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!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nvidia to implement mining limiter to all new Ampere SKUs?

 

[Muadib]

Nvidia to implement mining limiter to all new Ampere SKUs?

As a new miner, this sucks! I plan to mine until I pay off my 3090, and I'm only $150 in. I guess that means no upgrades until I meet my goal.

 

[fleshconsumed]

So long as they assign new SKU to eth limited cards I'm fine with that. Otherwise there is going to be a lot of angry customers not getting what they expected.

 

[MrTeal]

As a new miner, this sucks! I plan to mine until I pay off my 3090, and I'm only $150 in. I guess that means no upgrades until I meet my goal.

If you're just mining to pay for your existing card, this should be great for you. If it basically dries up the supply of new mining cards, all of a sudden your 120MH/s card mines as well as two new 3090 Supers (or whatever). You might be able to buy the replacement SKU at MSRP and sell the existing GPU, or it'll slow the increase in network hashrate and your existing GPU will be more profitable.

This would only be bad for existing miners, not people mining on what they already own. I'd totally sell my 3080 to a miner and replace it with a 20GB (or 12GB) 3080 Ti for no cost even if the hashrate is locked.

 

[Mopetar]

Just mine one of the currencies that Nvidia's drivers fail to detect. It isn't like ETH is the only thing out there.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

but I suspect that most of them were a bit like the miners during a gold rush where a lot of their profit got eaten up in various expenses.

...and as per usual during a gold rush, the guy who sells the shovels get rich. (That'd be Nvidia/AMD)

 

[Mopetar]

...and as per usual during a gold rush, the guy who sells the shovels get rich. (That'd be Nvidia/AMD)

Nah, it was the people who bought the shovels in quantity where they were cheap and scalped them at extreme markup to the miners.

Funny how history repeats itself

 

[Humbledude]

Nah, it was the people who bought the shovels in quantity where they were cheap and scalped them at extreme markup to the miners.

Funny how history repeats itself

Well, cheap first batch cards inventory ended a long time ago. demand is through the roof, There is not that much inventory for both GPU or ASIC miners in Shenzhen. Even Chinese suppliers' prices with in-stock inventory are the same as eBay resellers!

 

[Mopetar]

Well, cheap first batch cards inventory ended a long time ago. demand is through the roof, There is not that much inventory for both GPU or ASIC miners in Shenzhen. Even Chinese suppliers' prices with in-stock inventory are the same as eBay resellers!

Maybe AMD and Nvidia have been increasing their prices, but it doesn't seem like they are if it's by much. AIBs have been charging more than normal, but some of that's probably just a fact of their own costs increasing. Plenty of retailers are certainly marking up the prices on any cards they get, but ultimately any failure to do so on the part of anyone in the chain up to that point just leaves money on the table for the scalpers that will buy and flip cards for the actual market value.

Most of the price increases seem as though they are happening downstream from Nvidia and AMD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries'

Bitcoin mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithm – is a deeply energy intensive process

www.theguardian.com

"
A single transaction of bitcoin has the same carbon footprint as 680,000 Visa transactions or 51,210 hours of watching YouTube, according to the site.

" Whoa.

 

[MrTeal]

Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries'

Bitcoin mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithm – is a deeply energy intensive process

www.theguardian.com

"
A single transaction of bitcoin has the same carbon footprint as 680,000 Visa transactions or 51,210 hours of watching YouTube, according to the site.

" Whoa.

The math checks out. If they're projecting 115TWh a year, that's an average of 315GWh/day. Average transactions a day is broadly in the ballpark of 300k, so you're looking at ~1MWh per bitcoin transaction. If you want to know why it costs to much to send a Bitcoin transaction, it's because it uses as much power as an average home does in a month.

 

[Mopetar]

BitCoin is essentially built in a way to ensure that outcome, but there's no reason that a cryptocurrency in general needs to function that way. The more valuable BitCoin becomes, the more electricity can be used in the mining of the next block. There are a finite number of BitCoins and the possibility that existing coins can become lost only means that they become relatively more valuable over time. Unless you can get everyone to agree that they aren't worth anything the cycle will continue. It's a potential feedback loop from hell.

 

[Hitman928]

Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries'

Bitcoin mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithm – is a deeply energy intensive process

www.theguardian.com

"
A single transaction of bitcoin has the same carbon footprint as 680,000 Visa transactions or 51,210 hours of watching YouTube, according to the site.

" Whoa.

Yep, I used to really be into the idea of cryptocurrency until the stark reality of what it would mean to try to actually use it as a widespread currency hit me. Even other algos that have tried to make transactions more energy efficient haven't really helped the situation compared to our current systems. They are much better than bitcoin, but still much, much worse than existing logistics. I still think the blockchain idea has potential, just not in how it is trying to be currently used. Maybe I'm wrong though, we'll see.

 

[Mopetar]

I haven't really looked into the details of anything outside of BitCoin, but I suspect part of the reason that other currencies haven't taken off is that they don't have the same limit on the maximum number of coins that can exist. The reason that BitCoin becomes more and more valuable is that the number created decreases with time. Think of it a little bit like a rare collectible baseball card where the supply doesn't go up, which means that the relative value increases over time as a simple matter of more dollars existing than did previously. If you have a cryptocurrency where the number of coins can be increased infinitely, it isn't any more valuable than any existing currency where the government runs the printing press endlessly. It just makes it less valuable relative to existing currencies.

