Tuesday, January 18th 2022
Intel "Bonanza Mine" is a Bitcoin Mining ASIC, Intel Finally Sees Where the Money is
Intel is reportedly looking to disrupt the cryptocurrency mining hardware business with fixed-function ASICs that either outperform GPUs, or end up with lower enough performance/Watt or performance/Dollar to take make GPUs unviable as a mining hardware option. The company is planning to unveil its first such product, codenamed "Bonanza Mine," an ASIC purpose-built for Bitcoin mining.
Since it's an ASIC, "Bonanza Mine" doesn't appear to be a re-purposed Xe-HPC processor, or even an FPGA that's been programmed to mine Bitcoin. It's a purpose-built piece of silicon. Intel will unveil "Bonanza Mine" at the 2022 ISSCC Conference. It describes the chip as being an "ultra low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC," putting power-guzzling GPUs on notice. If Intel can clinch Bitcoin with "Bonanza Lake," designing ASICs for other cryptocurrencies is straightforward. With demand from crypto-miners slashed, graphics cards will see a tremendous fall in value, forcing scalpers to cut prices.
Problem solved, right? Not quite. As we've seen with several past spikes in GPU prices, the development of an "energy efficient" ASIC tends to mark the completion of a "difficulty cycle," where custodians of the cryptocurrency mining algorithm up the "difficulty" (else those with faster hardware simply mine the currency to inflation).
Market saturation of ASICs triggers an increase in difficulty, and the then the next cycle begins, with GPU vendors introducing newer architectures on newer nodes, with generationally doubled SIMD muscle, and significant enough increases to performance/Watt.
The least one can expect from an ASIC deluge is a large cache of new and used current-generation "Ampere" and RDNA2 graphics cards falling into circulation. Scalpers won't be able to horde brand-new cards, as they'll be facing stiff competition from miners dumping used cards that people might still be interested in.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
Since it's an ASIC, "Bonanza Mine" doesn't appear to be a re-purposed Xe-HPC processor, or even an FPGA that's been programmed to mine Bitcoin. It's a purpose-built piece of silicon. Intel will unveil "Bonanza Mine" at the 2022 ISSCC Conference. It describes the chip as being an "ultra low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC," putting power-guzzling GPUs on notice. If Intel can clinch Bitcoin with "Bonanza Lake," designing ASICs for other cryptocurrencies is straightforward. With demand from crypto-miners slashed, graphics cards will see a tremendous fall in value, forcing scalpers to cut prices.
Market saturation of ASICs triggers an increase in difficulty, and the then the next cycle begins, with GPU vendors introducing newer architectures on newer nodes, with generationally doubled SIMD muscle, and significant enough increases to performance/Watt.
The least one can expect from an ASIC deluge is a large cache of new and used current-generation "Ampere" and RDNA2 graphics cards falling into circulation. Scalpers won't be able to horde brand-new cards, as they'll be facing stiff competition from miners dumping used cards that people might still be interested in.
40 Comments on Intel "Bonanza Mine" is a Bitcoin Mining ASIC, Intel Finally Sees Where the Money is
ETH mining is profitable, but probably not for much longer. Everyone keeps talking about how the hard end to mineable Ethereum (complete transition to proof-of-stake) is never going to come but progress towards it is relentless and hurdles that delay the process are being cleared at a reasonable rate. 2022 2H is the planned cutoff, it might slip to 2023 or ETH could collapse entirely as a currency instead.
When ETH mining dies, another coin will take its place, which is fine for GPUs that can just switch to another coin, but all ASICs will go to landfill.
Given how slow Intel is at releasing a dGPU to market, this announcement is a joke because they won't even launch an ETH ASIC until it's no longer relevant.
They're clearly on crack.
GPU mine ETH and altcoins ,ASICS mine bitcoin and temporarily until fork Possibly ETH IE few ASICS mine ETH or altcoins for long as it's apposed to their purpose so much the Devs Act to limit the use of ASICS.
Pure ass by Intel and a knightsferry league future f#@£ up in the making.
Intel appears to targetting making a cheaper ASIC solution. As in they've identified the existing ASIC market is overpriced.
But yeah, it's only for Bitcoin at this stage. So it's not going to impact GPUs going to Ethereum mining.
Components produced for other means are deemed good miners.
The reliability of your sources should be questioned. Unless, off course, you're just shilling for crypto..
Then we can escape country's printing paper add nauseum to Regulate the worth of my ten pounds.
Plus the waste of making and moving around shells with holes in them(sarcasm for actual cash and it's True worth(f all)) would also be gone.
@btarunr how much of the GPU talk is yours and not there's because someone needs to read up.
ASICS made GPUS irrelevant to bitcoin mining over three years ago, that ship sailed, no one's using GPU to mine bitcoin at all they're power use and hashrate is pure comedy compared to anything bitmain makes.
They could flood the market with 4 billion of these and not one GPU would get displaced from mining into gamer's hands Soo.
Like I said someone, is on crack.
And ye fully banning is unreal at least in most of the european countries, at least a firm tax must be applied.
Its no news that TSMC has a miner, because everyone recognizes TSMC as the #1 fab-lab in the world. Intel needs to break into that market if they hope to survive.
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Intel is late to the party. But that's fine, just having the contract and executing upon it is enough. Ideally, they find more beneficial contracts or better work, but beggars can't be choosers.
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EDIT: Wait, this is an Intel internal project? Well... that's not as useful then. Intel probably has some of the best hardware+software optimizers in the world though, so this probably will be a good mining chip. But that's a lot less interesting than I was hoping for... Intel really needs more 3rd party contracts and industry recognition. Internal projects are still fine since Intel probably has idle fabs, but I find it unlikely that this BTC-mining chip will push out in enough volume to be useful.
Pay no attention to the greater economic issues at play here. Just play to win. We know where the money is at.
I don't know what the next coin will be after ETH, but I'm fairly sure there will be one. Ravencoin is no longer the most profitable to mine, Autolykos seems to have vanished from whattomine.com too. I guess there's a fight to the death for all the shitty altcoins that needs to take place once ETH moves on :)