HIVE Blockchain Technologies has signed a deal to buy ASIC chips dubbed “Bonanza Mine” from semiconductor manufacturer Intel. The chip will be used in their new custom mining devices and according to Intel will lower power consumption during mining.
HIVE has arranged for the new devices to be manufactured by a third-party custom design company, which will include Intel CPUs into new air-cooled Bitcoin (BTC) mining equipment.
About the Bonanza Mine chip
The Bonanza Mine chip devices are expected to roughly quadruple HIVE’s total Bitcoin mining hash power, from 1.9 to 3.8 Exahashes per second (Eh/s). They’ll start arriving in the second half of 2022, ready to use.
The chips would also lower the power consumption of mining operations by 15%, according to Intel’s patent for the processors, dubbed “Bonanza Mine.”
Because of the lower power consumption, HIVE may be able to utilize more devices, allowing it to provide even more hash rates.
Aydin Kilic President and COO of HIVE suggested that the new devices would be important in the future growth of the company and its hash rate contributions to the network.
He said that the company is committed to “implementing these next-generation blockchain accelerators in (HIVE’s) green energy infrastructure.” Frank Holmes, HIVE’s Executive Chairman, added:
Bitcoin mining and environmental concerns
The state of New York, as well as several other governments across the world, are currently considering prohibiting Bitcoin mining in the name of environmental and power supply protection.
“Intel’s commitment to challenging the status quo and commitment to energy-efficient products aligns very well with our ESG and clean energy commitment.”
HIVE’s new Texas location may be safeguarded from such objections by employing a facility fueled by renewable energy owned by digital infrastructure provider Compute North.
HIVE now operates BTC, Ethereum (ETH), and Ethereum Classic mining operations in Canada, Iceland, and Sweden (ETC). The Texas operation will be its first in the U.S.
Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips are designed specifically for a given application. They are designed to perform difficult mathematical computations in order to create new blocks on the chain in the case of Bitcoin mining.
