That Intel was developing a chip for mining had not been confirmed, but it was known unofficially and the wait for its confirmation has come to an end and it is that Bonanza Mine is the miner based on ASICs developed in-house by Intel and built exclusively with its technology. . Let’s see how it performs against other options on the market.
There is no doubt that ASIC mining is the best type of microprocessor for mining cryptocurrencies. Its energy efficiency is much higher than that of a graphics card and we must not forget that the mining algorithm requires more and more computing power. Today there are already currencies such as the popular Bitcoin where it is no longer profitable to mine it via a GPU and the use of ASICs is necessary.
Well, Intel doesn’t want to be left behind in this market and at ISSCC 2022 they showcased Bonanza Mine, their ASIC for Bitcoin mining. Let’s see what the details are and why they decided to bet on such a solution instead of orienting their ARC Alchemist GPUs towards mining. But let’s not forget that it has not been profitable for a long time to mine the most popular cryptocurrency with graphics cards.
Bonanza Mine, Intel’s mining ASIC
Intel has just presented its ASIC for mining BMZ1 and its corresponding minor Bonanza mine and with figures that put on the table are impressive. For starters, we’re talking about a specific domain processor that only measures 14.16 millimeters2 in a packet of 7 x 7.5mm and manufactured under 7nm Intel Nodealthough we don’t know if it’s Intel 7 or Intel 4. Up to a total of 300 BMZ1 tokens will be part of every Bonanza mine, giving you the chance to get 40 THash/s with a consumption of 3600 W.
Each of the miners is made up of 4 motherboards, with 75 BMZ1 ASICs on each, an Intel FPGA with an integrated ARM CPU as the control unit, and a programmable power supply. In terms of its performance in relation to consumption according to needs. In this case, they promise a much higher Joule mining capacity than other ASICs such as Avalon 9 and Bitfury Clarke, where with a ratio of 54 J/TH it can reach 47.7 TH/s, thanks to the possibility of configuring the PSU via the control unit.
They already have the ASIC ready for second generation mining
However, Intel’s first attempt at hardware mining is a bit behind options like Bitmain’s Antmienr S19j XP which can hit 104 THash/s with 3010 W power consumption. watt are very important in this class of equipment. . So in theory Pat Gelsinger would be at a disadvantage compared to other options on the market, but Intel already has its BMZ2 chips and offers them to its customers. Of these, we don’t have their full specifications, as the ISSCC 2022 submission only covers the first generation ASIC.
Currently, Intel has several large customers, including BLOCK, Argo Blockchain, and GRIID Infrastructure, who will directly use the second-generation Bonanza mine and its BMZ2 ASIC.
