Global management consulting and professional services provider, Accenture filed for a patent dubbed, “Hardware Blockchain Acceleration”, which was supposedly done on August 2, 2018. The reason for seeking this patent is believed to revolve around blockchain technology’s current issues consisting of security and scalability.

Based on the claims made by Accenture, the rise in different communication mediums as well as advancement in technology has the potential to induce security concerns. While software implementations can help to better the situation at hand, the consulting firm strongly believes that hardware systems also play a significant role.

The first argument for hardware implementation, made via the patent, explains the role hardware systems play in encrypting and decrypting data. As opposed to viewing it as solely the responsibility of software systems, Accenture wants everyone to see it as a combined effort.

As per the quotation:

“As a result, the implementation shown […] has increased security and scalability as compared to, for example, software only based security systems.”

The patent further broke down the different ways in which this effort can come of use. In particular, it was written that:

“All parts of the implementations may be circuitry that includes an instruction processor, such as CPU, microcontroller, […] Application Specified Integrated Circuit (ASIC), Programmable Logic Device (PLD) […] or as circuitry that includes discrete logic or other circuit components, including analog circuit components, digital circuit components or both.”

Multiple storage options are also believed to be available, as per CCN’s reporting, which include the likes of CD ROM, Read Only Memory (ROM), Erasable Read Only Memory (E-ROM) and Random-Access Memory (RAM).

This isn’t a first for Accenture, as the firm was previously known for coming up with a controversial application that would allow one to edit blocks. When this took place sometime in September of 2017, Accenture representative, Richard Lumb made the case that, “For financial services institutions faced with a myriad of risk and regulatory requirements […] is a potential roadblock.”

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