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Intel’s Steps in the Blockchain Universe

🗣 Digital computing continues to enrich our lives in more ways than we can imagine. We acquire, consume, and create content and services with a few clicks or taps of our fingertips. Exponential increases in compute performance, enabled by Moore’s Law, play a significant role in making these experiences seamless. Moore’s Law is also enabling us to democratize access to this enormous pool of processing power. Amazing things happen when a lot of computing is available to a lot of people without much friction.

We are looking forward to the next set of amazing things!

🗣 Blockchain is a technology that has the potential to enable everyone to own much of the digital content and services they create. Some even call it an inflection point in computing, fundamentally disrupting the way we store, process, and transact our digital assets as we usher in the era of metaverse and Web 3.0.

Today, Intel is declaring its intent to contribute to the development of blockchain technologies, with a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators by engaging and promoting an open and secure blockchain ecosystem that will help advance this technology in a responsible and sustainable way.

Some blockchains require an enormous amount of computing power, which unfortunately translates to an immense amount of energy, which is why their customers are asking for scalable and sustainable solutions, that led them to focus their efforts on realizing the full potential of blockchain by developing the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale.

Intel’s blockchain accelerator will ship later this year, and they are engaged directly with customers that share their sustainability goals. Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square), and GRIID Infrastructure are among the first customers for this upcoming product. This architecture is implemented on a tiny piece of silicon so that it has minimal impact on the supply of current products.

🗣 Intel senior vice-president Raja M Koduri wrote “Intel Labs has dedicated decades of research into reliable cryptography, hashing techniques, and ultra-low voltage circuits”.

They expect that their circuit innovations will deliver a blockchain accelerator that has over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining.  Users will be able to learn more about our circuit innovations at the International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) this month.

To support this, and additional emerging technology, Intel has formed the new Custom Compute Group within Intel’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics business unit. The objective of this team is to build custom silicon platforms optimized for customers’ workloads, including blockchain and other custom accelerated supercomputing opportunities at the edge.

Onward, they aspire to leverage technologies from our zetta-scale computing initiative to deliver energy-efficient solutions that make our tomorrow better than our today.

🗣 The tech giant said its new blockchain chip will have 1,000 times better performance per watt for crypto mining than mainstream GPUs, and that its new “blockchain accelerator” chip is energy efficient and designed to contribute to the global development of blockchain technologies. This, given that many of its customers are looking for sustainable options due to the enormous amount of processing power and energy that these technologies require.

Intel senior vice-president Raja M Koduri added that there have been “exponential increases” in computing performance under Moore’s Law. This is the principle coined by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years, while the cost of computers is halved.

“Blockchain is a technology that has the potential to enable everyone to own much of the digital content and services they create,” Koduri said. “No matter how the future evolves, it is certain the availability of a lot more compute to everyone will play a central role.”

Intel also announced a $1bn fund aimed at early-stage start-ups and established businesses developing tech for the foundry space. This is part of Intel’s bid to help meet the growing demand for semiconductors amid a global chip shortage.

The company is planning major investments in Europe and announced last month that it is building a massive new chip-making facility in Ohio with an initial $20bn investment.

👀 Surely Blockchain is here to stay and is helping increasingly more companies to enhance their user’s experience.  What are you waiting to do the same?

Check out what we at CaptivatAR have to offer!

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📝 Sources:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/

https://www.intel.com/

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