News Nvidia Mulls Restarting Production of Cryptomining Product Line

[Admin]

As sales of GPUs set records, Nvidia has a hard time understanding the origins of the demand.

Nvidia Mulls Restarting Production of Cryptomining Product Line : Read more

 

[Phaaze88]

Due to what the past already taught us:
The mining specific cards have worse resale value via the lack of display options, and the low power optimized Vbios.
While that latter part isn't as bad as the former, most people aren't too keen on messing around with Vbios flashing to get it to work like the original model...

It's just going to make more e-waste. Besides, the smart miners won't buy them because they'd already know the above.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Yeah, I hate the idea of dedicated cryptomining cards because:

1. They can only be used for mining (no display outputs)
2. Miners will still buy non-mining cards if needed

It guarantees some percentage of chips go to mining cards but does nothing to stop miners from grabbing other cards. And frankly, unless the mining SKUs are actually provably better for mining, or at least cheaper, who cares?

 

[Chung Leong]

Why bother with mining when you can create cryptocurrency at will? How many people are buying Bitcoins to for business transactions after all?

 

[jkflipflop98]

How many people are buying Bitcoins to for business transactions after all?

That's why most people view this Bitcoin explosion as simple Tulip Mania. Bitcoins don't mean anything. They have no actual value backing by anything. No real company uses Bitcoins for anything. They use dollars. Portland here is one of the most "bitcoin friendly" places to do business and I've seen one single place that takes them - a taco truck.

Can you use them to buy coke and hookers over the internet? Yup. But that's about as far as the actual usable value goes. Other than simply trading them back and forth, of course.

 

[korekan]

i think nvidia should restrict cryptomining or use AI chip to slow the cryptomining in consumer VGA. so they only bought the specific VGA for them

 

[TerryLaze]

Yeah, I hate the idea of dedicated cryptomining cards because:

1. They can only be used for mining (no display outputs)
2. Miners will still buy non-mining cards if needed

It guarantees some percentage of chips go to mining cards but does nothing to stop miners from grabbing other cards. And frankly, unless the mining SKUs are actually provably better for mining, or at least cheaper, who cares?

Ever since windows 10 you can reroute your output as long as you already have any output, so any intel CPU any AMD APU on a mobo with video out or any old GPU as long as it works.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rxFxdvO3fQ

or at least cheaper, who cares?

If they have a low power optimized Vbios as stated above that would make them cheaper to operate which is the big deal with mining anyway.

 

[Olle P]

... understand how many of its GPUs are needed by cryptominers.

Cryptominers need as many as they can fit within their physical limits (space and power draw).

... Bitcoins don't mean anything. ... No real company uses Bitcoins for anything. They use dollars. ...

As of right now many major investors move from USD to BTC since FED water down the USD to finance all the pandemic aid programs. That's why BTC is valued so high.

 

[King_V]

Can you use them to buy coke and hookers over the internet? Yup. But that's about as far as the actual usable value goes.

Don't underestimate the Coke And Hookers market. 😆


EDIT: but, on a more serious note:

Since miners only need compute capabilities of a GPU, they do not need display outputs, and they do not care if the GPU they use comes with disabled texture mapping units or lacks video processing capabilities. As a result, Nvidia can sell them graphics processors that would otherwise go to waste.

So, if there are chips that could not be used for a proper GPU, but the miners could use them, then I'm all for this. Let the miners buy the chips that couldn't be used for gaming.

I still don't like the whole concept of cryptocurrency/cryptominig, but it seems like this strategy might slightly reduce the mining drain on the supply of regular GPUs.

 

[Phaaze88]

So, if there are chips that could not be used for a proper GPU, but the miners could use them, then I'm all for this. Let the miners buy the chips that couldn't be used for gaming.

I still don't like the whole concept of cryptocurrency/cryptominig, but it seems like this strategy might slightly reduce the mining drain on the supply of regular GPUs.

Still need to solve the problem of e-waste and resale.
Once the boom crashes, they will be looking to sell off all their used cards for some extra bank. Mining dedicated cards will not sell as well - if at all - compared to their gaming counterparts.
They'll just end up throwing the mining-centric cards away, and will be cautious of buying such cards in the future.
It's a stop-gap at best.

 

[jkflipflop98]

You guys aren't thinking far enough on this one. If they make a mining-specific ASIC, then it won't compute graphics at all. There won't be a flood of banged-out claptrap GPUs flooding the market because they aren't GPUs to begin with.

If Nvidia starts selling mining asics that can crunch hashes 2x-4x faster than a GPU, they could charge $10k a pop for them and it wouldn't affect the gaming GPU market at all.

 

[Phaaze88]

@jkflipflop98
Some of the crypto is ASIC-resistant, isn't it?

 

[King_V]

@jkflipflop98
Some of the crypto is ASIC-resistant, isn't it?

I don't personally know, but I thought that was the case with Ethereum.

Then later, I'd read that they'd figured out an ASIC design that could do it.

This was stuff I'd read back during the 2018 crypto-craze, though. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Phaaze88]

I don't personally know, but I thought that was the case with Ethereum.

Then later, I'd read that they'd figured out an ASIC design that could do it.

This was stuff I'd read back during the 2018 crypto-craze, though. 🤷‍♂️

It is, but it isn't the only one. So:
-some are ASIC-resistant, some aren't
-crypto's volatility as a whole
-people looking to buy a 2nd hand card will want it to have proper display options
-miners will buy up the next gen of cards and want to sell off their old stock easily
-miners will end up throwing away the mining-specific cards due to how hard they are to sell
In other words, mining-specific cards won't do jack to alleviate the current problems... well, some folks new to mining may buy them initially, but that's about it.

 

[spongiemaster]

-people looking to buy a 2nd hand card will want it to have proper display options
-miners will buy up the next gen of cards and want to sell off their old stock easily
-miners will end up throwing away the mining-specific cards due to how hard they are to sell

Is resale value really an issue for the major mining operations? Sure, for the guy with a few cards in his basement, he will want to recoup some initial sales costs, but those people aren't the reason for the global shortages. For the major mining operations in China using hundreds or more video cards, who are they selling those cards to when they are retired? I don't remember an overwhelming flood of used cards on the market after the last crypto crash that just cratered used card prices.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

ASIC resistant mostly means an algorithm that requires more memory to effectively 'solve' the hashing alogorithm. Coming up with an algorithm that absolutely can't be optimized to run faster on dedicated hardware is basically impossible -- there are always ways to make a chip that does the required calculations faster -- so realistically all we get are algorithms that require new ASICs. It's an arms race and since this is specifically cryptocurrency related it's a relatively pointless arms race. Multiple algorithms have come out that were "ASIC resistant" and some were even supposed to be targeted purely at CPUs. However, at least one of those had a clever coder figure out how to do the calculations much faster on GPUs and he ran the code privately (ie, didn't open source it or give it to others) for months, accruing a bunch of coins in the process. Which is pretty much standard fare for how cryptocurrencies work.

Fun fact: When Darkcoin (now Dash) launched, it had a bug. I mined, via CPU, something like 33,000 DRK in a couple of days. I figured the coin was going to be worthless and traded most of that away for relative pennies. Clever marketing and improvements now have Dash sitting at over $1,000 per coin. And I can guarantee I was not the only one that got a bunch of DRK thanks to that bug. It was a failed launch that somehow still got promoted into (relatively) widespread acceptance.