[HN Gopher] Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of ... ___________________________________________________________________ Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half Author : bcatanzaro Score : 179 points Date : 2021-02-18 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blogs.nvidia.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blogs.nvidia.com) | CryptoGhost wrote: | Nvidia should partner with Steam. Steam has enough meta-data on | user accounts to be able to offer a level of certainty about how | accurate and authentic a given account and it's user information | is. You could then use a trusted enough Steam account as a one- | per-customer method to sell a card to. | | You wouldn't have to monkey around with hardware freedom and even | if a person decides to re-sell it at least it had the chance of | being used by a "real gamer" first. | 0xfaded wrote: | I'm in the market for a card for computer vision stuff, but | don't have steam. | CryptoGhost wrote: | Understood but Nvidia is justifying the changes by saying | "we're taking an important step to help ensure GeForce GPUs | end up in the hands of gamers." | thomastjeffery wrote: | That would be much worse than this. | Causality1 wrote: | Even simpler way to be to lock the card to a specific unique | Nvidia account for a limited period after sale. | neogodless wrote: | Clearly the solution for everyone is to either make a popular | computer game that matches the signature of cryptocurrency | mining, or develop a cryptocurrency that is mined by beating | computer games that require high quality and frame rates to | maximize the mining rate. | | The graphic card manufacturers would, of course, have to optimize | their hardware and software for these situations, to make the | gamers happy. | Jonnax wrote: | It's kinda amazing that Nvidia could have increased the RRP for | each of their 30 series cards by $300 and it'd still be in short | supply. | vbezhenar wrote: | Buying gamer GPU allows to sale it later, when crypto bubble pops | up. Buying specialized hardware makes it useless later. Prices | (and availability) for specialized hardware must be really sweet | to satisfy miners. | tmaly wrote: | Why not just make a massively parallel ASIC and make the price | competitive to the RTX 3060? | | This would be better than crippling the product via software | drivers. | throwaway2a02 wrote: | My understanding is that the ETH and other algorithms designed | to be run on GPUs have big memory and memory bandwidth | requirements, which is what makes it more difficult (or less | cost effective?) to implement on an ASIC. | | LE. I see you meant NVidia should be making the ASICs. In that | case, that's exactly what they're doing, isn't it? This CMP | line is exactly that. | julienfr112 wrote: | ethereum was especialy designed to be mined with gpu, i think | asic or fpga will miss the memory size that gpu have. | terramex wrote: | The big draw of gaming cards is their resale value, when they | become obsolete for mining they can be resold to gamers for | significant fraction of their original price. Truly huge mining | operations use ASICs anyway, but for medium sized farms gaming | GPUs make more sense. | m463 wrote: | Will this nerf minecraft too? ;) | golover721 wrote: | I wonder how much of this is Nvidia getting pressure from the | Gaming industry to do something about it. As far as Nvidia is | concerned they are selling as many units as they can produce, so | it is a gold rush for them. The gaming industry I am sure is | getting concerned that for their new AAA titles already under | development which require these high end GPUs, their customers | won't be able to get ahold of them. Or at least will be unwilling | to pay the huge markups that the cards are going for. | jarenmf wrote: | They are only doing that to promote their new NVIDIA CMP HX | product line | vlovich123 wrote: | Aren't ASIC miners at least an order (or in the case of Bitcoin, | several orders) of magnitude more efficient than these chips? Is | this just more attractive in terms of more easily accessible | supply? | mindcandy wrote: | ASICs are great for Bitcoin because B's algo strains the math | features of a chip. An ASIC can bake a whole iteration of the | algo into a single, huge instruction. | | Many people in the community don't like ASICs in crypto because | they believe their high cost and rarity creates a hurdle for | mass adoption. Every kid playing games on their computer has a | GPU, but it's much harder for that same kid to get their hands | in an ASIC. Mass adoption by all kinds of people, not just | already rich corporations, is important to the security and the | mission of crypto. | | In response, Ethereum was designed