Intel’s blockchain accelerator to ship this year

Intel has announced its intent to contribute to the development of blockchain technologies, with a roadmap of very-efficient accelerators.

Raja M. Koduri, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, said that the company will engage and promote an open and secure blockchain ecosystem and help advance the technology in a responsible and sustainable way.

The company acknowledges that some blockchains require an enormous amount of computing power, which translates to an immense amount of energy, and customers are asking for scalable and sustainable solutions. Intel responds by focusing its efforts on developing the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale.

Intel’s blockchain accelerator, which will ship this year, features a tiny piece of silicon with minimal impact on the company’s supply of current products. Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square), and GRIID Infrastructure are among its first customers for this upcoming product.

With the help of Intel Labs which dedicated decades of research into reliable cryptography, hashing techniques, and ultra-low voltage circuits, the company expects that its circuit innovations will deliver a blockchain accelerator that has over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining.

Intel has also 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.