Nvidia could create the world's fastest mining card using its A100 GPU

[midian182]

Rumor mill: Nvidia could be considering another entry in its Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) line, one that would likely be the fastest cryptocurrency miner in the world. The rumor claims that the first-ever Ampere GPU, the A100 designed for AI, HPC workloads, and cloud computing, will power a new CMP HX card.

The news comes from regular hardware leaker kopite7kimi. They tweeted that the new CMP HX card based on the A100 will be a “mining monster,” though no hash rates or performance figures were revealed.

Nvidia’s current fastest dedicated crypto mining card, the 90HX, has an Ethereum hash rate of 86 MH/s using the Daggerhashimotto algorithm, while the RTX 3090 has an average mining performance of 115-120 MH/s.

I mean we will meet a new CMP HX card based on A100.

— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) March 21, 2021

The RTX 3090, which uses the GA102 GPU, has 24GB of GDDR6X memory with a combined bandwidth of 936.2 GB/s. The PCIe 4.0 version of the Ampere A100 uses HBM2 memory and boasts bandwidth up to 1.6TB/s. It also has a TDP of 250W, lower than the GA102’s 350W, making it more efficient.

If Nvidia is adding an A100 GPU-based product to its CMP HX line, there will likely be a few issues, the main one being the price. The PCIe 4.0 version of the A100 has an MSRP of $12,500. While you can’t find an RTX 3090 for its $1,499 MSRP these days, miners are still more likely to opt for the cheaper gaming card. There’s also the seemingly unending global chip shortage throwing a spanner in the works.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/89000-nvidia-could-create-world-fastest-mining-card-using.html

 

[Dimitriid]

I think it would be more honest if they spin up all their production to almost 100% this new product and a line of step down ones that are just cut down versions of it.

I wouldn't mind if Nvidia just goes to make billions out in the open, but I would like them to commit to it directly and unapologetically just so gamers start realizing Nvidia, like any other corporation, will never have a consumer's best interest in mind and shouldn't be idolized and defended unwarrantly on a troubling parasocial relationship with a brand.

Just kill that notion in gamers head, plus maybe damage the relationship with game manufacturers so they stop taking Nvidia bribes to push their proprietary technologies on games.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

This is fantastic. I'm gonna be a trillionaire off of Dogecoin and Ethereum soon.

I'm going to the moon.

I'm going to Kepler 22b!!!

 

[terzaerian]

These damn mining cards are just their regular GPUs with the display outputs sawzall'd off, it's lazy and wasteful. If Nvidia was making an actual affordable, efficient ASIC that would be one thing, but this is a waste of chips. If I didn't know better I'd say they're doing it on purpose to foment the frenzy even further.

 

[punctualturn]

These damn mining cards are just their regular GPUs with the display outputs sawzall'd off, it's lazy and wasteful. If Nvidia was making an actual affordable, efficient ASIC that would be one thing, but this is a waste of chips. If I didn't know better I'd say they're doing it on purpose to foment the frenzy even further.

And you expect less from Nvidia?

But that said, I wonder if the AMD Instinct line provide such performance.

 

[VitalyT]

Crypto-miners must be $hitting themselves right now.

 

[neeyik]

The RTX 3090, which uses the GA102 GPU, has 24GB of GDDR6X memory with a combined bandwidth of 936.2 GB/s. The PCIe 4.0 version of the Ampere A100 uses HBM2 memory and boasts bandwidth up to 1.6TB/s. It also has a TDP of 250W, lower than the GA102’s 350W, making it more efficient.

The A100 has a much lower peak FP32 throughput figure than the 3090 (roughly 45% worse), so how good the former is at mining will depend on how much of the latter's throughput is capped by the memory bandwidth, speed of random memory reads, and so on.

These damn mining cards are just their regular GPUs with the display outputs sawzall'd off, it's lazy and wasteful. If Nvidia was making an actual affordable, efficient ASIC that would be one thing, but this is a waste of chips. If I didn't know better I'd say they're doing it on purpose to foment the frenzy even further.

They're using chips that don't meet the requirements for the available graphics card SKUs, so on that basis, it's not particularly wasteful.

 

[pcnthuziast]

I see a future where the gaming industry legit died, but the hardware industry remained relevant for mining exclusively. Sad times.

 

[punctualturn]

I see a future where the gaming industry legit died, but the hardware industry remained relevant for mining exclusively. Sad times.

What you are referring to is PC gaming.

Mobile and consoles are racking insane profits and even though is not from everyone, Cloud gaming will also do a number, eventually.

Gaming overall will continue to grow.

 

[terzaerian]

They're using chips that don't meet the requirements for the available graphics card SKUs, so on that basis, it's not particularly wasteful.

This doesn't mesh with their prior history making "mining" hardware, or with the alleged power of these higher-end mining cards. The 30HX is at the level of a 1070 MH to MH. If they could put out 1070-equivalent cards using this allegedly inferior silicon, I'm sure gamers and miners both wouldn't complain.

 

[neeyik]

This doesn't mesh with their prior history making "mining" hardware, or with the alleged power of these higher-end mining cards. The 30HX is at the level of a 1070 MH to MH. If they could put out 1070-equivalent cards using this allegedly inferior silicon, I'm sure gamers and miners both wouldn't complain.

An example of chips that would fail to meet GC SKU requirements would be any with serious defects in the video section of the die, be it for output display or encoding. Although it's a relatively small portion of the die, and thus there won't be many chips sporting these failures, they will still have a reasonable inventory of them, given the lifespan of manufacturing of Turing.

 

[texasrattler]

This is fantastic. I'm gonna be a trillionaire off of Dogecoin and Ethereum soon.

I'm going to the moon.

I'm going to Kepler 22b!!!

ill take a souvenir.

 

[Zinixo]

So we take an outdated 12 nm chip remove the video inputs make a card equivalent to the 1070 in mining and charge 600$ for it cuase that will really make miners want to buy it .
Perhaps a 150-250$ price tag is more inline considering a 3060 ti is 60 mh vs 25mh cmp30 and costs 450$ its a no brainer why this wont do a dam thing to the shortages or why miners wont buy them.
What a joke.

 

[JamesBlond]

The whole BS story everybody believes, if your a gamer, stop paying for graphics cards, you can have any card you want for free if its over 6BG, when your not gaming, set it up for mining, it will pay itself off in 8months, less than what you wait for your next card, sell it and upgrade to the more powerful one, eat sleep sh-t repeat... not paid for a graphics card in 5 yrs... stop complaining, get on the bloody wagon and go along for the ride. Nvidia have no plans of stopping screwing everybody, they will keep doing it until AMD plough past them by 10% performance.

 

[Carmaine]

With EIP-1559 and Etherium 2.0 on the horizon, lots of miners are gonna be selling soon. Nvidia doesn't seem to think so and is really optimistic about these dedicated Etherium mining cards.

 

[JamesBlond]

With EIP-1559 and Etherium 2.0 on the horizon, lots of miners are gonna be selling soon. Nvidia doesn't seem to think so and is really optimistic about these dedicated Etherium mining cards.

I think it might be that there are new coins, new algo's coming out that will produce a little less profit, but still enough to pay the cards off in 6 months