CMP chips is not going to do graphics processing, Nvidia stated. Not like gaming-focused GeForce GPUs, additionally they lack show outputs, enabling improved airflow whereas mining to allow them to be extra densely packed. CMPs even have a decrease peak core voltage and frequency, which improves mining energy effectivity, the corporate stated.
“Creating tailor-made merchandise for purchasers with particular wants delivers one of the best worth for purchasers,” Matt Wuebbling, head of world GeForce advertising and marketing, stated.
“With CMP, we may also help miners construct essentially the most environment friendly information facilities whereas preserving GeForce RTX GPUs for players.”
On the similar time, Nvidia plans to cut back the hash charge of Ethereum mining by round 50 p.c on its upcoming RTX 3060 graphics playing cards – deliberately utilizing software program to make them worse at crypto mining. This is not going to have an effect on current GPUs, the corporate stated.
It isn’t the primary time that Nvidia has used synthetic restraints to restrict the sale of chips to sure industries. In 2018, it up to date the EULA on consumer-focused GeForce GPUs to prohibit data center use – as a substitute pushing information heart firms in the direction of the considerably costlier enterprise GPU line. It claimed that the transfer was merely resulting from GeForce not being designed for the information heart, however continued to make use of the chip in its personal amenities for the GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
Nvidia has claimed that the brand new CMP chips is not going to have an effect on the manufacturing of GeForce merchandise, which have been out of inventory for many of 2020 and 2021. Restricted provide, attributable to a global semiconductor shortage, has been made worse by booming crypto demand as Bitcoin and Ethereum hit report highs.
As a substitute, Nvidia argues, the brand new product line and software program restrictions will make sure that future GeForce provides will solely go in the direction of players.
There’s one other profit to Nvidia that will have led to its choice to create a brand new product class. Cryptocurrency mining is a growth and bust business, constructed on tight margins. Over the last bitcoin bubble, GPU provides had been once more closely constrained – however when bitcoin’s value fell precipitously, miners had been pressured to promote their gear en masse, flooding the market with low cost GPUs. This cut heavily into Nvidia’s profits as second-hand GPU costs fell, making buying a brand new one much less interesting. This fall 2018 was “a rare, unusually turbulent, and disappointing quarter,” CEO Jensen Huang stated on the time.
Now, ought to Ethereum costs collapse, miners will solely be capable of promote CMPs to different miners.
