Question Jen Sung makes questionable decision? [RUMOR] NVidia tries to disable GPU mining?

[VirtualLarry]

So now, not only is Nvidia's chairman selling GPUs that can be used for Compute (*formerly called GPGPU - "General Purpose"), he's rum0ored to be attempting to effectively regulate WHAT PROGRAMS are ALLOWED to be run on the GPUs that they mfg?

Imaging if Intel decided to decree, that their CPUs, could no longer be used for searching for prime numbers.

This whole idea is a slippery slope that I am NOT willing to go down.

And to think, this is all just an (alleged) stupid band-aid, over their mfg and supply-chain issues.

If Nvidia could effectively supply all of their GPU markets with product, this wouldn't even be an issue.

Edit: If this rumor turns out to be true, expect class-action lawsuits against NVidia, much like what happened to Sony with the PS3 losing functionality (running Linux) after people purchased them.

Now, ALL NVIDIA RETAILERS will be forced to post a prominent disclaimer of the software that is NOT ALLOWED to be run on these GPUs, or they will get sued as well.

Update:
NVidia to phase out all existing Ampere PCI device-ids, phase in EtH mining "block" across ALL new Ampere line-up!

 

[Shmee]

Hmm upping production would be logical. This is Nvidia we are talking about though. Sometimes they have shady practices.

 

[The Alias]

Hmm upping production would be logical. This is Nvidia we are talking about though. Sometimes they have shady practices.

Why would Nvidia purposefully ot sell more GPUs if they could? The more likely answer is they are limited by TSMC. This explains why there are no AMD cards nor Consoles available at msrp.

 

[Gideon]

It looks to be a bit more complex than just a last minute driver change:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1362628358966681600

 

[BFG10K]

LOL @ entitled miners. As if its never been the case that DP performance is artifically restricted on consumer cards compared to Quadro/Tesla. No siree, we've never seen anything like it.

Here is another idea, just produce 4GB 3060.

Why should we cripple performance for gamers using gaming SKUs on account of whining miners? If miners wanna mine, they now have mining SKUs.

 

[BFG10K]

Why cant they double or triple production?

AMD/nVidia already ramped up production back in 2017/2018 and it almost killed their financials when Crypto collapsed, flooding the market with cheap second-hand cards.

 

[NTMBK]

Why would Nvidia purposefully ot sell more GPUs if they could? The more likely answer is they are limited by TSMC. This explains why there are no AMD cards nor Consoles available at msrp.

They're on Samsung 8nm, not TSMC.

 

[Shivansps]

Hmm upping production would be logical. This is Nvidia we are talking about though. Sometimes they have shady practices.

They are produccing money making hardware that paids itself in 3 months and everything after that is just pure, raw, profits. Do you really think you can ever produce enoght? There is no way.

 

[coercitiv]

Do you really think you can ever produce enoght? There is no way.

Surely you understand how crypto mining works: miners solve mathematical problems until one of them gets the right solution. That one miner gets the reward for the current block, the rest get none, after which the race begins again for the next block.

This means that every new card that starts mining will make the other cards less profitable. Double the global hash rate and you get half the profit per card. You can definitely produce enough.

 

[Shivansps]

Surely you understand how crypto mining works: miners solve mathematical problems until one of them gets the right solution. That one miner gets the reward for the current block, the rest get none, after which the race begins again for the next block.

This means that every new card that starts mining will make the other cards less profitable. Double the global hash rate and you get half the profit per card. You can definitely produce enough.

Ethereum is diferent in that regard, also you are assuming price is static, and is not.

Bitcoin had a diferent way of doing things, as the number of blocks increased the rewards where cut by half. Not only Ethereum does not works this way(In fact they were adjusting the block rewards down by manual hard forks), it has some things in place that makes the rewards to go HIGHER, for example it has a small bonus added based on the number of transactions. That actually caused the rewards to increase like x4 in at some time in 2020 for a while.

One thing that Etherum has is this Epoch thing that increases DAG size by 8MB every 30.000 blocks, this is what made, 2GB, then 3GB and finally 4GB gpus useless. So, if hashrate keep increasing eventually the 6GB and 8GB cards will be useless faster, but it is calculated at the current speeds that 6GB gpus will become useless by 2024.

