A new patent filed by Intel suggests the company is seriously contemplating entering the world of cryptocurrency mining. The patent filed at the US Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO) aims to optimise bitcoin mining by reducing power usage when performing SHA-256 functions.
Intel is designing the mining rig around a System on a Chip (SoC) and claims that its design can reduce power consumption by up to 35%. This is done by coupling a processor core with an accelerator core in the same SoC, which helps in computing the SHA-256 functions.
In the long run, Intel says that the new design can save money by spending less time and cash on the power needed to run the rigs. Intel also noted that the new SoC design can be used outside of cryptocurrency mining. We could see the same accelerator technology used in other ASICs, SoCs, CPUs and FPGAs to help with better performance and power consumption in the long run.
Intel’s future products may even be more power frugal with this new patent used; of course like most patents out there the chance of it being realised in the real world is slim to none, so we can only just wait and see.
(Source: CoinDesk, TechPowerUp)
