NVIDIA Evaluates Cryptocurrency Mining GPU Production

[AleksandarK]

During the 19th Annual J.P. Morgan Tech/Auto Forum Conference, NVIDIA has talked about the possibility of special graphics cards dedicated to mining purposes. The special edition crypto mining GPU is a form of graphics card that has no display outputs, and possibly a few defective texture units. Usually, GPUs that end up with defective texture units end up as waste, however, as crypto mining requires only the compute element from the GPU, these products could be rebranded as mining GPUs. But, it seems like NVIDIA is currently somewhere in the middle ground and weighing in whatever the company sees something like that as a feasible option.

During the conference, NVIDIA's Colette Kress, a chief financial officer, had said a few things about the possible production of GPUs dedicated to crypto mining. "If crypto demand begins or if we see a meaningful amount, we can also use that opportunity to restart the CMP [mining-specific GPUs] product line to address ongoing mining demand," said Ms. Kress. She added that "We [NVIDIA] don't have visibility on how much of the GeForce RTX 30-series end demand comes from mining. So, we don't believe it's a big part of our business today. Gaming demand is very strong, and we think that's larger than our current supply." And that is an understandable thing. Right now crypto mining is hot because of Bitcoin's price, however, NVIDIA can't predict if it will crash a lot or not, so the company doesn't want to risk starting a big production for something that can burst like a bubble.


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[fancucker]

Would be fantastic if they did. Literally saving the enthusiast market from miners

 

[pavle]

Colette is a she - so "Ms/Mrs" and "She added" (https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/bios/colette-kress)...

 

[AleksandarK]

Colette is a she - so "Ms/Mrs" and "She added" (https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/bios/colette-kress)...

Thank you very much for pointing this out!

 

[nguyen]

Would be fantastic if they did. Literally saving the enthusiast market from miners

I think Nvidia is just focusing on making GPU as fast as possible right now, printing money has never been easier

 

[Xaled]

`"If crypto demand begins or if we see a meaningful amount...``

Isn't there a single nvidia employee that just don't lie?
Is lying a main requirement to get a gob at nvidia?

 

[Vya Domus]

"NVIDIA can't predict if it will crash a lot or not"

Yeah they can because it will always crash, the issue that they are dancing around has to do with the fact that revenue from crypto is volatile, you could be shipping hundreds of thousands of GPUs to miners one month and close to zero the next. Investors don't like that, so they are trying to figure out how they can sell as many GPUs for mining while pretending that they aren't.

 

[Xaled]

"NVIDIA can't predict if it will crash a lot or not"

Yeah they can because it will always crash, the issue that they are dancing around has to do with the fact that revenue from crypto is volatile, you could be shipping hundreds of thousands of GPUs to miners one month and zero the next. Investors don't like that, so they are trying to figure out how they can sell as many GPUs for mining while pretending that they aren't.

yeah they lie about it even in their official annual reports

 

[R0H1T]

Would be fantastic if they did. Literally saving the enthusiast market from miners

How?

 

[ZoneDymo]

if they truely cared they would lock out consumer gpu's from this sorta functionality (just how consumer cards are arbitrarly locked out from professional, aka quadro/titan functionality) and then produce dedicated cards for miners separately.

but probably nope.avi, just a lot of talk.

 

[Chomiq]

Yeah them gamers are really buying 70 gpus to play minecraft. BTC's at all time high for months and clearly we need to wait for when "crypto demand begins". What a load of BS.

 

[Fabio]

the real guilty its not from nvidia. True responsable are those who mantain eth. They went with a gpu mining coin on purpose. And there are years that this is disrupting the market, not to talk about the waste of energyn and pollution.
Its not sustainable and eth should have been proof of stake years ago.

 

[Vya Domus]

How?

In no way, just deluded ramble, don't pay attention to it.

They did manufacture dedicated mining cards in the past and it made no difference to the availability of cards because obviously miners would still buy anything that was available. But even if they didn't, it would have still made no difference because the pool of available wafers is still the same no matter what you do with the chips.

 

[Vayra86]

the real guilty its not from nvidia. True responsable are those who mantain eth. They went with a gpu mining coin on purpose. And there are years that this is disrupting the market, not to talk about the waste of energyn and pollution.
Its not sustainable and eth should have been proof of stake years ago.

No, those who fail to regulate systems that are cultivating waste, are the ones responsible. In other words - us as consumers and miners, plus our voice to our governments for taking action against it. There was a point in the past where people considered mining a good idea. What the actual fuck? We cultivated this ourselves. It came from the people, and speculation right now is coming from similar people. As consumers we can be much more vocal about any companies dealing with or in Bitcoin or ETH for example. Don't even have to just 'not mine'... we can do more and achieve more just by speaking up.

