Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s digital payments company Block has announced that it finished the design of a prototype for its five-nanometer (5nm) Bitcoin mining chip and will soon start experimenting with the new design.
The announcement came right after the company bought a remarkable amount of mining chips from the U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturer Intel.
Intel recently said it would discontinue the Blockscale chips designed for Bitcoin mining, stopping taking new orders by October 20 and ending shipping in April 2024.
- Block has stated that the development of the Bitcoin mining chips is in the hands of a select few companies, centralizing the industry, since it is financially and technically challenging.
- The firm pointed out that its efforts would decentralize the market by bringing more efficient and affordable chips to the industry.
- The San Francisco-based company added that it plans to make Bitcoin mining technology open source wherever possible.
- The digital payments services giant also said its large batch of chip acquisitions from Intel will accelerate the development of its proprietary three-nanometer (3nm) chip, expected to be the most advanced mining chip ever.
The scale of the nanometer refers to the distance between the transistors on the chips.
- The smaller distance allows much more transistors to be placed on the chip of the same size, increasing both the performance and the efficiency.
