It’s only been a year since Intel officially announced its Bitcoin mining Blockscale ASICs, but today the company announced the end of life of its first-generation Blockscale 1000 series chips without announcing any follow-up generations of the chips. We spoke to Intel about the matter, and the company said so Tom’s hardware that “As we prioritize our investment in IDM 2.0, we have discontinued the Intel Blockscale 1000 Series ASIC while continuing to support our Blockscale customers.”
Intel’s statement cites the company’s tighter focus on its IDM 2.0 operations as the reason for ending Blockscale ASICs, a frequent refrain in many of its statements since it has exited several businesses as it tightens its belt and focuses on its core competencies. We also asked Intel if it planned to exit the Bitcoin ASIC business entirely, but the company replied: “We continue to monitor market opportunities.”
In the original announcement that the company would enter the blockchain market, then-head of graphics Raja Koduri noted that the company had created a Custom Compute Group in the AXG graphics unit to support Bitcoin ASICs and “additional emerging technology.” However, Intel recently restructured the AXG group, and Koduri left the company shortly after. We asked Intel about the fate of the Custom Compute Group, but it says it has no organizational changes to share at this time.
Intel hasn’t announced any next-generation Bitcoin mining products, and its Blockscale ASIC landing pages are now all inactive, but the statement suggests it’s leaving the door open to future opportunities should they arise. Intel’s initial entry into the bitcoin mining chip market came at an unfortunate time, as its chips finally became available just as Bitcoin values crashed at the end of the last cryptomania, and Intel’s apparent exit from the market comes as Bitcoin is back on the upswing — it recently cleared $30,000 for the first time in nearly a year.
Intel’s Bitcoin mining chips first went public under the Bonanza Mine codename it used for its R&D chips that were never commercialized, but the company later announced it would enter the blockchain market and briefly launched a second-generation model called “Blockscale” to select large mining companies such as BLOCK, GRID Infrastructure and Argo Blockchain, among others.
Aside from exceptionally competitive performance over competing Bitcoin mining chips, Blockscale’s major value prop stemmed from the stability of Intel’s chip-making resources. Several large industrial mining companies signed large long-term agreements for a steady supply of Blockscale ASICs, thus bypassing the volatility with the mainly China-based manufacturers engaging in wild price manipulations based on Bitcoin values, subject to tariffs and suffering from supply shortages. disruptions and shortages, not to mention the increased costs of logistics and shipping from China.
Intel tells us that it will continue to serve its existing Boockscale customers, suggesting that it will satisfy its existing long-term contracts. Intel customers have until October 2023 to order new chips, with shipments ending in April 2024. In the meantime, Intel has scrubbed almost all of the landing and product pages for the Blockscale chips from its website.
Intel’s latest moves come on the heels of a cost-cutting drive — the company sold off its server-building business last week, spun off its network-switching business, ended its 5G modems, discontinued production of Optane Memory, shed the company’s drone business. and sold the SSD storage device to SK Hynix.
Intel’s cost-cutting also applies to a number of other projects, as Intel has also shelved plans for a megalab in Oregon and canceled its planned development center in Haifa. The company has also trimmed some programs, such as the RISC-V pathfinder program, and streamlined the data center’s graphics roadmap by removing Rialto Bridge GPUs and delaying the Falcon Shores chips until 2025.
