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

[Vya Domus]

So if it's not an ASIC ... then what is it ? Because if they start from current designs it can't get much faster at miming than it already is. The only thing I can image as to what they can do is eliminate some of the critical stages for the graphics pipeline like the rasterizer and what not and fill the remaining die space with more SIMD lanes. Which will make it better at compute and useless for graphics.

Thing is , this is pretty much guaranteed to eat away the very wafers that are being used for their consumer graphics , there's no other way. Seems like everyone might get played again by our boy Huang , they aren't saving jack shit , they are optimizing their products for mining. Nvidia has never been a long term company for the most part , they are always for the profit in the here and now. This is exactly that.

 

[BorgOvermind]

They're making dedicated gaming cards, dedicated mining cards, dedicated AI cards, dedicated prosumer cards whatever the hell that means, dedicated self driving car chips and tegra.
Interesting to see whether this card changes things. It might but time will tell, it's a good move from nvidia.

...while it's 99% the same card with various things and tweaks enabled or not.

 

[bug]

Probably b/c it will be priced too high and it's still using RAM needed for gaming cards... It's a cash grab or at attempt. Time will tell.

Yeah, we should ban companies that release products only to make money

 

[Fluffmeister]

Yeah, we should ban companies that release products only to make money

I suspect Nvidia's investors and share holders are glad a lot of these forum warriors don't run the company.

 

[qubit]

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

 

[First Strike]

Probably b/c it will be priced too high and it's still using RAM needed for gaming cards... It's a cash grab or at attempt. Time will tell.

Oh, grabbing cash from mining industry, sounds good to me, except that is completely non-sense.

This is as ridiculous as to say somebody exploits Wall Street fund managers. They calculate expenditure/income to extreme, and you want to cash-grab them?

 

[iO]

It might be a compute chip without any graphics pipeline and even some optimisations to typical blockchain workloads. But nothing purely mining specific, too volatile and risky

 

[intelzen]

well this article (information) is about near future - and everyone can interpret as he likes... but lets us agree on some information about present days, that are based on facts (that are less for interpretation):
1) all gpus are sold out for x2 price right now (so no waffers and fab resources are avalible for you gamer to get at this point).
2) nvidia and amd are making money of it right now.
3) more miners enter the game - more difficulty rises and less money miners get.

so how exaclty these news are bad for gamers? gamers wont get cards, because nvidia will use existing waffers to produce miner cards?
answer - gamersdoes notand wont get any gpu anyway - nor 2 year old gtx 1070 nor potential new gtx 20XX if this situation in mining does not collpase or market will be flooded with more powerfull rigs that can increase difficulty significantly, and Jen-Hsuns pockets will be filled with miners cahs anyway. So look at this at the bight side, if this architecture is more optimized for mining, and it hits the mining market - then dificulty will rise and mining will be less profitable with existing rigs, even when Jen-Hsuns used up all your waffers in the process and filled his pockets - still you will get second hand cards then - because those millions of existing mining rigs will hit ebay and compete with each oter.

 

[lexluthermiester]

What if (big what if) Volta-based GeForce cards have artificially-crippled blockchain performance from their drivers/CUDA_CL?

That has been talked about. But the problem is that driver level limitations can be overcome if an open-source cryptocurrency focused alternative is used.

Dear site..
What is with the messianic titile in the topic? Yeah Nvidia CEO is making this card to save pc gaming and not ot make profit from it . You made a topic based on a rumor from Reuters and made it into a puff piece.. Are you CNN and WCCFTECH all in one?

If you don't like it, don't come here. Whining about it will only get you some cheese.. And not the good kind.

 

[jabbadap]

So if it's not an ASIC ... then what is it ? Because if they start from current designs it can't get much faster at miming than it already is. The only thing I can image as to what they can do is eliminate some of the critical stages for the graphics pipeline like the rasterizer and what not and fill the remaining die space with more SIMD lanes. Which will make it better at compute and useless for graphics.

Thing is , this is pretty much guaranteed to eat away the very wafers that are being used for their consumer graphics , there's no other way. Seems like everyone might get played again by our boy Huang , they aren't saving jack shit , they are optimizing their products for mining. Nvidia has never been a long term company for the most part , they are always for the profit in the here and now. This is exactly that.

