Intel Ships Blockscale ASIC Chips To Selected Bitcoin Mining Companies
July 04 2022 - 8:17PM
NEWSBTC
It’s official, Intel is part of the bitcoin mining business. The
gargantuan technology company announced its “ultra-low-voltage
energy-efficient” ASIC chip barely six months ago, and it’s already
here. Under normal circumstances, infrastructural support from a
multinational company like Intel would be tremendous for the
bitcoin market. How will it react in the middle of all this chaos?
Will it react at all? The news didn’t immediately do much, but the
long-term effect remains to be seen. Intel AXG Custom Compute team
is now shipping the Blockscale ASIC! First product will always be
unforgettable, congratulations team👍 Excited to see how
@ArgoBlockchain @griid and @HiveBlockchain improvise around
Blockscale and our open design. pic.twitter.com/0rxtNTLMfw — Raja
Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) June 29, 2022 Raja Koduri,
Intel’s Architecture, Graphics and Software (IAGS) division’s
senior vice president, recently tweeted: “Intel AXG Custom
Compute team is now shipping the Blockscale ASIC! First product
will always be unforgettable, congratulations team. Excited to see
how Argo, Griid and Hive improvise around Blockscale and our open
design.” Notably absent from the list is BLOCK, Jack Dorsey’s
company. Does that mean something or is BLOCK just fourth on the
list? Three months ago, Bitcoinist quoted Raja Koduri emphatically
saying: “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.” The Bitcoin Miners React To Intel’s Announcement Green
mining company Hive was the first to react, they tweeted “HIVE is
proud to have partnered with Intel, and we can’t wait to put the
new ASICs to good use mining BTC!” A few months ago, the company
was much more eloquent in a press release NewsBTC quoted. “These
miners are expected to be delivered over a period of one year
starting in the second half of calendar 2022, the effect of which,
if they are all installed, would be an expected increase of up to
95% in our aggregate Bitcoin mining hashrate from 1.9 Exahash per
second.” $HIVE is proud to have partnered with @intel, and we can’t
wait to put the new ASICs to good use mining $BTC!
https://t.co/qDWKnU95MI — H I V E (@HiveBlockchain) June 29, 2022
For their part, Argo also went the simple route and tweeted.
“Thanks, Raja Koduri and Intel. We’re excited to be innovating with
these new ASIC chips in our custom immersion mining rigs. Our
thanks to ePIC Blockchain for joining us on the ride.” That new
player, ePIC Blockchain Technologies produces self-proclaimed
“North American Designed ASIC RIGs.” So, innovation and
customization are on the way. Thanks, @RajaXg and @intel. We're
excited to be innovating with these new ASIC chips in our custom
immersion mining rigs. Our thanks to @ePICBlockchain for joining us
on the ride. https://t.co/pKlxDjkm08 — Argo (@ArgoBlockchain) June
29, 2022 Last but not least, let’s remember Raja Koduri’s words
when Intel’s bitcoin mining experiment started: “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.” Remember that
statement as we pass to the next section. BTC price chart for
07/04/2022 on Bitfinex | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
Mainstream Media Mocks Intel In the eyes of mainstream media,
bitcoin or anything related to it can’t do anything right. And this
bear-market-of-sorts we’re into gives them the perfect ammunition
to attack the technology and the billion-dollar market around it.
Luckily, bitcoin doesn’t care. In the first mainstream article
about Intel shipping its Blockscale ASIC chips ahead of time, The
Register starts with valuable information: “Blockscale is shipping
a couple days ahead of Intel’s previously stated release window for
the third quarter, which begins Friday. Even if it’s a tiny head
start, it is nonetheless an achievement for a corporation that is
becoming notoriously under-schedule across multiple products,
including the Sapphire Rapids server chips and the discrete Arc
GPUs.” Only to then, start dunking on bitcoiners and Intel alike.
They start with this: “Experts and company officials are warning
that the world of blockchain-fueled digital currencies is entering
a crypto winter, a period where the value of virtual coins plunge
and remain low. This last happened between early 2018 and
mid-2020.” And then, they dedicate 1000 words to the market’s
condition instead of discussing Intel’s SEG energy-efficient
intentions. Or the perfectly executed roll-out strategy that the
company exhibited these last few months. Or the fact that bitcoin
is humanity’s only hope. Featured Image: Blockscale promotional
image from this tweet | Charts by TradingView
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