NVIDIA Turing is a Crypto-mining Chip Jen-Hsun Huang Made to Save PC Gaming

[Franzen4Real]

It's all still speculation. Nobody knows really. Don't know why this got put as factual news. One of the sourced articles said April 12th. Reuters vaguely mentions Turing as a gaming chip. Crypto carrying this train hard af.

Nvidia GTC is scheduled next month March 26-29. Nvidia is calling it "AI & Deep Learning Conference"

I have to agree. The article seems to take the Alan Turing cracked crptyography, therefore this is a crypto mining card approach and ran with it. I know talking about mining all the time is the trending thing to do at the moment, however, he is also responsible for the Turing Test, which evaluates a machines ability to learn and behave like a human being. As Xzibit pointed out Nvidia GTC is scheduled next month March 26-29. Nvidia is calling it "AI & Deep Learning Conference", I feel it is FAR more likely that this card will have something to do with the later, not the former.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

nVidia has shown they are very committed to the deep learning and AI sector, which has amazing long term potential and benefits across hundreds of use cases.
Crypto currency and mining on GPUs could be gone just as fast as their prices rise and fall, it's a very volatile. If it is true that releasing a mining card on a mass scale will drastically ramp up difficulty to mine on a GPU, why would they base an entire business model on something that will essentially create its own demise? (as in, the more people buy these cards> the more people will mine> the more difficult mining gets> the less return/value/reason there is to mining>the less people will buy the cards).

Because of this I would be shocked if this ends up being a mining specific card. But you never know, maybe it will be. Maybe they just want to cash in while the getting is great, and throw a bone to gamers. This is why I am not the head of nVidia I guess. All I can say is if it is a mining card, they need to disable mining on the GeForce brand completely, just as they have disabled the use of the GeForce brand in datacenters.

 

[jabbadap]

I only have one question... what fab line is going to make these chips so that they actually have an impact on supply? Fab time is a limited resource.

Maybe the fab line which does not make gpus in the first place, like TSMCs 12nm FFC or GF 12nm FDX. I would be more concerned about graphics memory shortages, than fab lines though.

 

[RealNeil]

I'm looking for release dates.

They're kicking around a March release date. (not set in stone yet)

 

[RejZoR]

It's hilarious how everyone is concerned over landfills getting filled with unused crypto cards, but no one has an issue with burning of terawatts of power to calculate meaningless numbers to make money. Which is essentially what cryptocurrency is.

 

[Captain_Tom]

So if Nvidia wanted to, they could take V100 and:

1) Cut the amount of HBM down to 6GB, but clock it faster.
2) Remove the tensor cores and manufacture these cards on 16nm (instead of the more expensive 12nm).
3) Use a smaller core, but clock it faster; and then turn the fan up to 70% to mitigate the extra heat.

^ With these tweaks they could probably make the thing do ~80-100 MH/s ETH @200-250w out of the box. With those numbers they could easily charge $1500. I could also see a cut-down 50 MH/s @200w GDDR6 variant sold for $600.


However I am very skeptical about how much effort Nvidia will actually put into making these cards truly worth it. After all, everything I just stated was in reference to mining Ethereum; but there are SO many other cryptocurrencies that these cards would not be as good as the price would suggest they should be. Let us not forget that Vega 64 beats V100 at both Monero mining, and relative dual-mining capabilities while utilizing half the die size and a smaller bus...

What would truly be remarkable is if Nvidia managed to make Turing substantially more efficient at ETHash, ETHash dual mining, Equihash, cryptonight, X17, and basically any emerging mining algorithms they think are on the horizon. And then they also included 1 x HDMI 2.1, and 1 x Displayport 1.4 in case someone eventually does want to use one of these cards for gaming.

 

[Fluffmeister]

It's hilarious how everyone is concerned over landfills getting filled with unused crypto cards, but no one has an issue with burning of terawatts of power to calculate meaningless numbers to make money. Which is essentially what cryptocurrency is.

I did laugh too, Nv have announced nothing yet and it's already in landfill causing environmental damage!

 

[kruk]

It's hilarious how everyone is concerned over landfills getting filled with unused crypto cards, but no one has an issue with burning of terawatts of power to calculate meaningless numbers to make money. Which is essentially what cryptocurrency is.

And people burn terawatts of power to calculate meaningless pixels to play games ... At least gaming cards can be reused for years (I still use a 15 years old Geforce 6000 series card) which won't be the case for mining only cards.

Landfills in poor countries might seem a joke to you (and others), but those who daily inhale the toxic fumes coming from them aren't laughing ...

 

[Casecutter]

(as in, the more people buy these cards> the more people will mine> the more difficult mining gets> the less return/value/reason there is to mining>the less people will buy the cards).

It is a strange scheme that only those who got in at the top make money. ▲ Well until it's taken by a hacker(s) that seems to be the better side of the equation to get in on.

It's hilarious how everyone is concerned over landfills getting filled with unused crypto cards, but no one has an issue with burning of terawatts of power to calculate meaningless numbers to make money. Which is essentially what cryptocurrency is.