Well chip with very low power and enough compute perf. and memory bandwidth should do it.

Wonder if nvidia is the one behind TSMCs custom cryptoasic order, samsung has some crypto manufacturing asic deals too. But knowing close relationship between nvidia and tsmc, the former is safe bet.

 

[Gasaraki]

I wonder if this means any delays for next gen geforce cards. They're making Volta and now this one, probably in ridiculous amounts. TSMC will have their hands full.

This will only be useless if supply can't meet demand. Miners will swallow it and burp, then be back to buying geforce again. If they can saturate the market tho, it means a lot of good things for gaming card prices.

They recently signed a deal with Samsung also to start making chips. Don't know if it's Volta processors or Turing.

 

[Nicholas Peyton]

There must be a solution to this.

My idea would be to include a display-port or HDMI port as normal. But to have a lower hard limit on voltage. Miners typically always under-volt their mining cards.

For example if I mine on my own 1080Ti it will draw up to 336 watts at only 0.9v. (it does 1999Mhz at 0.9v)

Even at stock the voltage would actually be 1.06v which would put power draw up to nearly 500 watts. Which would soon kill a card if left mining at that current/voltage throughput continuously.

By limiting voltage (at hard level) to lower than that of the GeForce counterparts, it would deter gamers from buying them initially.

But would still offer a cheap Ebay bargain for a gamer that doesn't care about overclocking and who doesn't mind their card being effectively "down-tuned" compared to a regular card. This would enable resale of the card as people would love to snap up a bargain on a down-tuned variant. Moreoever they'd have the peace of mind knowing that although the card has been used for mining, voltage has always been kept low. In other words the card will have been "broken in" gently.

This also wouldn't affect mining performance because no miner who is trying to turn a profit (while paying electric) is running their card at stock voltages. And certainly isn't overclocking.

I estimate my card is probably actually most efficient at about 0.8 to 0.85v

 

[mouacyk]

Only the Codename of Turing seems to be news. Various AIBs have already announced mining-specific GPUs last year and have already sold mining-specific cards for a while.
See Asus GP106 model without any outputs here: https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/MINING-P106-6G/gallery/
Pascal mining news from 2017: http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics...-gpu-cryptocurrency-mining-solution-pictured/

This is really just NVidia ramping up (current Pascal and next-gen) die production for those mining cards. They had their chance to "save" the gamers for a while now, but they didn't fearing the volatility of the crypto-coins just like Steam did. What changed is that the crypto-coins didn't burst, so analysts and investors are putting pressure on NVidia because they are 10x bigger than the competitor. If you piece NVidia news together for the last 6 months, it's very cohesive and centered around the dynamics of crypto -- particularly BTC.

 

[bug]

There must be a solution to this.

My idea would be to include a display-port or HDMI port as normal. But to have a lower hard limit on voltage. Miners typically always under-volt their mining cards.

For example if I mine on my own 1080Ti it will draw up to 336 watts at only 0.9v. (it does 1999Mhz at 0.9v)

Even at stock the voltage would actually be 1.06v which would put power draw up to nearly 500 watts. Which would soon kill a card if left mining at that current/voltage throughput continuously.

By limiting voltage (at hard level) to lower than that of the GeForce counterparts, it would deter gamers from buying them initially.

But would still offer a cheap Ebay bargain for a gamer that doesn't care about overclocking and who doesn't mind their card being effectively "down-tuned" compared to a regular card. This would enable resale of the card as people would love to snap up a bargain on a down-tuned variant. Moreoever they'd have the peace of mind knowing that although the card has been used for mining, voltage has always been kept low. In other words the card will have been "broken in" gently.

This also wouldn't affect mining performance because no miner who is trying to turn a profit (while paying electric) is running their card at stock voltages. And certainly isn't overclocking.

I estimate my card is probably actually most efficient at about 0.8 to 0.85v

Wild guess: those that build the cards know best how to limit/prevent mining and their solution was to build cheap silicon in the form of Turing.

