Topic: Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC from Intel (23 Feb 2022) (Read 1289 times)

Yes more than one time with intel based gear I have had to have extra gear to update gear they sent with old firmware.

They had an issue with eth ports that was really hard to fix.

I have had issues where I had to use old keyboard with old wire designs . ie ps/2 port to alter firmware to allow for usb key boards.

Alas from my (limited) experience, Intel is no better at this.
I've bought the parts and built myself, 2 servers - all up about $40k - (all intel: MB, CPU, Case, PSU but other party RAM) and had some interesting problems with them.
Specifically, the Intel motherboards:

First one the base firmware didn't spin the fans - at all - lots of overheating and hard shutdowns.
After discussing with them online for a while, it was indeed the MB needed a software update to fix it.
So while you could say it's my fault for not having done that at the start, I will point out that they had known about it for over a year, but they still didn't update the MB at the factory to fix this rather serious problem.

Second one couple years later, I bought the R version of the same MB due to getting a Xeon Gold 6258R (equivalent fastest 2nd gen CPU they sell)
Oddly enough though, it did not work at all.
It gave some weird light code that no one on the Intel board could identify (and not in the PDF manual)
Turns out that the firmware in the R version of the MB (that exists purely to support the 2nd gen R CPUs) didn't support the top of the line 6258R.
So since I fortunately had 2 Xeon Gold 6148 in the other MB, I took one out, put it in the new MB, booted fine, updated the MB, and now it works with the 6258R.
Had I not had a non R CPU on hand to update the MB, I would have been screwed and had to send it back to Intel to update it as it should have been to start with.

So, yeah, don't expect much from Intel either.
They do quite literally expect people to update faulty firmware themselves, and not ship it updated even if they know its a major problem.

Not for a while. From what was discussed elsewhere, they are going to the big buyers 1st then to the smaller bulk then to distributors.
Till they trickle down to us will probably be months.
It's probably a smart move on their part. 1000s and 1000s of end users can be a nightmare to support, putting them in the hands of professionals 1st to find issues that can be dealt with in a data center environment with full time support engineers is probably better.

Unlike other manufacturers that let us do the beta testing of the products.

-Dave

I've not seen any exact release dates and possible distributor partners...

Do we know when those Intel miners gonna be available for sale?

Just saw that. A bit less efficient then the S19j XP BUT if they are true to the marketing and the chips and miner are 1/2 the price then who cares.
And it's Intel. Might not be the best at all times, but their chips and miners are probably a lot better then everyone else.
Lets see how long till they come to market and we can actually buy them.

-Dave

Some more details on the chip and it seems the Bonanza2 is behind S19 XP. Good news for existing miners!

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intels-second-gen-bitcoin-miners-performance-and-pricing-listed

Toms Hardware has a write up:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-details-its-bitcoin-mining-bonanza-mine-chips-and-systems

The 1st gen are essentially useless unless they are so dirt cheap as not to matter. If you can get the miner cheap enough then it might be worth it.

The 2nd gen looks like it might be a competitive product since there are big names buying it, but until more info is released it's all a guess.

-Dave

Being sha-256 chips does not lock them into being for BTC. Most of the logistics tracking blockchain applications I've seen from IBM are all using sha-256.

That said they can certainly be used for mining BTC but until specs are released we have no way of knowing how they compare to existing chips from Bitmain, Canaan, et al. So far all Intel is saying is that "they are 1000x more efficient than GPU's"

Umm.. but as far as I've read,
BMZ1 and BMZ2 are confirmed as btc (sha-256) asics.

I heard that this info leaked a bit earlier than Intel intended,
and that they would have official launch this month (which means next week ?).

Usual order quantities are said to be in thousands (I don't know exact numbers, e.g. for MOQ ).

Folks here should realize that Intel is talking about Blockchain Technology in it's myriad of current and possible applications - NOT just Bitcoin.
From the news release:GPU arrays are of course not used to mine BTC but they are used in blockchain-based logistics tracking applications, large scale Public Utility assets tracking, etc. that use blockchain tech for the records keeping.

Well, like you said previously, there isn't a full product out, or even a commercially available chip with specs published, so it's all just speculation at this point.

I don't doubt that below 20w/th is possible with the S19pro, but not every S19pro. Could be only one out of 10 can achieve that. Same for S17pros hitting 30w/th.

---

A couple of interesting tidbits of info in there. They've created a whole new group for doing projects like this.

With custom firmware the S19 pro can easily do below 20w/th according to one of the devs at vnish, so efficiency wise i highly doubt intel chips will beat that. So the cost of final products will be the judge.

As far as quality is concerned, I have to agree with you, although most issues are beyond the chip level, so we do not really need new chips to lower that failure rate, we just need better "everything else".

Microbt seems to be the only manufaturer with proper quality control, even the new Avalons have high failure rate, it is annoying given how expensive these gears sell for.

I'm expecting and hoping their end product is the chip, not a full miner. Let multiple integrators compete in the marketplace to build the best miner. But I can't really imagine they'd do a worse job than current miners out there if they did decide to market the end product. The failure rate on new gen miners although better than the 17 series still seems pretty awful. And the firmware sucks. Really, I just don't see how Intel could possibly do worse.

Bitmain has a working product that intel does not have yet, personally, I can't take the above table any seriously until there is a finished product all of this is unreal, the chip level is the most important but there are many other factors, the production capacity and final cost are two important things that we can't ignore.

Well, Bitmain's 1397 chip was their 2nd crack at 7nm and is about 25mm² and best efficiency of 30w/th when running ~280GH/sec. So hashrate per die area is pretty close between the two.

We also don't know what the high end of the hashrate might be on Intel's chip, what is quoted is most likely just the most efficient operating conditions, so it can likely run much faster at lower efficiency.

So I'd say Intel put Bitmain to shame, destroying their efficiency # at the same node size right out of the gate.

Here's a bit more information about this chip:


Here's a comparison table with some of the other miners, showing Intel's BZM1 as the most efficient chip:



There are also indications that there will be a second chip from Intel, BZM2, which will be released at some point in the future.

Admist all this talk, has anyone actually looked at the size of the BZ1 chip?

14.1 mm<sup>2 and only 137 GH? At 4000 per wafer each chip would cost a customer around $3 - it's got to be the worst mining deal for years,  $23 per TH versus a standard cell implementation of around $5 ?

I'm really disappointed in Intel, perhaps the second iteration will do much better.</sup>

Well for chip making, shift from Asia and specifically, Taiwan (not China). AFAIK Russia has next to no cutting, much less bleeding-edge fabs that use EUV litho processes. China definitely does not 'cause the West will not sell them the EUV tech and for at least the foreseeable future they cannot just copy it because they have no access to or ability to copy the underlying tech involved. PCB mfg and assembly of miners is a different matter.

That said, it's about freakin' time!

maybe the shift of mining away from China and Russia is coming.

Could be interesting for us all.