to have an algo that | stresses your RAM rather than your processor. This reduces the | advantage of ASICs tremendously. You can't drive RAM much | harder than GPUs already do. And so, Eth and many other memory- | hard cryptos are still mined on GPUs. | vlovich123 wrote: | Looking up (admittedly expensive) ASICs on Amazon shows ASICs | that outperform MH/s/watt on Etherium by 2x vs the best | nVidia card announced. | _alex_ wrote: | There are ASICs for Bitcoin and other coins that use SHA. | Ethereum and other "later" cryptocurrencies using hashing | algorithms that are memory-hard and there aren't efficient | ASICs for those. If you're mining Ethereum or ZCash or | something, you're using GPUs | rtrdea wrote: | People still GPU mine ether | dis-sys wrote: | those who bought 3090/3080 five months ago can probably sell | their GPU cards at the original purchase price. you will never | be able to do that for those ASIC based devices. | Thaxll wrote: | Not original more like 2x more. | jimmaswell wrote: | I never got around to selling my old r9 380 that I used to do | some mining on. Unfortunately too old now I guess, doesn't go | for more than $80. | SloopJon wrote: | If NVIDIA feels the need to gimp the upcoming RTX 3060, that | suggests that the new CMP cards will not be attractive enough to | compete on their own price/merit, or that they will be similarly | supply constrained. That said, I'm curious to see how they | perform for machine learning. | michaelt wrote: | Of course they won't compete on their own price/merit. | | This will be like Quadro: Same chip, a couple of feature flags | flipped, then sold at several times the price to price- | insensitive market segments. | | Nvidia have noticed miners will pay $1000 for an MSRP $500 | card, and they want to take a cut without alienating the gaming | market too much. | ralmidani wrote: | I would normally be appalled by such an action, but the supply | issues for RTX 30x0 cards are beyond ridiculous. Mining trashes | the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, | does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides | speculation (I say that as someone who has put thousands of | dollars into crypto in the past). Why should people who want to | try some ML/DL at home (maybe they even need it for a class | they're taking), and might also want to play the occasional game, | have to pay an arm and a leg to get their (remaining) hands on a | modern, efficient card? | | I really wish Nvidia would do this across the RTX product line. | | Edit: the "Syrian refugee crossing into Europe" trope might pop | up as a counter-argument for crypto. I am Syrian and still have | relatives there. Refugees' assets are a drop in the ocean of | speculators' mining and HODLing. | Tenoke wrote: | > I really wish Nvidia would do this across the RTX product | line. | | I'd rather they have scaled up the demand. They've had years of | this to take the higher profits and invest them. Even if people | don't use them for mining, the demand for Machine Learning is | there - instead GeForce cards have been banned for use in data | centers for years. Not to mention that the crippling of 3060 | would be trivial for mining operations to get around. | ralmidani wrote: | I understand Nvidia is no angel. And I'm totally OK with them | doing the right thing for the wrong reason. | | Also, my concern is not for data centers running creepy ML | models that invade users' privacy, but for the average home | user who wants to get started with ML and at the same time | get decent frame rates when they play a game. | Tenoke wrote: | >I understand Nvidia is no angel. And I'm totally OK with | them doing the right thing for the wrong reason. | | My argument is they should and could have scaled up the | production rather than just shuffling around which group | they hurt or help at the expense of which other (be it | miners, ML folks or gamers). This isn't the 'right thing', | it just helps the group you prefer on this round. | belltaco wrote: | https://www.networkworld.com/article/3602456/youre-not- | imagi... | PixelOfDeath wrote: | Ask AMD why scaling up to mining demand is a bad idea. | | A sudden implosion of demand combined with a flooding of | the used GPU marked. Better not plan on bringing out any | new GPU architectures when your warehouses are still full | of the previous generation. | tomatotomato37 wrote: | You do understand Nvidia is a fabless company, correct? | Scaling up demand isn't just calling up some factory | manager and telling them to work harder, it's getting | into a massive cagefight with AMD, Apple, and every other | company out there that needs silicon all for the | amusement of Samsung/TSMC | throwaway1777 wrote: | You do realize