A year ago Koduri officially announced Intel’s Bitcoin-mining Blockscale ASICs, but today the company announced the end of life of its first-gen Blockscale 1000-series chips without announcing any follow-up generations of the chips.

Intel said that it had prioritise its investments in IDM 2.0 and end-of-lifed the Intel Blockscale 1000 Series ASIC.

Intel's statement cites the company's tighter focus on its IDM 2.0 operations as the reason for ending the Blockscale ASICs, a frequent refrain in many of its statements as it has exited several businesses amid company-wide belt-tightening.

Chipzilla said that it was not sure if it planned to exit the Bitcoin ASIC business entirely was continuing to monitor market opportunities.

In the original announcement that the company would enter the blockchain market, then graphics chief Raja Koduri noted that the company had created a Custom Compute Group within the AXG graphics unit to support the Bitcoin ASICs and "additional emerging technology."

However, Intel recently restructured the AXG group, and Koduri left the company shortly after that.