In a nutshell: Intel’s accelerated computing group has started shipping its second-gen Blockscale ASIC for SHA-256 cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The launch is months ahead of schedule, but still too late to capitalize on the most recent cryptocurrency craze. Intel announced that it was developing Blockscale ASICs in January when Bitcoin was worth twice as much as it is now and hardware was desperately in demand. Its second-gen is arriving after the market has satiated its need, which is usually when Intel starts shipping its hardware (I’m looking at you, Arc GPUs). Despite that, the Blockscale ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is […]