Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Intel releases new cryptominer… at the worst possible time”.
Intel’S block scale cryptominer is out early, they finally shipped their block scale asic. It was originally slated for q3 release code name bonanza mine, secure hash algorithm to fit is a secure hash, algorithm 256 hardware accelerator that can do up to 580 giga hash per second, with just 4.8 to 22.7 watts of power consumption that is freaking incredible. It’S 14.2 millimeters squared, which is actually a pretty tiny die, meaning each wafer can produce a theoretical 1250 chips and is manufactured on the cutting edge tsmc n5 process. This thing sounds freaking awesome. If it was six months ago, i i think i don’t know.
I think that take is wrong, and maybe this is a hot tape. Really, i think, take me baby. I think it’s still fine that it comes out now. I did a tech linked today and i said what was in the thing and then i came here and i saw this and i was like okay now i can throw my own spin on this and i don’t think i don’t think it’s too late. Really. I think these will fly, you think they will fly. I think they will fly well. Okay, for one thing, the cryptocurrency uh industry is clearly in need of some more efficient hardware if prices have crashed yeah, because, like a lot of the prop like discourse that i’ve seen online, a lot of the problem is that the calculation of performance per watt is Just not there now it’s not people being like. Oh, i don’t want to do this anymore. It’S oh right now! Technically, if i turn my machines on i’m losing money, which is a situation that crypto mining has been in multiple times in the past, because difficulty ramps or whatever right now, this topic was crea, it was uh was, i don’t know populated, was filled out by uh Nicholas plouffe, who did some very helpful math thanks pleuse, you should be uh. You should be a writer for ltt for a living.
The one of the issue i mean, aside from the fact that there was a crypto crash and investment in the space is going like like this – is that intel talked a lot about the energy efficiency of this of this asic over a thousand times the performance per Watt, but the issue is that they compared themselves to discrete gpus, which is fine for certain algorithms, but compared to dedicated asic. Miners is not very good and, according to ploof’s math, the new bonanza mine block scale asic from intel seems to be worse than a an ant main bitcoin miner s 19 xp hydro, that’s not necessarily going to matter too much um did he do a wattage calculation Yeah, so what’s the difference that miner is terahash per second at 5, 300 watts and 256 of intel’s chips would be 148 terahash per second at 5, 800 watts. Oh there’s less power vision.
So then cost will just be the equation. Yeah i mean that’s the thing about that industry. Is it’s all just down to cost it’s it’s funny. I saw it. I saw a tweet today, someone was saying like. Oh, it turns out that a big part of the silicon shortage was mining because apparently there’s just like in certain industries did we not know that inventory is piling up and i was tagged on uh yeah.
Anyone who’s been paying even sort of attention like and i’m people tagged obviously knew this yeah um, but yeah like you’re you’re in an industry where it’s all just money driven calculation. What you’re attempting to buy is a money printing machine yeah, but that money pricing machine money very well, then you won’t buy it that money, printing machine costs money to buy and it costs money to run. So it’s a fairly simple calculation, so they they need if they can get their initial cost really low.
Then there’s potential value there and if you can find customers where their power is cheap or whatever they have some way of generating their own power. Who knows if the initial cost is low? Maybe they’ll be interested in buying your product? If ant mine is sold out like they always are, yeah bitmain never builds enough inventory. Then then maybe you will have inventory at all so they’ll sell out. I yeah, i don’t know the calculation that it’s worse is kind of funny um. But i still – and i didn’t know that when i was trying to defend it, but i still kind of suspect that they’ll they’ll probably fly because there’s a lot of people that are still mining.
There’S a lot of people that still have profitable mining operations as well, which i think a lot of, like i’m just said, a lot of people a lot of times um. But i i think people are are looking over that because it’s more fun to look at the like the wasteland, yeah people who are flipping all their gpus on ebay right now, but that is not everyone there are. There are people that were more prepa, more prepared to weather the storm and i think just because the gold rush is over, i don’t think mine is going.
Mining is going to end um. I think people are going to find a way to exist in the new environment and yeah, we’ll see thanks for watching and thanks to seeker lab for sponsoring. This week’s clips secret lab chairs are engineered to keep you comfy and with up to five years of warranty and a 49 day return policy you’re covered if anything goes wrong head the link in the description to get your secret lab chair today. .