Intel Corporation has decided to close another area of its business. The processor giant informed its partners about stopping production ASIC for mining the Blockscale 1000 series, whose official launch took place just a year before. No information was provided about their successors, with the chipmaker explaining its decision by a desire to focus on developing microchip contract manufacturing as part of its IDM 2.0 strategy.
Intel entered the market ASIC relatively late for Bitcoin mining. This happened during the last cryptocurrency fever, so the chipmaker managed to sign long-term contracts with several large companies, such as Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square) and GRIID Infrastructure. However, by the middle of 2022, the Bitcoin exchange rate had fallen significantly, leading to a decrease in demand.
Possibility to order ASIC for mining Intel's Blockscale 1000 series will be available to clients by October this year, and the last delivery will be made in April 2024. In the future, the company may return to the production of similar devices if the relevant market opportunity arises. However, in the near future, the Custom Compute Group department will only deal with the support of existing customers.
