Thursday, February 15th 2018
NVIDIA Turing is a Crypto-mining Chip Jen-Hsun Huang Made to Save PC Gaming
When Reuters reported Turing as NVIDIA's next gaming graphics card, we knew something was off about it. Something like that would break many of NVIDIA's naming conventions. It now turns out that Turing, named after British scientist Alan Turing, who is credited with leading a team of mathematicians that broke the Nazi "Enigma" cryptography, is a crypto-mining and blockchain compute accelerator. It is being designed to be compact, efficient, and ready for large-scale deployment by amateur miners and crypto-mining firms alike, in a quasi-industrial scale.
NVIDIA Turing could be manufactured at a low-enough cost against GeForce-branded products, and in high-enough scales, to help bring down their prices, and save the PC gaming ecosystem. It could have an ASIC-like disruptive impact on the graphics card market, which could make mining with graphics cards less viable, in turn, lowering graphics card prices. With performance-segment and high-end graphics cards seeing 200-400% price inflation in the wake of crypto-currency mining wave, PC gaming is threatened as gamers are lured to the still-affordable new-generation console ecosystems, led by premium consoles such as the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. There's no word on which GPU architecture Turing will be based on ("Pascal" or "Volta"). NVIDIA is expected to launch its entire family of next-generation GeForce GTX 2000-series "Volta" graphics cards in 2018.
Source:
DigitalTrends
NVIDIA Turing could be manufactured at a low-enough cost against GeForce-branded products, and in high-enough scales, to help bring down their prices, and save the PC gaming ecosystem. It could have an ASIC-like disruptive impact on the graphics card market, which could make mining with graphics cards less viable, in turn, lowering graphics card prices. With performance-segment and high-end graphics cards seeing 200-400% price inflation in the wake of crypto-currency mining wave, PC gaming is threatened as gamers are lured to the still-affordable new-generation console ecosystems, led by premium consoles such as the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. There's no word on which GPU architecture Turing will be based on ("Pascal" or "Volta"). NVIDIA is expected to launch its entire family of next-generation GeForce GTX 2000-series "Volta" graphics cards in 2018.
124 Comments on NVIDIA Turing is a Crypto-mining Chip Jen-Hsun Huang Made to Save PC Gaming
If they want to change the game, they should develop a whole new system to replace the normal desktop PC motherboard systems. Make a new main motherboard (not ATX spec), and a new gpu card layout that makes it easier and more efficient to pack more compute hardware in smaller spaces, with better cooling, more control, and easier management. Similar to what they do for their scalable compute stuff. Then maybe you can separate the mining rigs from the gaming rigs. But that would likely cost too much money.... but they could save gamers that way if they were really concerned... but we know that all that matters to corporations is money and shareholders, which makes miners buying up all the gaming cards good for business - it's capitalism at work.
If this is really true, I will stop paying attention to Turing and prepare for all-Monero mining...That's basically what I think too:
1) Nvidia could make some excellent mining hardware if they really wanted to, and it would essentially save PC gaming (or at least make it so cards are only 20% above MSRP lol). Heck if they wrote official mining drivers (with real effort) they could probably boost their cards substantially.
2) But at the same time it would be somewhat risky unless they really put in the effort to make an architecture that truly is at least 2x as good at every mining algorithm, and not just one or two of the (currently) popular ones. However I doubt they would put that much effort into this considering the numerous easy mistakes they could make.
3) In reality, I think a "Turing" mining architecture is most likely to be a version of Volta with less RAM, less ROP's, and no Tensor cores. That's it, and it will only be useful for under a year...
For 1080's for example, ethhash is a terrible choice. Equihash is much better.That is what is needed, and I too am pretty much a skeptic that that's what we'll get. I think you are spot on with 3.
Again they/any smart executive would make a about-face on the PC Gaming Industry in a Heart-Beat, if they could!
And with the reduce volume they'd hold to supply gaming, it would still mean high(er) MSRP for what is offered.
Furthermore I think everyone here should watch this video:
1) In his analysis it starts to become pretty clear that around HALF of Nvidia's current profits in desktop gaming cards are coming from crypto! HALF!
2) Even funnier, is the fact that Nvidia's crypto revenue seems to have accelerated immensely right around when AMD cards were completely out of stock.
3) Nvidia even goes on to say that they believe they can force more GDDR from manufacturers because of "How much bigger they are than AMD." This is an important claim they are making too, important because AMD said they could produce 20% more GPU's if they could just get a hold of RAM.
So yeah I hope Nvidia can figure out a way to make a powerful mining arch that can be manufactured with alternative facilities to the ones foundries currently employ for gaming cards, and also that it actually has legs and can mine EVERYTHING best. But they better be careful because there are multiple wrong moves they could make that would cut there income down by incredible amounts over night...
Again it boils down to...Is there foundries that can produce complex GPU silicone right now today, that's sitting with idle capacity?
There is no evidence supporting that half of Nvidia's profits in the consumer market is due to mining. Keep in mind that inflated prices at retailers doesn't affect Nvidia's profits.
Most GPUs are not sold at extremely inflated prices. Firstly, the problem is localized. Secondly, even though many of the cards in stock are overpriced, doesn't meant the larger volume are sold at these prices. Popular products have large backorders, and might ship hundreds or thousands every week even if it appears to remain "sold out" for months.
The theory of a "mining shortage" fails due to AMD's claim of memory shortage. Cards are not assembled by Nvidia or AMD, but by makers such as Foxconn on behalf of AIBs. AMD GPUs are still more favorable for mining, which should lead AIBs to prioritize AMD GPUs in the event of memory shortages, but since they are prioritizing Nvidia, it becomes apparent that the primary cause is non-mining.
Additionally, keep in mind the increased demand for data centers and AI also increases the demand for high-end consumer products. Not all development and research is done on Titans and Teslas, many companies and institutions do development on high-end consumer products to save money. GTX 1080 Ti have sold incredibly well for a high-end model, and it's certainly not due to mining.
NVIDIA has actually been better for making money this go around.
-My $500 Vega cards do 47.2 MH/s Ethereum + 1100 Pascal dual mining. That is the equivalent of 2.5 1070's!
-My $120 R9 380's do 23 MH/s. That's as good as a 1060 that would cost at least 2x as much (And it's 28nm lol)
-And of course RX 580's mine as well as 1070's if properly tweaked.
There is a reason RX 580's eventually started selling for the same price as 1070's, and in general AMD cards sold out WAY before Nvida...
Again let's look at my highly overclocked Vega's that pull ~310w: They have 1.5x the hashing power an overclocked 180w 1070 has in Ethereum, and then they are also mining Pascal as well as another 1070 at the same time! That is substantially more efficient than Nvidia's most efficient mining card, and I could clock them lower for much better efficiency if I wanted to.
Now Volta is more efficient, but it's also a lowly-clocked 12nm card with a 73% larger die size! Of course it is better in Ethereum mining (and still worse in cryptonight)! It also costs substantially more to produce and buy. Nvidia would be wise to make a for-mining architecture so they don't lose sizable amounts of income if AMD cards ever come back in stock in sufficient numbers.
I learned a few things though, not being a amd miner myself. Have a thanks.
and my 1060's ran $140-150 USD and use less than half the power those 380's do...