And at any rate, Ethereum is just one coin, once that one goes down, another will rise up as "the next big thing". The fall of Ethereum is not the end of mining.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Why cant they double or triple production?

There is a shortage of Silicon for nearly everyone right now. Even some car production was held up due to chips for cars.

Chip shortage forces Ford, Toyota, Nissan, FCA to cut vehicle production

Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Nissan Motor Co Ltd said on Friday they would cut vehicle production this month due to a shortage of semiconductors, becoming the latest automakers hit by a chip crunch as demand rebounds from the coronavirus...

www.reuters.com

If they reduce any of the *advertised* capabilities of their existing released product line, expect lawsuits. SEVERE lawsuits. Potentially from every CUDA developer out there.

Lawsuits for what? This will only apply to new cards, and they will advertise the new feature.

As noted in Tweet linked in an above post, this is not just in the driver (secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS, that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter.), so it likely has to come this way from the factory, so they won't disable your ability to mine with the cards you already have.

So ZERO case for a lawsuit by upset miners.

 

[coercitiv]

Ethereum is diferent in that regard, also you are assuming price is static, and is not.

Never made any comments regarding absolute values, hence I never assumed the price is static. It's a simple fact: increase in hashrate leads to a proportional decrease in rewards for the same hash power, independent of other factors such as coin price, rewards, price of electricity.

And at any rate, Ethereum is just one coin, once that one goes down, another will rise up as "the next big thing". The fall of Ethereum is not the end of mining.

There's plenty of other coins, but how many of them can take sustained selling from professional miners and not lose value over night? Keep in mind the professional miners sell a lot of coin to cover their operational costs.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

If they reduce any of the *advertised* capabilities of their existing released product line, expect lawsuits. SEVERE lawsuits. Potentially from every CUDA developer out there.

-Not if they modify the bios of every future card they make, assuming that this is a bios mod and not just drivers. No obligation to keep those mining.

If not, then what's the point of their gimped mining chips anyway? Miners will gobble up supply of the higher tier gaming cards, as they have been doing, anyway.

 

[MustangSVT]

even if they dont do jack, Jensens marketing team has done it again, look at all the excitement over the cards and I am pulled right back into having hope to buy one again. Jensen you slimey sales master you.

 

[simas]

There is a shortage of Silicon for nearly everyone right now. Even some car production was held up due to chips for cars.

Chip shortage forces Ford, Toyota, Nissan, FCA to cut vehicle production

Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Nissan Motor Co Ltd said on Friday they would cut vehicle production this month due to a shortage of semiconductors, becoming the latest automakers hit by a chip crunch as demand rebounds from the coronavirus...

www.reuters.com

Lawsuits for what? This will only apply to new cards, and they will advertise the new feature.

As noted in Tweet linked in an above post, this is not just in the driver (secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS, that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter.), so it likely has to come this way from the factory, so they won't disable your ability to mine with the cards you already have.

So ZERO case for a lawsuit by upset miners.

And even if there are lawsuits , so what?! they are dealt with as nuisance they are - again Sony PS3 as example that some people of this board like to mention ('see Sony got sued after removing Linux') . So what?? Did they bend over backwards and reintroduced 'Other OS' in their next firmware? Or told the world to screw off and never brought back the feature once it was removed? I thought it was second option..

So yes, you can bring whatever suit you want. And no, if you will do absolutely nothing for you in terms of restoring functionality once manufacturer decides that way. At best, may be, half a decade later, you may or may not receive some trivial amount after class action sharks are done with their fees. Lawsuits never work in these situations.. See Sony

 

[fleshconsumed]

If nvidia gimped functionality on the current cards that would have been false advertisement and cause for lawsuits. I'm ok with them gimping newly released cards though, their product, their decision, consumers are free to make their own choices given information presented to them.

That said, I'll have to repeat myself, RX480's go as high as $400 on ebay. I read today that 3060 will hash at 25Mh/s meaning even gimped it is still as good as RX480 at mining, twice as fast at gaming, and cheaper than the current going rate for RX480. You won't be able to find 3060 in stock.

 

[Mopetar]

They could spend a lot of time trying to defeat it. Or they could just buy another card. It's not like the 3060 is the only card to mine with.

