Intel: the Green light for Bitcoin Mining-Patent

the The Chip giant Intel has on the 27. November a Patent for energy-efficient Bitcoin-Mining. According to the company's costs to the current and the size of the Chips can be reduced by up to 15 percent.

By Michele Troccolo
3. December 2018 share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn xing mail

After Intel had been filed in March of this year, an application for a Patent for the optimization of the Bitcoin mining can post the company is now a success. 27. November the United States Patent and Trademark Office has given the Chip maker a green light for a 2016 submitted the patent application. The designs in the Patent to show how the Mining of energy can be made more efficient.

Increased efficiency due to the fixing of parameters

The Mining process is one of the pillars of the Bitcoin is its decentralized nature owes and for consensus within the network. The Miner solve in a computationally-intensive process is a Puzzle, in which the SHA-256 Hash of an input value less than a certain target value must be. ASICs, dedicated Bitcoin Mining Hardware, are capable of a variety of these Hashing operations can be executed in parallel.

The Patent published embodiments divide the Hashing process of the ASICs in several stages. This saves you the examination of the Hashes after each increase of the "Nonce". In this way, Miner should be able to early determine whether an input value for the solution in question. This has according to Intel the advantage that the power consumption and the size of the Chips can be reduced by an estimated 15 percent.

The miners have reason to be happy

developments such as these are to be welcomed, especially in times in which the price of Bitcoin is relatively low. A lower rate has namely great pressure on the miners, since this can not be mines more profitable. According to an estimate of Mao Shixing, the operator of the Chinese Mining pool F2Pool, have mines, therefore, alone since mid-November, approximately 600,000 to 800,000 Miner stopped.

This is understandable if one considers the estimates to the actual Mining costs from the recently published Report of CoinShares Research. Accordingly, the costs for the Mining of a Bitcoin be around 6,000 euros, on the basis of current costs in the amount of 5 cents per KWh, and a Hardware life of 18 months. This means that the Mining is currently permitted only under certain conditions, such as, for example, lower electricity prices, profitable. Therefore, it is to be welcomed that more and more Chip manufacturers come into the market and the market for Mining Hardware is not in the hands of a few actors.