It appears like Nvidia has discovered not less than one purchaser for its not too long ago introduced Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) graphics cards. An order price $30 million has been positioned with the graphics card maker for an unconfirmed amount of mining GPUs, that are mentioned to ship 1,600GH/s in additional mining oomph for his or her new proprietor.
The order was positioned by Hut 8 Mining Corp., Tom’s Hardware reports, who’s a big crypto mining company that focuses on the highest coin of at the moment, Bitcoin. Business is evidently booming. Although maybe Bitcoin’s current $60,000 valuation made that clear sufficient.
The precise mixture of GPUs that Hut 8 has ordered is unknown, however it has simply 4 to select from: the CMP 30HX, 40HX, 50HX, and 90HX. Those numbers roughly match the hash charges on provide with these playing cards, and whereas the GPUs in every one has not been revealed—it is all very hush hush all-round—it is suspected that solely the 90HX is of the most recent Ampere era.
Hut 8 says the brand new GPUs will likely be used primarily with different blockchain networks.
Whatever the specification, too, $30 million is bound to purchase numerous them. While Nvidia hasn’t named a value per card publicly, some again of the serviette maths would recommend that is roughly 18,600 of the highest CMP chip, or over 35,000 of the purported Turing chip, to hit 1,600GH/s. At least by Nvidia’s rated speeds. That works out at over $1,600 per card if it had been simply the 90HX alone, which appears steep, however I suppose the place else are you supposed to purchase graphics playing cards by the tens of 1000’s proper now?
Nvidia holds all of the playing cards (pun meant).
Hut 8 is not going to utilise these GPUs for Bitcoin mining, nonetheless. Bitcoin has lengthy been dominated by ASICs, or Application Specific Integrated Circuits, which at the moment are able to hash charges upwards of 100TH/s. GPUs as an alternative are helpful for ASIC-resistant networks, similar to Ethereum, and handle something from a pair MH/s to 100MH/s.
“We are extremely excited to have these excessive efficiency CMPs in our fleet,” says Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8. “We consider mining with CMPs will open up new alternatives for Hut 8 and can enable us to proceed to execute on our long- and short-term plans for elevated and diversified income streams.”
It’s mentioned the order will start to be fulfilled by means of May 2021, and “accomplished this summer time.”
Purpose-built mining GPUs aren’t at all times seen as fascinating by cryptocurrency miners, nonetheless, as these playing cards do not function any outputs, and due to this fact have little or no resale worth past different mining operations. In the occasion of a worth crash that would spell doom for small-time miners. Perhaps that is much less of a priority for a company keen to spend $30 million on “new alternatives”.
I’m certain most do not want a reminder of the influence that the excessive profitability of cryptocurrencies has had on the graphics card market. It’s definitely not the only real purpose for the current shortages in PC gaming {hardware}, however it has most positively exacerbated the problem.