Intel Files Patent For Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining Hardware (crn.com)

Intel is exploring the creation of specialty hardware for mining the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, according to a U.S. patent application released Thursday. From a report: The patent, filed on Sept. 23, 2016, describes a Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator that may include a processor core with a hardware accelerator coupled with it. Bitcoin mining is the process of using powerful computer processors to record Bitcoin transactions on a public ledger, which is done by attempting to solve cryptographic puzzles. If the miner becomes the first to solve the puzzle and record the next transaction, it is rewarded with newly released Bitcoin. The high energy and equipment costs associated with mining have brought into question whether the activity can be profitable, especially as the price of Bitcoin has nose-dived in the past few months, as noted by Forbes. But that hasn't stopped people from hoarding equipment -- one report from Coherent Market Insights pegged the cryptocurrency mining market at $610 million in 2016 and expects it to grow to $38 billion by 2025. The current issues faced by miners also has propelled companies and individuals to find new technologies and methods for making mining more efficient.

Comments

Another broad patent of the obvious...

[kbonin]

Patent claims an SOC with a hash engine that includes a message scheduler, which is what anyone skilled in the art would come up with when asked to design a mining SOC.

appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20180089642.PGNR.&OS=dn/20180089642&RS=DN/20180089642

failing to understand the problem

[c6gunner]

The miners are competing. If you make the hardware cheaper and more energy efficient, they'll just buy more of it.

Good businnes for Intel; does nothing to lower energy or other resource usage.

Will it make any difference?

[quantaman]

Mining cryptocurrency isn't like mining gold, double the number of gold miners in the world and you double* the amount of gold, but if you double the number of crypto miners the amount of cryptocurrency is exactly the same.

If you make bitcoin mining twice as energy efficient, people will buy twice as many** mining rigs, and the total energy usage will be about the same.

* Not really double, but you get the point.
** Again not quite, equipment cost factors into it.

Re:Will it make any difference?

[ctilsie242]

There are only a certain amount of coins that are coming out per unit time. If fewer people are mining, coins become less difficult to mine. If more people are mining at the same time, the difficulty goes up.

One may be better off mining another cryptocurrency and trading for BTC if you absolute just have to have that currency. Other currencies give more bang for buck and have other advantages.

Ultimately, a Bitcoin 2.0 currency is going to show up. Bitcoin has a number of shortcomings, especially how expensive transactions are, coupled with the need to go through 160 gigs of blockchain to check if you are not double-spent (of course, you can trust some exchange... but we know how reliable exchanges can be.) It is only a matter of time before another currency becomes the de facto flagbearer.

In every gold rush...

[mccrew]

In every gold rush, the ones who are guaranteed to make any money are those who sell the picks and shovels. Looks like that's Intel's strategy.