Intel is developing a hardware accelerator for mining

The mining boom has triggered shortages and higher prices for GPUs used to mine cryptocurrencies. Intel is preparing to bring a hardware accelerator to the mining market, judging by the patent application filed by the company

The method, entitled "Bitcoin Mining Hardware Accelerator With Optimized Message Digest and Message Scheduler Datapath"  is expected to reduce the energy cost of bitcoin mining by 35% and double the number of coins mined.

Because the software and hardware used for bitcoin mining uses brute force to repeatedly perform SHA-256 functions, the bitcoin mining process can be very energy-intensive, and the equipment takes up a lot of space. The hardware accelerator optimizes mining. Due to this, it reduces the space occupied by equipment and reduces energy consumption.

In addition, the accelerator is not limited to the functionality of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). In other words, it can be used in a number of different mining systems. 

Earlier this year, Specter and Meltdown hardware vulnerabilities were discovered that are present in millions of Intel devices. Although Intel has released BIOS updates to protect against these vulnerabilities, Intel chips have a new flaw, BranchScope, that is almost as dangerous as Specter Security.

Intel said it has completely redesigned its new Cascade Lake and Coffee Lake chips to address the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities.

According to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, the new chips are protected against the Specter variant 2 and Meltdown variant 3, but adjustments are still required to the Specter Variant 1 software.

According to https://segmentnext.com