It was announced by the Canadian company that by the end of January, 5,800 machines would provide computing power of over 630 petahashes per second. The October prediction was for 1 exahash, so this is a decrease from that.
Hive Blockchain (HIVE), a cryptocurrency miner, has found that its mining rigs powered by Intel’s (INTC) new chips will produce less hashrate than anticipated.
The Vancouver company announced on Friday that their 5,800 new machines, called Hive Buzzminers, will have a combined computing power of over 630 petahash/second (PH/s). It was predicted to reach 1 exahash/second (EH/s) in October.
Hive did not provide a reason for the discrepancy, and by the time of publication, the company had not responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment. As electricity prices rose, it may have adjusted machine specifications to reduce power consumption. As the price of bitcoin has dropped by over 60% this year, it’s possible that the company placed fewer orders for machines than expected.
The majority of the hardware should be in place by the month’s end, though a few pieces have already been set up. The computing power of the rigs, at around 109 terahas/second (TH/s) per machine, is slightly higher than that of Bitmain’s Antminer S19 Pro, which is scheduled for release in 2020. Key metrics for miners struggling to keep up with high power costs that Hive did not disclose are the rigs’ energy efficiency and cost. Intel’s chip is being promoted as eco-friendly, suggesting that saving resources will be one of its primary strengths.
In April, Intel announced the Blocksale 2 ASIC, which is designed specifically for use in bitcoin mining hardware. It will likely challenge the dominance of Bitmain and MicroBT in the bitcoin mining ASIC industry. The chip is configurable, so miners can use it in mining rigs of their own design, or in rigs built by others, like Hive’s. The Bitmain machines are notoriously closed-source, so this is a big improvement. However, making design decisions and bringing them to production can be challenging due to this versatility.
Delays in rollout occurred because Argo Blockchain (ARBK), another of Intel’s early clients, decided to redesign the machines. To compete with Bitmain’s Antminer S19 XP, which has 134 TH/s at 21.5 joules/terahash, the London firm working with ePIC Blockchain on the rigs said it wanted to shift the machines’ focus more toward power efficiency. Originally, Argo explained, the machines were built to perform computations.
Additionally, the first customers include Griid Infrastructure and Block (formerly Square), which is owned by Jack Dorsey.