there is a global chip shortage right now? | It's not as easy as clicking a button in ec2 to suddenly make | more gpus. | dumbfounder wrote: | I think it absolutely makes sense for them to customize their | products for the market they want to serve, even if it is | artificial, that is their prerogative. But the product is just | for gamers that want better games. I think it's funny that is | the moral high road here. | baybal2 wrote: | Even $2000 video cards are sold out | | I'm speechless | kyriakos wrote: | It doesn't surprise me. My 2yo GPU is selling in EU for | double the price I originally bought it from the same | retailer. Its the first time computer hardware is actually | not depreciating but gaining value as it ages. | paulmd wrote: | When I upgraded to a 3070 I sold my 1080 Ti for 50% more | than I paid for it and at this point I think I could have | gotten more (it was a blower so not exactly a desirable | card though). Cost me 100 bucks after tax to do the | upgrade. Then I scored a 3080 and sold the 3070 for $700 | plus shipping. | | It's to the point where I'm thinking about selling my | "backup" 1060 3GB card, but if my GPU died then I would be | in real trouble because lol at getting ahold of GPUs right | now. | pyr0hu wrote: | Same, bought a GTX1660 Super, and the price doubled since. | It's madness what's happening on the GPU market. | gabereiser wrote: | A year ago I bought a RTX 3070 when I rebuilt my | entertainment rig. I replaced a GTX1080 and got rid of it. | I should have kept it and resold it. It's crazy and I wish | there were two categories of cards. Mining cards and Gaming | cards. Looks like NVidia feels the same and is making | dedicated cards for the basement farmers. | felipelemos wrote: | Maybe you are confusing with the series 20XX? The RTX | 3070 were only released a bit more than 4 months ago. | uncledave wrote: | Yeah I sold my 1660 GTX for PS40 more than I paid for it | after 2 years. Was shocked. | bob1029 wrote: | The practical utility of crypto is such a joke when compared to | the intended use cases that all of the speculators fawn over. | The idea that crypto is a "store of value" seems like meager | coping with the fact that transaction rates in a distributed | system necessarily must suck compared to what Visa, et. al. are | doing with IBM mainframes and racks of x86 hardware contained | in the same datacenter (i.e. 1~2ms latency domain vs seconds to | minutes). | | For reference, Visa does thousands to tens-of-thousands of | transactions per second. The cost to run one of these | transactions is negligible because it can be handled so | quickly. Contrast with BTC, which struggles to hit 10 | transactions per second on a good day. I used to work in a | facility that monitored debit transactions. Our SLAs were | ridiculous. Certain customers had requirements that if a single | transaction took more than 100 ms, we were to open a ticket and | contact their help desk immediately. This is the type of rigor | it takes to maintain a financial payment network that consumers | will have confidence in using. | | This is not something that can be solved with current crypto | approaches. There are information theory constraints regarding | how long it would take to reach consensus across a distributed | system and in such a way that transactions are serializable. | [deleted] | cloudhead wrote: | I'm not sure why you would compare Visa with Bitcoin, unless | you had no idea what you were talking about.. Visa does not | enable one to transact without the rest of the banking | system. It's useless on its own. Really pointless point of | reference. | deweller wrote: | The long term road map for Ethereum 2 is 100k transactions | per second. This is a theoretical maximum and it will likely | take years to get there. | | This defies your assertion that scaling cannot ever be | achieved with current crypto approaches. | xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: | The long term roadmap for MyCoin(tm) is to hit twelve | bajillion transactions per second by next Tuesday. | | It isn't easy to hit those throughputs on a normal system | where nodes are reliable and trustworthy, workloads are | carefully controlled, and latency is under a millisecond. | There's no reason to think Ethereum can pull it off. | humaniania wrote: | Always just around the corner, just like functional PoS. I | won't believe it until I see it. | blitz_skull wrote: | Okay, so for the foreseeable future: "The practical utility | of crypto is such a joke when compared to the intended use | cases that all of the speculators fawn over" | | Not really a change in semantics here. It's still the point | that crypto promised a LOT of really cool things for | fintech that realistically