So yeah, either we collectively get real and stop doing this shit, or we ask governments and institutions to create an effective banhammer for it. Everything else is pissing against the wind and pure hypocrisy. If you want a healthy market, you have to work for it. The same thing applies to scalping. Whining about it, while still carefully on the lookout for a GPU that isn't super price inflated but just a little, is hypocrisy. You're part of the demand keeping them in business. The MSRPs are known and if you overpay, you condone higher prices.

That goes for all the systems we don't like btw. Somehow there is a staggering lack of commitment to change, instead we prefer to chase overinflated carrots and then complain they taste sour.

 

[thomv18]

I think they have already talked about dedicated mining cards some years ago.

 

[R0H1T]

They released a bunch, didn't help with the pricing or mining one bit!

 

[_Flare]

IF ???? WTF
"If crypto demand begins or if we see a meaningful amount, we can also use that opportunity to restart the CMP [mining-specific GPUs] product line to address ongoing mining demand,"
OMG everything is sold out primary because of the Miningboom and only secondary a few Cards went to Homeoffice and Gamerdemand.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

In no way, just deluded ramble, don't pay attention to it.

They did manufacture dedicated mining cards in the past and it made no difference to the availability of cards because obviously miners would still buy anything that was available. But even if they didn't, it would have still made no difference because the pool of available wafers is still the same no matter what you do with the chips.

The miners still buy the GPUs that is used for gaming, as when they are done with them, they can still sell them to gamers on the second-hand market, disgusting, I know... not like I will ever buy a card that has been mined with, this is why I stay away from the second-hand market.

The good news is that ETH 2.0 is going to use a proof-of-stake model, as far as I know, this means miners will no longer be needed to mine ETH, when this goes live, I don't know.

Anyways, let's see what happens, all I know is, this whole story has infuriated me to no end, I am stuck on my GTX 660Ti which has a faulty VRAM module and I need, yes "need" a replacement not "want" a GPU, most just want something to say they have the latest toy though their previous toy already works great. *sigh* I can now finally buy a card if I should choose to do so, this after saving up a little... but I won't, I refuse, absolutely refuse to pay these non-MSRP prices, this has gone too far.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

I wanna strangle the bastard who created and/or executed the idea of using GPUs to mine crypto.

At this point I think best possible solution would be for the big 3 to invest in a separate crypto-specific architecture. Like how AMD has started RDNA for gaming and CDNA for computing and shit. Because my understanding is that modern mining rigs are driver-agnostic and usually run an efficient clock profile custom bios. And deleting the display ports means miners actually don't buy the cards since they won't be able to resell them when the market crashes. But seriously fuck the miners.

 

[Tom Yum]

Would be fantastic if they did. Literally saving the enthusiast market from miners

Given that the choke point of GPU production is foundry capacity, making dedicated miner GPU's won't help gamer GPU availability one iota.

 

[napata]

if they truely cared they would lock out consumer gpu's from this sorta functionality (just how consumer cards are arbitrarly locked out from professional, aka quadro/titan functionality) and then produce dedicated cards for miners separately.

but probably nope.avi, just a lot of talk.

That just seems like bad business. To Nvidia it doesn't matter who buys their cards, which is of course completely understandable. Nvidia sells a product and the consumer can do with it what they want.

 

[owen10578]

If people wanted dedicated mining hardware they’d just buy ASICs...the whole point of GPU mining is its resellability after its mining usage is over. This is pointless for the most part.

 

[trog100]

the good news is that when or if it becomes unprofitable to mine with gpus there is going to be a plethora of both new and used graphics cards on the market.. all at a nice cheap price..

trog

 

[kayjay010101]

If people wanted dedicated mining hardware they’d just buy ASICs...the whole point of GPU mining is its resellability after its mining usage is over. This is pointless for the most part.

Exactly. Who wants to have an entire PC up and running with a bunch of GPUs taking space when you can have a bunch of small ASICs that are way more efficient anyhow. Dedicated mining GPUs are pointless, the point of having GPUs for mining is to have them keep their resale value even if the coin crashes or when they're done mining - ASICs can't be used for anything but mining so lose/gain their resale value in accordance to the coin they mine. GPUs will always keep their value somewhat.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Kin dicks, they're selling to miner's already, they got 3xxx series first.
So Nvidia wants to make them a cheaper SKU now so they save a few quid on what they sell miner's.
Spin.