There are several other currencies that use an alternative to BitCoin that results in far less energy used. BitCoin uses a system referred to as proof of work, where in order to mine a block you have to demonstrate to the network that you've solved a problem. In this case the solution is difficult to arrive at, but easy to verify so you can't just lie about having done the work if you haven't. The issue with BitCoin is that everyone is doing the exact same hard to solve problem at the same time, but only the person to solve it first gets the reward. Obviously this results in a massive amount of duplicated and wasted effort.

The alternative used by other currencies is referred to as proof of stake. Under this system and random participant is chosen to add some transactions to a blockchain. Normally this could be a recipe for abuse, but in order to be trusted with doing this, you need to have staked something of value that's taken from you if you lie. Under these systems you don't have everyone on the network competing against each other to solve the same problem so the amount of computational power goes way down. However, in order to participate you do need to have collateral to use.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

On the subject of stand alone mining cards:

AMD is Preparing RDNA-Based Cryptomining GPU SKUs

Back in February, NVIDIA has announced its GPU SKUs dedicated to the cryptocurrency mining task, without any graphics outputs present on the chips. Today, we are getting information that AMD is rumored to introduce its own lineup of graphics cards dedicated to cryptocurrency mining. In the...

www.techpowerup.com

Looks like AMD is going to try something similar, but they will be competing with their own 7nm fab space based on the rumors of them using their RDNA dies, unless the parts have already been produced and were not fit to bin in a consumer grade GPU, and have been sitting in a bucket somewhere...

 

[Mopetar]

The only thing that isn't really fit to act as a GPU is anything with defective video output circuitry. The defect density for TSMC isn't very large and the percentage of die space that circuitry takes up isn't particularly large either, so I can't imagine them having a lot of GPUs that would fall into that bin. Normally I'd think some would wind up as OEM parts that have the affected port disabled, but maybe they can get a lot more money out of the card this way.

I don't think this is a good market for either company to chase after specifically, especially if it overlaps with their traditional products.

 

[MrTeal]

Given how efficient the 5700XT is, it would be interesting to see a really stripped down dual die card with a bios modded for typical Eth clocks. 110GH/s @ ~200W in a single card would be pretty appealing. Especially if they were two 8 pin and no slot draw so you could use a single SATA string to power the riser on a bunch of them.

 

[ultimatebob]

...and the mining limiter has been cracked. Took about as long as expected:

Cryptominers have already cracked Nvidia's RTX 3060 hash rate limiter

That certainly didn't take long

www.techradar.com

 

[Dribble]

...and the mining limiter has been cracked. Took about as long as expected:

Cryptominers have already cracked Nvidia's RTX 3060 hash rate limiter

That certainly didn't take long

www.techradar.com

This has been all over the web for days, and it turns out nothing was cracked/bypassed or anything else. The original picture was not of a card mining Ethereum which is the thing that the driver slows down. Most reputable news sites have now retracted their "it's been cracked" statement in the small print at the bottom (although many leaving the headline unchanged to maximise the clicks).

The whole thing was taken off a tiny partial screenshot by someone no one had ever heard of, was always super dodgy, but was that enough for sites like techradar to take it as fact and post an article confirming it's been hacked. Says more about techradar then anything, even wccf which is a site that exists for rumours like this were more careful (sticking "allegedly" in the title) and then and updating the article and posting a retraction.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Yep, not bypassed. It was just a partial screen shot of Octopus mining which also reports MH/s, and fake claim by a nobody to go with it, that clickbait media jumped on:

No, GeForce RTX 3060 crypto mining hash rate limiter wasn't bypassed

No, crypto miners in China didn't bypass the hash rate limiter on NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3060 and hit 50MH/s of ETH mining power.

www.tweaktown.com

 

[VirtualLarry]

...and the mining limiter has been cracked. Took about as long as expected:

"So far, according to Wccftech, it appears that the cryptomining algorithm in question is for Octopus, which is different than cryptocurrency than Ethereum, which the hashrate limiter
was designed to thwart."

So, garbage news site, and NO, the ethereum mining limiter, has NOT been cracked.

 

[Mopetar]

Maybe another cryptocurrency could design their algorithm to break the locks on Nvidia's cards. I mean that's basically what existing PoW algorithms do, just not with any intent to solve a specific problem.

Imagine a massive army of GPUs being used to solve a math problem to liberate GPUs so that they can be used to solve other math problems. The machine uprising is weirder than anyone imagined.

 

[Dribble]

Another report from wccf saying it's been bypassed: https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce...rate-limit-bypassed-hacked-rtx-3060-ethereum/
Looks like they found a developer driver without the mining restrictions in, which if true was very dumb of nvidia.

 

[Leeea]

Another report from wccf saying it's been bypassed: https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce...rate-limit-bypassed-hacked-rtx-3060-ethereum/

This looks legit.

Well, so much for that idea.

Looks like they found a developer driver without the mining restrictions in, which if true was very dumb of nvidia.

Most likely some unappreciated dev at Nvidia is heading to a nice cushy retirement.

 

[MrTeal]

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 With Full Unrestricted ETH Mining Hashrate, But Only With Single GPU in a Gaming PC - Crypto Mining Blog

According to the update here it only seems to work right now with one card that's driving a monitor and in Windows, but I can't imagine that will take long to bypass somehow.