Intel confirms its intention to enter the Blockchain accelerator market this year

[WYP]

Intel will contribute to the development of blockchain technologies with a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators....



Read more about Intel's new custom Compute Group and Blockchain plans

 

[dazbobaby]

If anyone can create a power efficient ASIC... is it intel?
Why has no one created a new ASIC yet, can they even be used for new crypto?

 

[NeverBackDown]

Intel definitely has the capability of creating an efficient ASIC. The thing is they are selling for non crypto reasons, though I'm sure they will still sell those, most of their customers are probably in the commerical and enterprise market for developing new ways to leverage Blockchain technology in existing IT fields.

Most mining is done with ASICs. Ethereum is what made GPU mining popular but it's dying off as Ethereum 2.0 pays very little for GPU mining.

 

[ET3D]

What a bunch of nonsense.

over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining

And exactly how many people are mining SHA-256 on GPUs? Zero? Why not compare to CPUs, then? Could get even higher numbers.

We are mindful that some blockchains require an enormous amount of computing power, which unfortunately translates to an immense amount of energy.

And are you also mindful of the fact that more efficient chips in no way will reduce the computing power needed by mining, because the more computing power is put into mining, the higher the difficulty becomes?

So yes, a press release that says "mining is a great opportunity for Intel to make money off pointless waste of energy" most likely won't go down that well, but still...

 

[ET3D]

The thing is they are selling for non crypto reasons, though I'm sure they will still sell those, most of their customers are probably in the commerical and enterprise market for developing new ways to leverage Blockchain technology in existing IT fields.

Their customers, as listed in the press release, are Bitcoin miners. Nobody doing actual blockchain work will be using mining, let alone SHA-256 mining.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Their customers, as listed in the press release, are Bitcoin miners. Nobody doing actual blockchain work will be using mining, let alone SHA-256 mining.

Wrong. It's literally everybody as I stated before. Square is a corporation, not a miner. It's being sold to everyone as I said. You don't need to mine in order to use Blockchain. All Blockchain is is essentially an immutable ledger with hashes. How you use it is completely arbitrary. When you mine, the result you get is put into the chain, therefore claiming it. However if you aren't mining, you could still leverage Blockchain technology to solve specific problems.


If this helps refocus the mining crowd to ASICs instead of GPUs why are you so against that? It only helps. ASICs are far more efficient than a regular PC doing the same work. Even if it takes longer to mine in this context, it'll still use less power and do it faster.

 

[ET3D]

If this helps refocus the mining crowd to ASICs instead of GPUs why are you so against that? It only helps. ASICs are far more efficient than a regular PC doing the same work. Even if it takes longer to mine in this context, it'll still use less power and do it faster.

It's clear from this that you don't understand mining at all.

First of all, it's worth pointing that SHA-256 is what's used by Bitcoin and is already being mined only by ASICs. Most other coins attempt to be ASIC-resistant, in order to reduce centralisation and allow "the common people" to run them at all. Not that it's hugely effective at reducing centralisation, but it's better than what Bitcoin has.

As for the idea that lower power leads to more efficient mining, that's where it's clear you just don't get mining.

Mining is designed to produce blocks at the same rate. If more processing power is put into it, the difficulty of mining rises, so it takes more processing power to produce the same blocks.

Since the only point of mining for miners is to produce money for them, it doesn't matter how much power an ASIC takes, because miners will simply run as many of them as is profitable, reaching the same power budget.

The end result is that the same number of coins will be produced using the same amount of power, just using the fastest, most power efficient ASICs. So Intel isn't improving the situation by any means, only making sure that it takes the profits from mining chips instead of other chip makes.

Square is a corporation, not a miner.

Square is a corporation which has stated an interest in creating a Bitcoin mining facility, and that's presumably what this chip will be used for. All the others are also mining Bitcoins. These chips have absolutely zero value outside of mining Bitcoin.

 

[NeverBackDown]

I understand it quite well, having personally created an entire Blockchain with a focus on mining as a mini game. I'm well aware of the difficulties associated with it.

This ASIC is beneficial in studying different ways to use Blockchain and as Intel states in this PR blog, for supercomputers on the edge. Which you didn't bother to read or if you did you clearly don't understand what that means.
You can use ASICs to to accelerate any given tasks(by definition that's what they do), such as IO. Just like the PS5/Series X do. In Supercomputing we are and have been IO limited, by making it Compute limited instead, we give ourselves an easier to way to scale our problems as overcoming Compute limitations is much easier to deal with than IO limitations. This is also why we have seen massive research and development go into IO related technology from PCI, Nvlink, etc to help aid IO bandwidth at all levels of computing.

 

[ET3D]

This ASIC is beneficial in studying different ways to use Blockchain

Can you explain how a SHA-256 chip is beneficial in studying blockchain? I don't see it.

For one thing, studying blockchain requires very little computing power, compared to mining. Mining wastes 99.99...% of power. For studies you could just use whatever and it'd work.

For another, it's just SHA-256. It's rather trivially done by pretty much everything, and doesn't really offer anything new.

(And yes, I've read the blockchain. It's a bunch of PR trying to glorify blockchain and say how important it is, than mentioning one chip which is only useful for Bitcoin mining and that Bitcoin mining firms are going to use it.)

And really, if you truly understand blockchain tech, then you understand that mining is a terrible idea, that blockchain can be supported in other ways, and therefore producing a mining chip is nothing but a cash grab.

 

[NeverBackDown]

You should just grab a computer science course and study that. It'll answer all your questions.

