Intel’s entry into the Bitcoin mining hardware business is unquestionably disruptive, and new information suggests that the company’s mining hardware may now have the most excellent price-to-performance ratio on the market. Intel recently demonstrated a prototype chip and Bitcoin miner at a tech conference.
Still, those versions aren’t the ones that are shipped to customers – the second-generation Bonanza Mine chips have remained a mystery. However, the pricing and performance of Intel’s second-generation Bonanza Mine (BMZ2) Bitcoin miners were exposed in a recent SEC filing by one of Intel’s top partners.
According to the listing, BMZ2 has a performance of 135 TH/s and an efficiency of 26 J/THs. The miner is also half the price of a competing Bitmain S19 Pro while being 15% more efficient, making it competitive with the best hardware on the market from competing companies.
Intel’s Bitcoin-mining ‘Bonanza Mine’ chips were first revealed through a listing for a tech conference presentation, with little publicity. Soon later, Intel’s go-to-market plan was revealed by discovering an IPO filing by GRIID, a Bitcoin mining business that was one of Intel’s first customers. Following that, Intel announced that it had entered the Bitcoin hardware business with three major clients on board and then showed off its prototype Bonzanza Mine system at ISCC. That prototype system isn’t competitive with today’s plans, but we now know that Intel’s selling products beat or challenge the market leaders, Bitmain and MicroBT.
The principles of the shipping Bonanza Mine systems are now revealed in a new SEC filing by GRIID (h/t Hashindex). Next to the specifications, the slide does not mention Intel’s hardware. All of the facts, including fixed pricing, guaranteed chip allocation of 25% of production capacity, and top-tier US manufacturer details (Intel is the only US-based bitcoin hardware manufacturer), match GRIID’s previous supply agreement disclosures with Intel.
As a result, this performance and cost are indeed for the second-generation Bonanza Mine systems, with the caveat that these systems could be customised for GRIID. That implies that custom designs, such as those we expect from BLOCK may have a modest performance/price variation.
The new miner’s performance is listed as 135 TH/s with 26 J/TH efficiencies, second only to Bitmain’s S19j XP system, according to the PowerPoint. The Bonanza Mine-powered system is also 15% more efficient than the Bitmain S19j Pro, the next best system on the market. The BMZ2 system’s peak performance is 135 TH/s, which is quite competitive. A little basic calculation reveals that the system consumes around 3510W.
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