won't materialize for a long | time. | [deleted] | bob1029 wrote: | 100k transactions per section w/ serializability and all of | the other things required to satisfy real-world concerns | like fraud and regulatory constraints? | FridgeSeal wrote: | Bold of you to assume that the crypto-crowd have | seriously taken fraud and and consumer protections into | account. Crypto-currencies are a poor technical | "solution" to a socio-economic problem, and while this | remains the case associated problems (regulatory | constraints, etc) will continue to be things that are | relegated to the "don't care/won't fix/too hard" basket | at worst, and stapled on as an afterthought at best. | That's before we even get to the hardcore libertarian | mindset that is incredibly prelevant in crypto- | currencies. | glsdfgkjsklfj wrote: | This comment is peak Liberal hacker news. | vbezhenar wrote: | Just wait until they'll limit ML/DL using those heuristics | because you're supposed to buy specialized hardware and let | gamers play their games. | | First they came for the miners, and I did not speak out. | liuliu wrote: | Yes, that is worrying. But, they already have license in | place to ensure no one uses their gaming GPUs in the cloud, | where the big money is already. (And it worked, I cannot find | any low-cost cloud providers with gaming GPUs for GPGPU | computing). | | I hope they don't, given that there is limited upside and a | lot of push back from dev community. | option wrote: | how Syrian refugees (or any other people from war torn place) | convert their assets to crypto before leaving? | ralmidani wrote: | Good question. I don't know the details, but early on in | Assad's war against Syrians, the situation was easier than it | is now. In 2012/2013, a lot of cash was taken to neighboring | countries. | mactrey wrote: | There are no two ways about it: the Syrian refugees who were | planning to buy RTX 3060s for mining are going to be hurt by | this announcement. | selfhoster11 wrote: | They don't need to mine for that, merely buy existing | Bitcoins. | Leherenn wrote: | Is that easy? I assume they are going to have Syrian pounds | as cash. Then I guess you need to put them in a local bank | account and use that account to buy BTC. Can you buy BTC | with Syrian pounds? If yes, wouldn't the exchange rate be | dreadful? I'm not sure exactly who would want SYP. | throwaway1777 wrote: | You need someone to accept Syrian pounds for the nvidia | gpu too, and you need to buy electricity and have | functional internet service... there's really no reason | to mine instead of buy in this case. | ljm wrote: | The environmental issues are concerning to me. The amount of | electricity being burned through for what is essentially a | skeuomorphism of gold mining, pretty much primarily for | speculation now, is beyond belief. It's a completely | artificial, and artificially scarce, product. | | Whatever original hopeful goals the creator(s) of Bitcoin had | with this idea, and decentralised currency...if there was any | victory at all it is a pyrrhic one when you look at the | externalities. | | If you can call a digital gold rush a victory, anyway. The | physical one in the US was pretty bad for a lot of people. | infogulch wrote: | > skeuomorphism of gold mining | | I'm gonna steal that one, thanks. :D | lrossi wrote: | Great, another company that is dictating what software I am | running on the computer I own. | | I've never mined Ethereum, but this really upsets me. | hobofan wrote: | With their proprietary drivers and their separate Quadro cards | (which are identical hardware but running different drivers), | NVIDIA has already been dictating what you are running for | ages. | | This is not the start of NVIDIA dictating what you are running, | just a new symptom of it. | adamdusty wrote: | Then get literally any other Nvidia card? | NKosmatos wrote: | I agree, when you buy the hardware you should be able to do | what you please with it. This applies for something you already | own and use. | | Imagine a new driver, for hardware you already own where you | couldn't watch cat videos (extreme example) in 4K but only in | 360p :-) | | On the other hand if you're well informed before buying such a | card, that it will have reduced performance for crypto (or | whatever) I guess it's ok and you can select something else. | | We have to be realistic here and understand that on one hand | NVIDIA hates miners since they're creating a shortage of cards | for gamers but on the other hand they're the ones buying all | new cards straight away for mining. | | I think this is a marketing trick so that both gamers and | miners are happy, RTX line for gamers and CMP line for miners, | win-win for NVIDIA :-) | dividedbyzero