Intel quietly ditches its Bitcoin mining chips
Intel has announced that's its Blockscale 1000-series Bitcoin mining chips are toast and won't be replaced with a new generation. The news comes just a year after the first Intel Blockscale processors(opens in new tab) hit the market.
Speaking to Tom's Hardware(opens in new tab), Intel said the move was part of a broader focus on its IDM 2.0 strategy, which has seen Intel tightening its belt and focusing on core operations and products.
Several business units have been closed, wound down or sold off as a consequence, including Optane memory products, its whole SSD division, 5G modems and more. Suffice to say, even before IDM 2.0 Intel had something of a track record for dabbling in new markets only to abruptly exit just as the endeavour seemed to be taking off.
According to the Intel «end of life» notice for its Blockscale products, existing customers have until October to place a final order for Blockscale 1000-series chips. But thereafter, the entire family of mining chips will be goners and the final batch of Blockscale chips will ship in April 2024.
Intel hasn't specifically said that it will never produce a new family of mining chips in future. Instead, nothing new is officially planned and Intel will «monitor the market» for opportunities.
Intel's Blockscale chips were said to be very competitive in performance terms. Designed to accelerate SHA-256 processing for proof-of-work applications, Intel said Blockscale is good for 580 giga-hashes per second. That, apparently, is very much in the same ballpark as existing players in the mining chip market.
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