Intel has made a move on their involvement in blockchain technology with a pending patent which was filed on 29th March.
A Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator is described. A System on Chip implementing a Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator may include a processor core and a hardware accelerator coupled to the processor core, the hardware accelerator to mine digital currency. The hardware accelerator may include a first computational block, including a message digest datapath, wherein the first computational block is to: precompute a first summation of a 32-bit message (W.sub.i), a 32-bit round constant (K.sub.i), and a content of a first shifted state register (G.sub.i-1), and store a result of the first summation in a state register (H.sub.i). The Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator may further include a second computational block comprising a message scheduler datapath.
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There is a lot of technical jargon involved in Intels application of which i can not wrap my head around, though it seems that Intel's angle is that this chip will reduce energy costs.
All computer chips have what is called a Management System which is layered above the Operating System and boots up the machine. Intel have kept their ME a closely guarded secret and many people including security expert Damien Zammit are of the opinion that the ME opens a backdoor and allow full access to memory as well as the TCP/IP stack meaning that all network traffic can be intercepted without the users knowledge.
I can't help but feel that Intel is up to something and am wary of their products though it seems they are near impossible to avoid as they have the majority of the market in their pocket. Intel made $53.4 billion in sales in the last 4 quarters with their closest rival Samsung making $43.54 billion in sales.
Fun Fact
Intel was originally called "Moore Noyce" but sounded too much like "More Noise" so changed the name to "NM Electronics" and finally changed the name to what is today called "Intel" which is actually short for "Integrated Electronics."
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