One of the largest manufacturers of processors, Intel, has received a patent for the equipment for mining the cryptocurrency, which would save electricity.
In the patent issued by the patent and trademark office (USPTO), describes a processor with high computing power, which allows to effectively mine bitcoin (BTC). The equipment uses the hash algorithm SHA-256 used in the production of top cryptocurrency in the world.
In the patent application is written, what mining equipment for mining bitcoins typically uses a hardware accelerator ASIC that require a lot of energy. ASIC is needed, particularly for processing 32-bit nonce field in the data block. The SHA-256 algorithm traverses this field during the transaction, calculating the correct value of the hash sums to create a new block. This process itself is very energy-intensive, but, in addition, modern accelerators ASIC process transactions in several stages, making redundant steps.
According to the authors ‘ calculations of the claims processors working on an algorithm SHA-256 may have a capacity of up to several thousand hashes per second, but consume more than 200 watts. The company proposes to reduce energy consumption, while maintaining computational power, by a sample hardware implementation of certain parameters during mining. This would reduce the number of required computations, and reduced by 15% the amount of electricity consumed by a single chip.
Also, the application stated that to reduce energy costs is possible by changing the number of passes in the 32-bit nonce field.
“Instead of having to compare the final result of the hash with a particular value, the algorithm could determine whether the result is the minimum number of leading zeros,” — written in the document.
It should be noted that Intel had previously shown interest in the field of cryptocurrency mining. So at the company’s plant produced chips for mining used by the company 21 Inc, later renamed Earn.com. In April the company acquired a major American crypto currency exchange Coinbase.
Recall that the largest mining pool F2pool recorded a sharp decrease in the number of miners in the bitcoin network in China. Analysts attribute this decline cryptocurrency market, obsolete equipment and rising prices for electricity in the country.