It is the whole eco-system energy to design, produce wafers, create them into boards, packaging, ships/trucks to move them, then energy to run them to do what actual work! (at least Folding did help do something). At least most GPU's that don't fail at least go on to a second even third use-life before retired. Such crypo-only-cards are fairly useless the moment the hash/watt equation moves and they're no longer profitable.

There are always folk who can't discuss the ramification of an action until too late.
Bullets fly, and it's to soon to talk about... time passes and why are you talking about that, no ones got time for that anymore! As human we gotten into weird mentality of apathy or playing into others diversion tactics. (or both)

 

[Fluffmeister]

Bullets flying and a lack of apathy seems apt... or maybe not, hey ho.

 

[efikkan]

If true, this has got to be one of the most useless pieces of technology in a long time. Mining of cryptocurrency is only computational demanding to regulate the generation of new currency. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have a fixed of currency generation and a cap on total volume, so advancing mining hardware is nearly pointless. This workload is just wasted power, it's not like it contributes to anything useful. Bitcoin mining already consumes energy comparable to a country like Ireland, all of it completely unnecessarily.

 

[Xzibit]

@btarunr Do you have a source link for this Turing development?

Its speculation which a lot of the tech sites are doing now a days for whatever reason.

Digital Trends - Nvidia may reveal dedicated ‘Turing’ cryptocurrency mining cards in March

Nvidia is expected to introduce new graphics cards for the gaming market, possibly codenamed “Turing,” during its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) starting March 26.

Which again site the Feb 9 Reuters that everyone is using as source. @btarunr says its a Crypto card but the article he sources from Digital speculates its a gaming card at first they arent even sure themselves. Whoops!!!!

Everything going forward most likely is still Volta. But the Ampere and Turing code names may be used to describe cards for two different markets given the new landscape: Gaming and cryptocurrency mining. Previous rumors pointed to Ampere code-named gaming cards while Turing likely references to cryptocurrency mining cards. Those names may be reversed too, but highly unlikely.

Its always beneficial to read the links/sources themselves in their entirety.

This is just speculation from Digital Trend

Pretty much now slap a sensationalize Headline to get traffic for your website.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Can't see it happening like this , no cited source , and regardless not enough memory to go round so the big rescue if it existed isn't going to work.

So

A. It's all balls

B. It's Spesh and a stupid idea given the market would be awash with mint ish seconds for months

C. Same old shit repackaged , tweaked a bit with a price hike.

I know which one it definitely isn't B.

 

[Sandbo]

I am not saying this is a good practice (in fact really bad),
Nvidia might just disable the support on CUDA/GPGPU on their gaming cards, which will probably solve the problem.....

 

[Vya Domus]

Nvidia might just disable the support on CUDA/GPGPU on their gaming cards

Can't be done.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Can't be done.

Oh, don't kid yourself. It can be done in the official drivers.

 

[Casecutter]

Bullets flying and a lack of apathy seems apt... or maybe not, hey ho.

I think the word you wanted was "Empathy" as in; you seem to lack any...

 

[eidairaman1]

I just want to see how this plays out.

If it works Great, if not, no one is getting a hold of my 290 VaporX lol

 

[kuwlness]

Called this one to a T on Tuesday. Booyah!! We miners gonna keep on mining! Haters keep on hating.

"This card should be an exceptional crypto miner. They're obviously going after AMD/Radeon with this one since Radeon cards are great for mining Ethereum and nVidia has always lagged here. Ethereum is a "Turing" Complete blockchain."

 

[Vya Domus]

Oh, don't kid yourself. It can be done in the official drivers.

While PTX , Nvidia's high-level assembly language for CUDA, is closed source and controlled through the driver the actual shader assembly generated by it is available to anyone. Meaning that "disabling CUDA" would be absolutely useless. It's like saying that without Intel's closed compiler you can never write a program for their microarchitecture again , clearly not true.

Therfore , it can't be done. No question about it.

 

[Fluffmeister]

I think the word you wanted was "Empathy" as in; you seem to lack any...

No definitely apathy, as it doesn't concern me (or those in power). But after Sandy it's hard to have any empathy...

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Even disabling Cuda wouldn't stop it ,direct compute, open CL/GL still exists essentially the algorithms are similar to some parts of game code soo ,yeh turn it off for consumers and see physx as what??

 

[Fluffmeister]

So basically what you are all saying is... what ever Nvidia release will sell like hot cakes and make them loads of money?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

So basically what you are all saying is... what ever Nvidia release will sell like hot cakes and make them loads of money?

The law , and they normally abide.

 

[Fluffmeister]

The law , and they normally abide.

 

[lexluthermiester]

While PTX , Nvidia's high-level assembly language for CUDA, is closed source and controlled through the driver the actual shader assembly generated by it is available to anyone. Meaning that "disabling CUDA" would be absolutely useless. It's like saying that without Intel's closed compiler you can never write a program for their micro-architecture again , clearly not true. Therfore , it can't be done. No question about it.

You seem to have misunderstood. If Nvidia wants to lock such out of their driver, they can do so. Can the community come up with an alternative? Sure. And I think that's already been done.