Intel Made Bitcoin-Mining Chips, Kills It Just A Year Later
Intel Made Bitcoin-Mining Chips, Kills It Just A Year Later
With no successors in sight.
Intel has announced its Bitcoin ASICs, Blockscale 1000 series, officially reaches End-of-Life (EOL) status. In a statement to Tom’s Hardware, the company says “as we prioritize our investments in IDM 2.0, we have end-of-lifed the Intel Blockscale 1000 Series ASIC while we continue to support our Blockscale customers.” So far, no successor to the Blockscale chip has been spotted. The main reason for EOL status is attributed to the company’s re-focus on strategies such as IDM 2.0 (and some cost cutting amid current global financial climate), spearheaded by CEO Pat Gelsinger.
It’s not just the Bitcoin ASIC business that Intel is quitting as a result – other segments such as 5G, Optane, and SSD business units, as well as RISC-V and certain GPU development program are either closed down, sold to other companies, or downsized. That being said, Intel isn’t entirely clear-cut about exiting Bitcoin ASICs entirely with a reply as that says: “We continue to monitor market opportunities.”
The blockchain business is part of the AXG Custom Compute Group that was previously led by ex-AMD (and now ex-Intel) Raja Koduri, however since his departure, it’s unclear whether this AXG graphics unit may undergo restructuring. Existing customers of the Blockscale chips will continue be supported, however any references of these chips from the website has been removed ever since.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
Pokdepinion: Cryptocurrency in 2023 is in a bit of a wreck to put it mildly, so given this is not highest priorities it’s easy to see why Team Blue may distance itself from it.
