Intel: Arc graphics cards won’t get built-in crypto mining lock

Intel’s upcoming Arc graphics cards will not include methods to counter crypto mining. Raja Koduri and Roger Chandler of the company made that clear in an interview.

In an interview with Gadgets 360 about the new Arc series of graphics cards, Koduri of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics division and Chandler of Client Graphics Products and Solutions said that a software-based lock system against crypto mining “is not a priority.” “We’re not going to put any extra work into it.” According to the two executives, the card should simply be available to everyone and the company has focused on gamers and creators with optimizations. With this they do not follow the example of Nvidia, which has developed a kind of software lock for its RTX 3000 series in the form of the Lite Hash Rate initiative, so that miners do not say they buy the entire stock immediately.

Koduri and Chandler therefore say that they cannot promise that there will be enough stock when the Arc GPUs, codenamed Alchemist, are released in early 2022. “Due to the high demand, I cannot guarantee that there will be enough stock. The same is probably true for the competition.” The fact that the video card market is a difficult one, with worldwide chip shortages and delivery problems, could be one reason that demand may not be met by early 2022.

Intel Arc chips