 

[mouacyk]

But would still offer a cheap Ebay bargain for a gamer that doesn't care about overclocking and who doesn't mind their card being effectively "down-tuned" compared to a regular card. This would enable resale of the card as people would love to snap up a bargain on a down-tuned variant. Moreoever they'd have the peace of mind knowing that although the card has been used for mining, voltage has always been kept low. In other words the card will have been "broken in" gently.

It is a great overall solution, one that NVidia would NOT be interested in. Market segmentation is a classic business strategy (for profits). Any business will do everything they can to NOT hurt their future profits (especially from sales).

 

[Totally]

If this turns out true I would be so happy

Alas it sounds too good to be true.

 

[Steevo]

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.

The one powered by the Jen fan club. Since he and his leather jacket are here to save us, and not make profit.

 

[xytras]

this will be useless. When all the mining cards are gone, miner start buying geforce, and if profittable, maybe less profittlable, they ll buu them all. No mattere how many cards there will be

Assumption they will not have stock of Crypto-Cards. Smells like Nintendo and the NES Classic.

 

[Casecutter]

they can't be sold as a gaming card later

And is environmental boon-dog-gal. Huge energy to make a chip, energy to mine, and no after life other than a landfill. Isn't Technology wonderful!

Fab time is a limited resource.

Amen, you can't give use gaming card now how is moving production to attend to this hugely profitable market going to save gaming? More like abandoning gaming might be the Headline!

if this Turning has significantly increased price/performance

Then they seem to have been working for awhile designing such new technology, or is a few tweaks to Pascal able to make that much difference?

mining set up with risers etc, that's the start. The real culprits though are even more industrial.

Agreed, but even Egg is the one bundling 6 Vega's with risers so they are selling.

and it's still using RAM needed for gaming cards

That's another big issue...

Yeah Nvidia CEO is making this card to save pc gaming and not ot make profit from it

More abandoning a low volume high maintenance market, for a new higher volume/profit market.

Because if they start from current designs it can't get much faster at miming than it already is.

That is if the ceased working on gaming designs some time ago to place engineer resources in developing a design better suite for hash/power improvements and forgo developing improved gaming engineered designs.

All what is here are good topics, and they point less to be for aiding the gaming community.

 

[dozenfury]

I think most miners have known this is the eventual end-game for gpu-based crypto. It will almost certainly follow the same evolution as cpu mining did when it shifted to industrial/ASIC mining which made it no longer viable for small-scale miners. We just happen to be in the window now (which btw has lasted much longer than I expected) before we get there. But it sounds like the clouds are forming for it to finally happen.

You're still going to have the moderate-sized miners that have a garage full of rack mining systems at home that have invested $50k+. But it would definitely kill off small scale mining, and those are really the people paying 200%+ premiums for video cards thinking they'll get rich quick. Large-scale miners aren't the ones paying $500 for a 1060 or 580, or $1500 for a 1080ti, they are buying in bulk (even by the pallet) at close to MSRP. So making small-scale mining unprofitable would definitely bring prices down for the gaming masses.

 

[Vya Domus]

That is if the ceased working on gaming designs some time ago to place engineer resources in developing a design better suite for hash/power improvements and forgo developing improved gaming engineered designs.

They stopped working and pouring money into consumer graphics maybe as far back as Maxwell. Most of their cash and work has been put into working with TSMC and slowly shifting the focus on compute.

 

[kruk]

Instead of ramping up the gaming GPU production and thereby reducing market pressure/prices, they decided to produce a accelerator that will probably be useless for gaming and will start filling landfills in third world countries when mining on these chips won't be profitable anymore. And as nVidia loves vendor lock-in, they will almost 100% produce a proprietary mining software (which might or might not be pay 2 use) and significantly gimp everything open source.

As others said, there is really nothing to cheer about ...

 

[Fluffmeister]

The one powered by the Jen fan club. Since he and his leather jacket are here to save us, and not make profit.

Jen is easily my fave ex-AMD employee!

 

[yotano211]

Fun reading anyone that posted that this "card" will save PC gaming. Another rumor with tons of hot air.

 

[dicktracy]

This is just speculation from Digital Trend