit in the form of these blockchain accelerators. The company is also aspiring to use its technologies from the zetta-scale computing initiative to improve its product portfolio and create more energy-efficient solutions than what we have today.