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Jensen Huang, President and CEO of Nvidia, speaks during the company’s event at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 6, 2019.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | fake images
Nvidia announced Thursday that it will launch a new series of semiconductors specifically for mining ether, the second-largest digital cryptocurrency.
The new type of chip is called a CMP or Cryptocurrency Mining Processor. The first cards will go on sale in March, an Nvidia spokesperson said.
Ether mining is a process in which computers solve complicated mathematical programs to help the Ethereum cryptocurrency network work. In return, miners get ether, the digital currency that runs on the Ethereum network. Ether hit a record high on Thursday, rising more than 160% so far this year to more than $ 1,914.
Ether mining algorithms work best on graphics cards, which is the type of chip that Nvidia is known for. Miners often buy multiple graphics cards and put them in a single machine to maximize their performance.
Last fall, Nvidia released a new series of graphics cards marketed for PC gamers that have consistently sold out. The semiconductor industry is also facing a widespread shortage.
Thursday’s announcement suggests that at least some of the demand for Nvidia’s chips came from cryptocurrency miners, not just gamers.
“Non-graphics CMP products are sold through authorized partners and optimized for the best mining performance and efficiency, “wrote Matt Wuebbling, GeForce Marketing Manager at Nvidia, in a blog post.
Nvidia said the latest chip in its gaming graphics card series, the RTX 3060, will be modified when it launches later this year so that it does not effectively extract the ether. Cards that have already been sold, such as the RTX 3070 or RTX 3080, do not have the same limitations, the Nvidia representative said.
“The RTX 3060 software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent,” Nvidia said in a blog post.
Graphics cards were first developed to enable high-definition computer games, but they are increasingly essential for new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Its utility in ether mining isn’t new either: In 2017, Nvidia said it made hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter selling chips to cryptocurrency miners.
“Cryptocurrency and blockchain are here to stay. The market need will grow and over time it will be quite large,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in 2017.
PC games are also growing strongly. Consumer spending on PC gaming hardware increased 62% in 2020, according to an estimate from the NPD Group. A graphics card is usually the most expensive part of a gaming PC.
