Intel Corporation has decided to exit another area of its business. The processor giant informed its partners about the discontinuation of production of ASICs for mining Blockscale 1000 series, whose official launch took place only a year before. No information was provided on their successors, with the chipmaker explaining its decision by its desire to focus on developing contract manufacturing of microchips as part of its IDM 2.0 strategy.
Intel entered the bitcoin mining ASIC market relatively late. This happened during the last cryptocurrency rush, so the chipmaker managed to strike long-term deals with several large companies such as Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square) and GRIID Infrastructure. However, by mid-2022, Bitcoin’s exchange rate had dropped significantly, leading to a reduction in demand.
Clients will have the option to order Intel’s Blockscale 1000 series mining ASICs by October this year, with the last delivery to be made in April 2024. In the future, the company could return to manufacturing similar devices if the appropriate market opportunity arises. However, in the near future, the Custom Compute Group will only support existing customers.
