US chipmaker Intel, which last month presented its first Bitcoin mining chip, offers users of its devices 15% higher efficiency than market leaders, Tom's Hardware resource has reported.
Intel presented the Bonanza Mine chip and a prototype miner based on it during the ISSCC international conference. During the presentation, a company representative claimed the equipment provides an energy efficiency of 55 J/TH with a hashrate of 47.7 TH/s. The performance is comparable to devices from Bitfury and Canaan, although significantly lower than flagships from MicroBT and Bitmain.
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Shortly before the event, the company said the first customers for its devices are the Block team (formerly Square), mining companies Argo Blockchain and GRIID Infrastructure.
In the prospectus of the latter, which was filed before going public with the SEC, journalists found information about its future offering of miners with features far superior to those announced in the presentation.
The publication believes we are talking about equipment based on Intel's second-generation Bonanza Mine chip (BMZ2). Even though the company is not explicitly listed as a supplier, a "leading US chipmaker" is mentioned, and Intel is the only chipmaker in the country.
The miner provides a hashrate of 135 TH/s and an energy efficiency of 26 J/TH. For comparison, Bitmain's Antminer S19 Pro is 110 TH/s and 30 J/TH, respectively. This means the BMZ2 outperforms it by 15% and the prototype is almost twice as efficient.