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Within a year of launching its Blockscale 1000 Series ASICs, Intel has continued to discontinue this product but shall take orders for the same up to October 20, 2023.
A year after Intel officially announced the sale of its Bitcoin mining Blocksale ASICs, the company finally took the decision to discontinue the sale of its Bitcoin mining chips. As per the announcement on Tuesday, Intel said that the last product to be shipped shall be no later than April 20, 2024.
The development comes at a time when there’s growing regulatory scrutiny for digital assets in the United States. Furthermore, Intel added that this move comes as part of the company’s efforts to reduce costs.
As reported by Reuters on Tuesday, April 18, the semiconductor chip manufacturing company shall stop taking orders for its Blockscale 1000 Series ASICs by October 20. Intel called it a strategic move of prioritizing the manufacturing of certain types of chips to outside customers while cutting overall costs.
It was just last year in April 2022 that Intel launched its Bitcoin Blocksale mining chips stating that the ASIC hardware would have a hashrate of up to 580 gigahash per second. It has also stated that each chip was capable of being combined as well as merged into a single mining unit.
Some of the top Bitcoin mining firms in the industry such as Block, Argo Blockchain, Hive Blockchain Technologies and GRIID Infrastructure were among the early takers to integrate this technology into their operations.
Focusing on IDM 2.0 Operations
As said, one of the reasons for Intel to discontinue these Blocksale chips was to focus on its IDM 2.0 operations. This development comes as Intel has recently decided to exit several of its businesses as part of its company-wide restructuring and reorganizing processes.
Besides, with IDM 2.0 operations, Intel plans to increase the number of its clients for whom it is producing semiconductors while also increasing its own output of faster and smaller chips. Commenting on this development, the Intel company explained:
“As we prioritize our investments in IDM 2.0, we have end-of-life the Intel Blockscale 1000 Series ASIC while we continue to support our Blockscale customers”.
As Intel drops the sale of its Blockscale ASICs, the question is whether it is planning to exit the mining sector entirely. Popular publication Tom’s Hardware asked Intel whether the company is preparing for a complete exit from the Bitcoin ASIC sector. Responding to it, Intel said:
“We continue to monitor market opportunities.”
Over the last month, Intel stock (NASDAQ: INTC) has jumped by nearly 10% as the company plans to roll out new products earlier than expected. The chip manufacturer has been recently testing the Granite Rapids chips.