wrote: | > I think this is a marketing trick so that both gamers and | miners are happy, RTX line for gamers and CMP line for | miners, win-win for NVIDIA :-) | | But they won't magically have twice the amount of chips on | hand, will they? So either they make a lot of CMP cards and | too little RTX cards, and gamers will still struggle to get | one, or they'll make sufficient RTX cards and too few CMP | ones and miners have a big incentive to get around those | restrictions (and will, in all likelihood). I guess they can | mark up those CMP cards and include some mining-friendly | features in the future for some additional revenue. | Uke wrote: | This could be the win-win-win for all parties, if only the | cuda cores on the die have to be known good, it could mean, | that the yield of nvidia goes up, gamers get their gpus | with graphics, and miners get a card that can mine for a | limited amount of time but then can't go into secondary | market. | varispeed wrote: | If you cannot run what you want on the device, do you really own | it? | bryanlarsen wrote: | If you cannot buy it because miners have purchased all the | stock, do you really own it? | varispeed wrote: | Not sure how this is relevant. Company should look how to | increase the supply instead of artificially crippling the | product to squeeze more money. | asutekku wrote: | If it is not physically possible, this decision makes a lot | of sense. Due to the global semiconductor shortage it | simply is not possible to build more on the scale customers | would like to. | varispeed wrote: | The instrument to regulate that is called the price. You | increase the price until there is a steady supply. That | would help funding new fabs and in the long run increase | the supply so that it could be available for a broader | range of consumers. The way they do it is not | sustainable. They will not generate enough money to pay | for new manufacturing plants this way. | kristjansson wrote: | > 'long run' | | That's on the order of years for this problem. I would | imagine that Nvidia doesn't think it could survive the | reputational costs of charging market clearing prices for | their cards for years - effectively proscribing their | core gamer market for the entire period. | | Sure, that's what's happening now, but it's the fault of | scalpers not a business decision by Nvidia. The scalpers | get the ire of the core market, and Nvidia gets to look | like it's doing its best (while guaranteeing all the | inventory it can make will sell) | | It's the same reason your favorite band charges a low | face for tickets that doesn't reflect demand - they don't | want to be the bad guy excluding poor people from the | experience, they just let the scalpers do that. | varispeed wrote: | So they essentially got themselves in a pickle. It looks | like they have not invested money in infrastructure and | instead lowered prices to attract as many people as | possible thinking what they currently have will be | "enough". They have not predicted that the demand will be | so high that it will exceed their current abilities and | they have no money to increase the production and they | are unable to raise the money without destroying the | market they built. That they want to give the experience | to the "poor" people it is just a poor excuse of poor | management. | kristjansson wrote: | > unable to raise the money | | I think Nvidia could borrow or raise basically any amount | of money if they had capital-intensive projects to invest | in that would solve current or future supply constraints. | Retained earnings are not the only way a company can | invest in itself. | | The problem isn't capital, its fundamental inelasticity | of supply for semiconductors. Fabs (or capacity in fabs) | can't be spun up or down quickly, nevermind cheaply. | unionpivo wrote: | The problem is that everybody wants to build on newest | TSMC and maybe Samsung fabs. | | Apple outbid everyone (and given their budget, will | continue to do so.), so the rest of them are fighting for | whatever capacity is left. | | TSMC is expanding, but new factories take years to build. | | So the issue here is mostly the overreliance of whole | world on TSMC and Samsung. | glennpratt wrote: | And crypto demand can evaporate tomorrow, as it has in | the past and leave those plants unprofitable. | dageshi wrote: | However many they produce, miners will buy all of them. | Miners will outbid gamers on the same cards. What is your | solution? | bryanlarsen wrote: | By crippling the product for miners, they're increasing the | supply for gamers. | varispeed wrote: | What if you are a gamer and you want to mine when you | don't play? | talhah wrote: | No, you never bought it to begin with. Can't