Block, the financial services and technology company owned by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has announced that it has completed prototype design of its new five-nanometer (5nm) Bitcoin (BTC) mining chip, which it claims is key to decentralizing the supply of Bitcoin mining rigs.
according to a blog mail posted on April 28, Block explained that developing bitcoin mining ASIC platforms are both financially and technically challenging. The result of this has been “the excessive concentration of custom bitcoin mining silicon” in the hands of a select few companies. Block views this centralization as harmful to both the miners and the Bitcoin network as a whole.
We have an update on our mining initiative. This is about ASIChttps://t.co/bJOM9YNxfl
—Thomas Templeton (@TempletonThomas) April 28, 2023
In particular, the San Francisco-based company wrote that it plans to make Bitcoin mining technology "open source" where possible by selling standalone ASICs and other hardware components to "optimize innovation and maximize size. of the Bitcoin mining hardware ecosystem".
The post adds that the steps taken in recent months will allow the company to experiment with new designs and help them bring more efficient and affordable Bitcoin mining chips to market. To speed up this development push, Block added that he bought a large batch of ASIC chips from Intel.
On April 18, Intel announced that it would be stop accepting new orders for its Blockscale 1000 series ASICs by October 20 and end shipping in April 2024 as part of cost reduction measures. Block says this large intake of ASICs from Intel will help speed up the development of its proprietary 3nm chip, which it claims at launch would be the most advanced chip to date.
"Now we can focus our design team exclusively on developing cutting-edge 3-nanometer ASICs."
The scale of one nanometer (1nm) is roughly equivalent to the width of two silicon atoms. As the parts of the chips get smaller, it allows more transistors to fit on a silicon. die the same size. By reducing the overall size, electrical current travels less distance in the circuit to perform a calculation, which means overall efficiency is improved and the amount of heat produced is reduced.
Related: Mineflation: The cost of mining a Bitcoin in the US rises from $5K to $17K in 2023
It is worth noting that 5nm ASIC chips have been around for some time, with the first 5nm ASICs being released in 2021 of the Chinese mining company Canaan. Currently, most Bitcoin mining ASICs run on 5nm chips; however, no company has made their ASIC chip designs open source.
ASIC stands for "application-specific integrated circuit" and refers to a computed device that is optimized to complete a single computational function and is typically used to mine proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Magazine: The Best and Worst Countries for Cryptocurrency Taxes: Plus Tips on Cryptocurrency Taxes
Post navigation
Previous Post
Cryptocurrency Transfers Coming to Venmo Users in May
