Intel "Bonanza Mine" is a Bitcoin Mining ASIC, Intel Finally Sees Where the Money is

[btarunr]

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[mechtech]

Intel - all crypto coin is going to be ours muwahahaha

 

[KainXS]

This smells so much like Larrabee at this point.

 

[Chaitanya]

Hopefully its old fabs being allocated to ASIC production.

 

[Chrispy_]

Ummm, welcome to 2017 Intel, I guess. Bitcoin hasn't been GPU mineable for half a decade, almost. If intel can make a better Bitcoin ASIC than everyone else, then all it will do is tip the difficulty balance slightly. There are so many bitcoin miners out there using ASICs at this point that Intel would have to sell literally billions of units to make even a small dent in the market.

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.

 

[Gui77aume]

I don't get the comparison with GPU, you don't mine BTC with GPU. This is a SHA256 dedicated ASIC only for BTC with no impact on GPU market...

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Ummm, welcome to 2017 Intel, I guess. Bitcoin hasn't been GPU mineable for half a decade, almost. If intel can make a better Bitcoin ASIC than everyone else, then all it will do is tip the difficulty balance slightly. There are so many bitcoin miners out there using ASICs at this point that Intel would have to sell literally billions of units to make even a small dent in the market.

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.

Except the deluded fools are talking only about bitcoin mining ASICS And mentioning GPUS.
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.

 

[Countryside]

Crypto is fully banned in 9 countries hopefully this number will grow much higher.

 

[user556]

The original linked article is much more switched on - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/i...n-mining-bonanza-mine-asic-at-chip-conference
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.

 

[sillyconjunkie]

No one makes a dedicated hardware component for mining and Intel is no different. Already written above..way too volatile for it to be a sound business decision.

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..

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Crypto is fully banned in 9 countries hopefully this nuber will grow much higher.

Yeh only 249 to go , then again with luck in ten years the fed etc will release they're cryptos.
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.

 

[Vya Domus]

No one makes a dedicated hardware component for mining and Intel is no different. Already written above..way too volatile for it to be a sound business decision.

They do for BTC since no on expects BTC mining will die anytime soon, it's a perfectly sound business decision to make an ASIC for that given that you have the technology to make your product stand out.

 

[Caring1]

No one makes a dedicated hardware component for mining and Intel is no different. Already written above..way too volatile for it to be a sound business decision.

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..

Tell that to Bitmain, a large supplier of dedicated Asics for Bitcoin.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

They do for BTC since no on expects BTC mining will die anytime soon, it's a perfectly sound business decision to decide to make an ASIC for that given that you have the technology to make your product stand out.

While I except your point, It just makes them sound more stupid for mentioning GPUS, which are truly totally irrelevant to bitcoin mining.
@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.

 

[Countryside]

Yeh only 249 to go , then again with luck in ten years the fed etc will release they're cryptos.
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.

Yes there are a lot of people who think crypto currency as some sort of savior but its not so dreamers can dream and central banks won't stop printing currency.

And ye fully banning is unreal at least in most of the european countries, at least a firm tax must be applied.

 

[dragontamer5788]

I don't like miners, but Intel needs all of the ASICs it could get. TSMC is dominating the market, and no doubt TSMC has plenty of ASICs on its process. Intel needs to get out there and pick up contracts, big or small, and learn how to manufacturer chips for other companies.

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.

-----

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.


-----

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.

 

[b4psm4m]

Ummm, welcome to 2017 Intel, I guess. Bitcoin hasn't been GPU mineable for half a decade, almost. If intel can make a better Bitcoin ASIC than everyone else, then all it will do is tip the difficulty balance slightly. There are so many bitcoin miners out there using ASICs at this point that Intel would have to sell literally billions of units to make even a small dent in the market.

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.

I agree with almost everything you say there, apart from another coin/token taking ETH's place. ETH currently has a 372 billion market cap. The next mineable coin, RVN, has a 0.9 billion market cap. The next most mined coin, ERG, has < 0.2 billion market cap. If (when) all ETH's GPU hashrate becomes available, the difficulty on these lower cap coins will go through the roof - won't even be worth mining with free electric. IMO, ETH 2.0 spells the end of GPU crypto mining for the next 5 years at least, there's literally nothing for the GPUs to point at afterwards. TONCOIN is profitable currently, but only a small amount of the tokens are allocated to POW.

 

[Pumper]

Is crypto mining is so great, why would any manufacturer sell this shit instead of using it themselves?

 

[dragontamer5788]

Is crypto mining is so great, why would any manufacturer sell this shit instead of using it themselves?

The shovel-makers made more money in the 1849 gold rush than the typical miner.

Pay no attention to the greater economic issues at play here. Just play to win. We know where the money is at.

 

[Aquinus]

Wow, that's Bonanzas. <Insert banana emoji here.>

 

[Chrispy_]

I agree with almost everything you say there, apart from another coin/token taking ETH's place. ETH currently has a 372 billion market cap. The next mineable coin, RVN, has a 0.9 billion market cap. The next most mined coin, ERG, has < 0.2 billion market cap. If (when) all ETH's GPU hashrate becomes available, the difficulty on these lower cap coins will go through the roof - won't even be worth mining with free electric. IMO, ETH 2.0 spells the end of GPU crypto mining for the next 5 years at least, there's literally nothing for the GPUs to point at afterwards. TONCOIN is profitable currently, but only a small amount of the tokens are allocated to POW.

I don't think anything will come along quickly. ETH gained traction largely because when BTC switched to ASICs, all of the previous BTC miners had to find something else to mine. It took a couple of years before ETH came out on top and after that it was the momentum of popularity.

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

 

[R-T-B]

No one makes a dedicated hardware component for mining and Intel is no different. Already written above..way too volatile for it to be a sound business decision.

Dude, they do.

 

[zlobby]

Now waiting for Lulapaluza. Spelling is intentional.

 

[Owen1982]

Crypto is fully banned in 9 countries hopefully this nuber will grow much higher.

Amen brother.

 

[R-T-B]

It won't be banned outside the authoritarian world but further taxation is likely.