own what you | never paid for obviously. | mhh__ wrote: | Well, ask Apple about that. | ortusdux wrote: | Many car manufacturers have found that it is cheaper to ship | all vehicles with a feature, and then have the owner pay to | unlock it. | | https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/2/21311332/bmw-in-car-purcha... | Zenst wrote: | Would be better if they just did specialised versions of their | datacenter systems geared towards the issue and capitalise upon | it for a win win around. However as a stop-gap solution that | won't impact many, but some crypto miners - I can see what they | are going for. | protoman3000 wrote: | As I wrote in the other thread here, this won't change anything. | The additional chips which were previously binned probably don't | exceed demand. The demand of miners is inelastic and they will | buy anything. | Klwohu wrote: | Hahaha, this can't be real. Will they gimp the RTX-3060 in other | applications like machine learning too? Will people who already | bought these cards for mining have to watch out for updated | drivers or firmware? This is an absolute nightmare scenario which | will come back to haunt Nvidia for years. I can't believe they | approved this. | | It'll be interesting to see how games perform on the newly gimped | cards people already own. Can they firmware-gimp a card to | reliably stop mining without affecting games? We'll see! | mywittyname wrote: | >Hahaha, this can't be real. Will they gimp the RTX-3060 in | other applications like machine learning too? | | Maybe? It would make sense because ML use cases are | professional and there's a lot of money to be made there. | | This isn't without precedent. Quadro cards have always been 99% | GeForce cards with some special bios magic to de-gimp them for | CAD or VFX applications. They charge 4x the price because they | know that workstations running $50,000 a seat software can | afford the premium. | terramex wrote: | RTX 3060 has not been released yet, it goes on sale February | 25th. | Klwohu wrote: | OK, but it still seems like a problem until people can see | that this doesn't affect their games. Perhaps this will | reduce demand among miners after all. | | I shouldn't be surprised - this is what Nvidia already does | with their Quadro vs. consumer line. Heck, I owned a Sound | Blaster Live! which was functionally equivalent to the EMU | APS and used the hacked drivers for years back in the olden | days. | pizza234 wrote: | > Will they gimp the RTX-3060 in other applications like | machine learning too? | | While their move is questionable (I don't judge, but recognize | that it's questionable), there is a situation out there that is | 1. specific and 2. concrete (gaming cards that can't be | purchased for gaming), which is unlikely to apply also to | machine learning. | cybrexalpha wrote: | Have nvidia lost their minds? | | It's going to take days for mining operations to reverse-engineer | the driver and undo this. So commercial operations won't be | affected at all. | | Worse, their detection isn't going to be 100% perfect. What if | After Effects does something that looks "kind of" like mining. Is | it just going to be crippled? What will nvidia do then? Suggest I | buy a Quadro for AE support? | | This will only penalise average users. | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | Yeah, this is about par for the course for Nvidia. | | I wish AMD had a working product to kick their teeth in... | kmeisthax wrote: | They mostly do, the problem is that they're even more supply- | constrained than Nvidia right now. | COGlory wrote: | They do. The 5700XT is still an excellent card, the 6700 and | 6700XT are coming out soon, and the 6800 and 6800XT are both | absolutely killer cards as well, especially at the reference | prices. | | Vendors and demand have effectively driven prices to an | insane amount, and you just can't get them, unfortunately. | Short of AMD doing something like Nvidia is doing here, I | doubt we'll see them on store shelves any time soon. | slezyr wrote: | 5700XT costs 1000$ in Ukraine. It cost 500$ when it just | got released. WTF? | | Edit: 1100$ actually. | COGlory wrote: | I just sold a used one for $1100 that I paid $380 for on | release. It's because crypto has gone up so much. | izacus wrote: | And the reason you can't buy them is exactly the same | reason nVidia is adding limitations - to try to make the | cards less appealing to scalpers so the actual customers | may get some. | encryptluks2 wrote: | Except you won't be able to buy any of them, even when they | are released. | account42 wrote: | You might not like the price, but the 6800/6900 ones tend | to stay in stock these days in at least some parts of the | world [0][1] | | [0] https://www.mindfactory.de/Hardware/Grafikkarten+(VGA | )/Radeo... [1] https://www.alternate.de/Grafikkarten/Big- | Navi | zelon88 wrote: | That's for the people who already own the card. | | If you're in the market for a new card and you have the option | of a powerful, purpose-built card that works out of the box or | one that needs endless tweaking, few people would choose the | more complex option. Especially if it means every new driver | that gets released is going to require days to make work | properly. | bluescrn wrote: | A GeForce will have much more resale value than a mining- | specific card once mining becomes unprofitable or the next | generation of cards come along | arsome wrote: | It all depends on availability - if there are no more CMP | cards available, but GeForce cards are still around and | there's a known good cracked driver for them, this won't even | be a question. | | Miners don't care about driver updates so it's really a one- | off, not endless, once it's running they don't have to touch | it. | wtallis wrote: | There's no "endless tweaking" to keep your GPU mining rig | working. | | Constant GPU driver updates are the norm for gaming GPUs | because GPU drivers include a huge pile of workarounds for | buggy games, and there are new buggy games hitting the market | all the time. But if you just want to run a specific | straightforward GPGPU task like a miner, you only need to get | _one_ driver version properly cracked to unlock full | performance, and keep using that until the hardware is no | longer profitable to mine with. | | And it seems pretty likely that a countermeasure bolted on to | the drivers this late in the process will be defeated fairly | quickly, and miners will go on a second shopping spree after | clearing out the stock of the new purpose-built mining cards. | (Assuming those even ship before the 3060 drivers get | cracked.) | judge2020 wrote: | Plus, part of the profitability of mining cards is being | able to resell them once their profitability is low (and | they do usually still work fine for gaming after a year of | mining). The new mining cards will have to be insanely | profitable to make them look better than the 30-series | cards. | PeterStuer wrote: | People are and still will be buying up every card that they | can get their hands on at a price that turns an ROI of less | than 6 months. They-ll just download a different | driver/firmware if needed. | tibbydudeza wrote: | The CMP cards will be much cheaper than the GPU gaming units so | why would they bother ???. | paulpan wrote: | So true. Nvidia can't not know how resourceful cryptominers are | - and to what lengths a miner will go to modify the firmware | for even a few percentage point improvements. It'll just lead | to a never-ending back and forth (will daily drivers become a | thing?) until Nvidia decides it's not worth the effort. | | This just seems like a feeble gesture at appeasing gamers. | What's interesting is that these "mining-crippling" changes | will only apply to the 3060 GPU, not the rest of the RTX 3000 | series. If it was a legitimate gesture, then Nvidia would've | made it universally applicable. | cat199 wrote: | > This just seems like a feeble gesture at appeasing gamers. | | Color me cynical, but this seems like a strong gesture at | increasing margins on GPU computing by upselling using | cryptocurrency and gamers as PR pawns/scapegoats | | if Nvidia is selling more cards than they can | produce/distribute at desired target prices they should | produce more cards and improve their distribution networks.. | sujinge9 wrote: | Or, even easier, raise prices... | lxgr wrote: | Maybe there is some hardware enforcement involved? Also, | retroactively capping functionality of a sold product seems | like a PR and legal nightmare. | g_p wrote: | The Sony PS3 precedent of removing OtherOS springs to mind | regards retroactive restrictions. | paulpan wrote: | From the announcement it seems this is driver-side only, so | a big nope. | Jonnax wrote: | I'm guessing their 3060 product is their budget card so it's | easier for them to limit performance on that. | phendrenad2 wrote: | It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for someone to | reverse-engineer the drivers and remove the slowdown code. | protoster wrote: | They might doing the same thing video games do to combat | piracy. No DRM is unbreakable, all games are eventually | cracked, so why bother? The thought is that it buys enough time | during the critical launch window to sway people who will have | pirated the game to buy a copy instead. | | The case for this kind of video card "DRM" is actually stronger | because miners either have to gamble and buy cards they know | they won't be able to