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Bitcoin mining firm Hive Blockchain (HIVE) has deployed its first machines based on Intel’s (INTC) Blockscale chips, the miner said on Friday.
The new chips not only have the potential to break the effective duopoly of Bitmain and MicroBT in the mining machine market, but also allow mining companies to design computers to their specifications, a major departure from those other manufacturers’ models.
Hive’s first 5,800 machines, delivered in late 2022 and dubbed BuzzMiners, can together produce computing power between 638 petahash/second (PH/s) and 754 PH/s, or 110 terahash/second (TH/s) to 130 TH/s per machine, said Aydin Kilic, the company’s president and chief operating officer. That lags behind some of Bitmain’s latest models such as the Antminer S19 XP or the S19 Pro+ Hydro.
However, Hive hasn’t released power efficiency data for the machines, a key metric in an environment that has brought miners to their knees over power costs. Intel touted an efficiency of 26 joules/terahash (J/T) for the chips in April, which wouldn’t beat Bitmain’s S19 XP series, but is on par with or better than other models currently on the market.
More than 1,500 of the Intel-powered machines have already been installed across the miner’s facilities in Canada and Sweden and they have met performance targets, the miner said. Hive had initially ordered 13,000 machines to be manufactured in 2022, but reduced the order “to methodically scale the business during the crypto bear market,” according to the Friday press release.
Jack Dorsey’s Block (SQ), troubled Argo Blockchain (ARBK) and Griid Infrastructure are set to be among the first customers for Intel’s Blocksale integrated circuits.
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