Intel has set up a custom compute group to contribute to the development of blockchain technologies with a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators including a blockchain chip to come out later this year.

“Digital computing continues to enrich our lives in more ways than we can imagine,” said Raja Koduri, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the group. “We acquire, consume and create content and services with a few clicks or taps of our fingertips. Exponential increases in compute performance, enabled by Moore’s Law, play a significant role in making these experiences seamless. Moore’s Law is also enabling us to democratise access to this enormous pool of processing power. Amazing things happen when a lot of compute is available to a lot of people without much friction. We are looking forward to the next set of amazing things.”

Blockchain is a technology that has the potential to enable everyone to own much of the digital content and services they create. Some even call it an inflection point in computing, disrupting the way digital assets are stored and processed as the world ushers in the era of metaverse and Web 3.0.

“No matter how the future evolves, it is certain the availability of a lot more compute to everyone will play a central role,” said Koduri.

Intel has declared its intent to contribute to the development of blockchain technologies with a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators. The company says it will engage and promote an open and secure blockchain ecosystem and will help advance this technology in a responsible and sustainable way.

“We are mindful that some blockchains require an enormous amount of computing power, which unfortunately translates to an immense amount of energy,” said Koduri. “Our customers are asking for scalable and sustainable solutions, which is why we are focusing our efforts on realising the full potential of blockchain by developing the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale.”

The blockchain accelerator will ship later this year. Intel says it is engaged directly with customers that share its sustainability goals. Argo Blockchain, Block (formerly known as Square) and Griid Infrastructure are among the first customers for this upcoming product. This architecture is implemented on a tiny piece of silicon so it has minimal impact to the supply of current products.

Intel Labs has dedicated decades of research into cryptography, hashing techniques and low-voltage circuits. It expects that its circuit innovations will deliver a blockchain accelerator that has over 1000 times better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining.

To support this, and additional emerging technology, Intel formed the Custom Compute Group within Intel’s accelerated computing systems and graphics business unit. The objective of this team is to build custom silicon platforms optimised for users’ workloads, including blockchain and other custom accelerated supercomputing opportunities at the edge.

“Onward, we aspire to leverage technologies from our zetta-scale computing initiative to deliver energy-efficient solutions that make our tomorrow better than our today,” said Koduri.