That makes sense if it's a single miner who's just going to buy a single card. However, if you're someone who's looking at thousands of cards, then there's a lot more upside to this and the incentive for doing so is that you can buy a whole bunch of cards at a lower price because other miners are ignoring them.

 

[Dribble]

I suspect the lock will work well against small time miners which I guess are all the miners raging about this right now, and the big orgs will buy the dedicated mining cards as they work better and they don't care you can only mine with them.

 

[Heartbreaker]

That makes sense if it's a single miner who's just going to buy a single card. However, if you're someone who's looking at thousands of cards, then there's a lot more upside to this and the incentive for doing so is that you can buy a whole bunch of cards at a lower price because other miners are ignoring them.

You aren't going to buy a whole bunch until after you break it. From NVidias statement this is a locked Bios. You can't just use a custom driver and bypass this.

Maybe someday someone will break it, but it doesn't make sense to mass buy the cards assuming you can break it, before it actually done.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Ok, let's say this really works... Do the 3060Ti on up next...

Nah, I'm all for gimping new gaming cards when it comes to mining but that would be like a bait and switch for existing cards.

 

[MrTeal]

That's interesting about Ryan's tweet. That's still PR, so take it with the appropriate grain of salt.
I wonder if it's specific anti-mining protection in the silicon, or if it's just a secure handshake between the silicon and BIOS to ensure that only properly signed BIOSes can be used and the actually identification and limitation is still implemented in BIOS?

Seems unwieldy to implement in silicon.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Why cant they double or triple production?

AMD did that in 2014 and then when the crypto bubble popped they had oversaturated the market with Hawaii cards to the point that R9 290 were going for $200. Doubt Nvidia wants to be stuck with RTX 3070 they're stuck selling for $200 each and then have all their next gen cards look ridiculously overpriced in comparison.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

That's interesting about Ryan's tweet. That's still PR, so take it with the appropriate grain of salt.
I wonder if it's specific anti-mining protection in the silicon, or if it's just a secure handshake between the silicon and BIOS to ensure that only properly signed BIOSes can be used and the actually identification and limitation is still implemented in BIOS?

Seems unwieldy to implement in silicon.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Anti-Mining Feature Goes Beyond Driver Version, Could Expand to More SKUs

Yesterday NVIDIA announced the company's first Crypto Mining Processor (CPM) that serves the purpose of having a dedicated processor only for mining with no video outputs. Alongside the new processors, the company has also announced that in the next driver update the GeForce RTX 3060 GPU will...

www.techpowerup.com

Looks like it is a handshake. And it looks like its coming to future revisions of existing cards (no word on whether cards already in the wild will be affected).

 

[dr1337]

AMD did that in 2014 and then when the crypto bubble popped they had oversaturated the market with Hawaii cards to the point that R9 290 were going for $200. Doubt Nvidia wants to be stuck with RTX 3070 they're stuck selling for $200 each and then have all their next gen cards look ridiculously overpriced in comparison.

That crypto money helped them stay afloat though, the graphics division was bringing in a considerable amount of money, more than it would have ever on its own. And the abundance of GPUs actually helped them with navi. with old cards priced cheap filling up the low end they had a much better time pricing the 5700xt high even though it was almost a 580 replacement.

 

[CP5670]

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Anti-Mining Feature Goes Beyond Driver Version, Could Expand to More SKUs

Yesterday NVIDIA announced the company's first Crypto Mining Processor (CPM) that serves the purpose of having a dedicated processor only for mining with no video outputs. Alongside the new processors, the company has also announced that in the next driver update the GeForce RTX 3060 GPU will...

www.techpowerup.com

Looks like it is a handshake. And it looks like its coming to future revisions of existing cards (no word on whether cards already in the wild will be affected).

It might be harder for them to do anything about existing cards. They might silently introduce a change to cards produced going forward, which would effectively mean there are two varieties of each card in circulation.

 

[MrTeal]

It might be harder for them to do anything about existing cards. They might silently introduce a change to cards produced going forward, which would effectively mean there are two varieties of each card in circulation.

Yeah, they would need some kind of BIOS that makes a change to the card that would prevent older bioses from being written to it. It's not that it would impossible, but it would be more of a challenge. It would also only really hurt very small or single card miners. Even hobby miners with a single rig would be aware enough to just not update, especially now.