Last week the California-based technology company Intel explained its intentions to develop crypto mining semiconductors that would showcase “1000x better performance per watt.” Now Intel has revealed more details about the “Bonanza Mine” (BMZ1) blockchain accelerator chip at this year’s International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
Intel’s Bonanza Mine Cryptochip Products Showcased at ISSCC
Information regarding Intel’s new crypto-mining accelerator chip has been released to the public, according to various reports covering the 2022 ISSCC event. On February 12, Bitcoin.com News reported on Intel’s intentions to to manufacture blockchain acceleration chips as Intel executive Raja M. Koduri described Intel’s goals.
Intel’s presentations at ISSCC revealed the “Bonanza Mine” (BMZ1) accelerator, but Tom’s Hardware author Paul Alcorn explained that Intel is already working on a second-generation “Bonanza Mine ASIC, known as the BMZ2.” Alcorn’s research notes that Intel described how it combined 300 chips into a “powerful 3,600W miner that delivers up to 40 [terahash per second (TH/s)] of performance.”
The BMZ1 operates a 7 nanometer (nm) process and the size is approximately a “7 x 7.5 mm exposed die FCLGA package”. Alcorn says that although BMZ1 is a 7nm process, it doesn’t give much detail about the process node.
“Each chip die measures 4.14 x 3.42mm, for a total of 14.16mm^2 of silicon, so these are comparatively small slivers of silicon,” the report published by Tom’s Hardware explains. “The smaller die size improves yield and maximizes wafer area usage (up to 4,000 die per wafer), thus helping maximize production capacity (though it does require more wafer dicing/packaging capacity).” Alcorn’s BMZ1 summary adds:
Each Bonanza Mine ASIC has 258 mining engines, and each engine computes parallel SHA256 double hashes. These motors make up 90% of the die area and operate at what Intel calls an “ultra-low” voltage of 355 mV. Each ASIC operates between 1.35 and 1.6 GHz at 75°C, consuming an average of 7.5 W each while reaching up to 137 Ghash/s. This is equivalent to 55 J/THash/s at 355 mV.
Intel’s specifications are not as profound as Bitmain’s recent mining rig launch announcements. For instance, in mid-November 2021, Bitmain revealed the Antminer S19 XP that boasts 140 TH/s. At the end of January this year, Bitmain announced the launch of an even stronger bitcoin mining unit called the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd. and the firm claims that each unit produces 198 TH/s.
Intel already has orders from companies looking to leverage new BMZ1 and BMZ2 accelerators from companies such as Griid, Argo Blockchain, and Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square). An S-4 filing from Griid does not mention BMZ1 but the filing discusses the integrated circuit product named BZM2