Simple answer, SHA is just a hashing algorithm. Blockchain is reliant upon hashing. You can use ASIC to help study ways to break SHA at a much faster rate and ultimately make anything using it unsecure. Considering Blockchain technology is being proposed as holding medical information of individuals, this would be vitality important research in order to strengthen Blockchain from SHA256 weaknesses which is widely used as the US standard hashing algorithm used in government. If you cannot make Blockchain more secure then it's a useless technology. Blockchain technology is a growing area of research and if you want to know more study it.

 

[ET3D]

You should just grab a computer science course and study that. It'll answer all your questions.

For some reason you call my explanations "questions".

You're honestly grasping at straws. The idea that one needs a SHA chip to help study SHA is a long stretch. The idea that one "needs to strengthen Blockchain from SHA256 weaknesses" when hardly any blockchains are using it, except of course the all important Bitcoin, is either disingenuous or ignorant.

Not sure there's any more point to the discussion. Hopefully everyone reading this has understood that you're trying to put a positive spin on Intel's greed just because you're some clueless crypto diehard, so further discussion won't illuminate anything more.

 

[Dawelio]

Can’t you two just swallow your pride of who’s right and who’s not, and just drop it and move on already?… The entire first page is literally of you two arguing.

 

[Dicehunter]

Can’t you two just swallow your pride of who’s right and who’s not, and just drop it and move on already?… The entire first page is literally of you two arguing.

Agreed, The incessant arguing that certain members create due to hard headedness has put a lot of people off joining OC3D lest they start getting screamed and put downs thrown at them for not agreeing with someone.

 

[Dark NighT]

Agreed, The incessant arguing that certain members create due to hard headedness has put a lot of people off joining OC3D lest they start getting screamed and put downs thrown at them for not agreeing with someone.

Yep combined with way less activity from TTL in terms of promoting OC3D in general really has hurt the new members, as well as the attack on this forum with all the spambots a couple of years ago making signups more difficult and required manually approving genuine signups, which also puts a big dent in the people joining.


People need to stop arguing so much that entire news items get derailed into sad arguements which drives us regulars away and it just is causing a slow death of this place. For the most part WYP and his news articles are keeping this forum a bit alive, but most of the other topics apart from a few builds, are prettymuch, dead.

 

[NeverBackDown]

For some reason you call my explanations "questions".

You're honestly grasping at straws. The idea that one needs a SHA chip to help study SHA is a long stretch. The idea that one "needs to strengthen Blockchain from SHA256 weaknesses" when hardly any blockchains are using it, except of course the all important Bitcoin, is either disingenuous or ignorant.

Not sure there's any more point to the discussion. Hopefully everyone reading this has understood that you're trying to put a positive spin on Intel's greed just because you're some clueless crypto diehard, so further discussion won't illuminate anything more.

You asked a question. how is that an explanation? Not grasping at all. I'm not a crypto diehard, this chip isn't only for Bitcoin. It's not complicated really. You're just not understanding anything I'm saying because you don't understand computer science. Grab a book as I said. Good luck in your research as any type of conversation with you is fruitless since you ironically are an anti crypto diehard. The irony of your statement lol


As for everybody else, this was just a conversation that he ended up getting upset about evidently over with his last comment. There was hardly any arguing until he got personal for some reason, and nothing to do with pride, it was on topic about this product Intel is introducing. Yall need to relax and stop taking any kind of discussion as "arguing". It's a forum. You discuss.

 

[Dawelio]

You asked a question. how is that an explanation? Not grasping at all. I'm not a crypto diehard, this chip isn't only for Bitcoin. It's not complicated really. You're just not understanding anything I'm saying because you don't understand computer science. Grab a book as I said. Good luck in your research as any type of conversation with you is fruitless since you ironically are an anti crypto diehard. The irony of your statement lol

As for everybody else, this was just a conversation that he ended up getting upset about evidently over with his last comment. There was hardly any arguing until he got personal for some reason, and nothing to do with pride, it was on topic about this product Intel is introducing. Yall need to relax and stop taking any kind of discussion as "arguing". It's a forum. You discuss.

There's a difference between discussing a matter and get hard feelings mixed in with it. Saying stuff like "grab a book" etc, can be seen as a personal attack to some and hence isn't an "discussion".

This was a "conversation", in several, that has some times derailed the thread in question. They have also included you as well, unfortunately.

Lastly, the fact that you keep on commenting on his posts, just shows that you insist on keeping the arguing going.
In all honestly, I am kinda surprised to see this from you NeverBackDown.

And no, this is not an invitation to start another argument. This is just my post to try and stop this from getting any further than it already has.

 

[NeverBackDown]

There's a difference between discussing a matter and get hard feelings mixed in with it. Saying stuff like "grab a book" etc, can be seen as a personal attack to some and hence isn't an "discussion".

This was a "conversation", in several, that has some times derailed the thread in question. They have also included you as well, unfortunately.

Lastly, the fact that you keep on commenting on his posts, just shows that you insist on keeping the arguing going.
In all honestly, I am kinda surprised to see this from you NeverBackDown.

And no, this is not an invitation to start another argument. This is just my post to try and stop this from getting any further than it already has.

May I ask why he may comment on mine and I may not comment on his and why you label me as the bad guy when I never initiated the conversation?

 

[Dawelio]

May I ask why he may comment on mine and I may not comment on his and why you label me as the bad guy when I never initiated the conversation?

It's not a question wether anyone may or may not comment on someone's post.
I also didn't label you as the "bad guy" here. The reasoning for highlighting you in this regard is due to you're the more regular member here and hence, in my opinion, should lead by example and drop it all.

As I said in my previous post, just swallow your pride basically and let it go.

Several other members have also commented on the fact that this has gone too far in this regard, that's all I'm saying here.