NORTH CANTON, Ohio, Aug. 03, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Squirrels Research Labs is working with Xilinx, Inc. to provide specialty hardware that previously wasn’t available to blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

“We saw a significant opportunity to enter into the largely unknown FPGA (field programmable gate array) cryptocurrency market by leveraging Xilinx FPGAs,” Squirrels Research Labs president David Stanfill said.

Usually reserved for applications like live video transcoding, data analytics, genomics and machine learning, FPGA hardware from Xilinx is also applicable and highly effective for cryptocurrency mining.

“We customized the Xilinx hardware solution to achieve optimal results for blockchain processing,” Stanfill continued. “FPGA-based hardware for cryptomining is in very high demand, and it will be available through us in partnership with the Mineority Group.”

Squirrels Research Labs will begin accepting shipments at a Northeast Ohio facility this summer. The devices will be processed and fitted with any requested modifications, and then they will be shipped out to customers.

“FPGA-based Blockchain solutions are different than standard FPGA uses like satellite deployments and high-frequency trading,” Stanfill continued. “Any error with traditional uses would be devastating.

“However, the distributed nature of blockchain makes it particularly impervious to errors. We were able to take advantage of this to accelerate the blockchain performance with modifications to unlock all of the chip resources.” 

Stanfill said the Xilinx relationship plays a key role in future Squirrels Research Labs plans.

“Our knowledge of the cryptomining space enabled us to work with Xilinx to have a blockchain-optimized product that falls outside of the typical FPGA use case and to invest in making the solution broadly available,” he continued. “We have further plans in the hardware space, and this helps us get there.”

About Squirrels Research Labs Squirrels Research Labs, or SQRL, is a research and development division of Squirrels LLC. SQRL focuses time on projects that keeps Squirrels forward thinking and adaptable in competitive markets. More about Squirrels Research Labs can be found at http://squirrelsresearch.com .