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The global technology giant Intel is in the latest news centered around blockchain on our DC Forecasts crypto news site – this time for winning a patent linked to its work in the area of Bitcoin mining.

The US Patent and Trademark Office this Tuesday awarded the company a patent which outlines a processor which is supposedly able to “conduct energy efficient high performance Bitcoin mining” named as the SHA-256 algorithm used by the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

According to the reports, Intel has previously tried to get patents related to its work in the area of crypto mining. Also, it was Intel’s foundry that produced the chips for the mining operation run by 21Inc, a company which later rebranded as Earn.com and was ultimately acquired by Coinbase.

As the patent outlines, Bitcoin miners may be rewarded for their efforts by receiving a block reward and transaction fees. Still, the mining machines for the Bitcoin network require hardware accelerators such as ASIC chips and therefore require a large amount of energy.

The patent explains:

“Dedicated Bitcoin mining ASICs are used to implement multiple SHA-256 engines that may deliver a performance of thousands of hashes per second while consuming power of greater than 200 [watts]. Embodiments of the present disclosure employ micro-architectural optimizations including selective hardwiring certain parameters in Bitcoin mining computation.”

The patent also hints that changing the 32-bit nonce is compared for validity and therefore could further lower the power requirements.

“Instead of comparing the final hashing result with the target value, [the] bitcoin mining application may determine whether the hash out has a minimum number of leading zeros,” the patent sums up.