use until (or even if) a "crack" is | available, or wait until a solution is available before buying | them. | | If the miners wait, this is a win for gamers and Nvidia PR | because the cards will be bought by gamers since cards have a | limited supply unlike video game licenses. | tux3 wrote: | I'm sure someone raised that objection internally, and was | pointedly ignored (as they should be if all you care about is | the PR angle of "we're doing something"!) | notum wrote: | Or. Uhm. Use older drivers? I bet these are bios changes | though. | hn8788 wrote: | The RTX 3060 hasn't released yet, so if the cards ship with | this limitation, there aren't any old drivers to use. | notum wrote: | You're right, I forgot they package up drivers for all | cards in the same versioning scheme, so using 4XX version | of the package won't support the card. | nuccy wrote: | I use CUDA for scientific calculations and I wonder how this | will affect GPU performance since any detection algorithm may | have fault positives. The only problem with such artificial | limitation is that usually people who mine crypto are very | inventive (if you have doubts about that just check laptop | mining farms [1]), since they try to squeeze out as many H/s as | possible. It is just a matter of time when the 'right' driver | will be available. | | 1. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-GeForce- | RTX-3060-laptop... | jbnorth wrote: | Honestly if it's an issue they'd probably tell you you're | also using their GeForce cards wrong and you need to move up | to Quadro. | notum wrote: | "No no sir, I see that you're using Quadro TensorFlow, you | need to use a Quadro PyTorch card." | hobofan wrote: | > since any detection algorithm may have fault positives | | Though not impossible, NVIDIA has been doing application | detection for ages for the purpose of tuning the performance | of the latest popular games. So as long as your scientific | calculations don't calculate too much Keccak-256 hashes, they | should probably be fine. | terramex wrote: | Their application detection is based on executable name. | Fairly popular game I worked on was misdetected because | apparently we used executable name of some decade old FPS. | They fixed it in NVidia Control Panel, but Shadowplay | continues to put gameplay recordings in wrong folder to | this day. | hobofan wrote: | Huh wow, I would have guessed that it was based on some | more complicated heuristics. Well then I guess my | previous comment is moot. | jki275 wrote: | I bet it's less than a day. | the-enterprise wrote: | (1) Many gamers are miners in their spare time! | | (2) Big Mining operations actually write their own drivers | | (3) Huge Mining operations even use custom boards | | (4) I heard that that Nvidia has been selling silicon directly to | the big boys (https://wccftech.com/nvidia-allegedly- | sold-175-million-worth...) | | (5) With this action I expect its only the little guys getting | removed from the game here (1) a huge benefit for the big players | (2)(3) benefitting the corporations biggest customers (4) | TomVDB wrote: | > (2) Big Mining operations actually write their own drivers | | Strong claims require strong evidence. | mywittyname wrote: | This doesn't seem that far fetched. Especially since miners | don't need to produce full-featured drivers. | lima wrote: | The objective seems to be to stop miners from buying up | consumer GPUs. Nvidia added a separate product line for mining. | wmf wrote: | If both those product lines use the same dies, mining is | still taking GPUs away from gamers. | Bayart wrote: | I wonder who they're going to blame when they still can't get | their card but can't pin it on the miners. | | As for these mining cards, without the resale value they might as | well be ASICs. | k__ wrote: | Is mining a viable investment? | OldHand2018 wrote: | At this exact moment, yes (I would think). But that says | nothing about tomorrow, or next month. Even if the crypto price | stays the same or goes higher, your ROI depends on how many | other people are mining and what their hash rate is. | | The people that are doing the best right now are almost | certainly the ones with fully depreciated equipment. | IceWreck wrote: | While I hate the GPU shortage, I dont think this is the right way | to go. Artificially limiting what you can and cannot do on your | hardware is a bad precedent. | thomastjeffery wrote: | It's also a precedent nvidia (and AMD) set well over a decade | ago by limiting several features to their quadro line. 5-10 | years ago it was 10-12bit color. Today it's SR-IOV. There was | also the gsync/freesync debacle not so long ago. | | This is the first time the ends have even remotely justified | the means. | cma wrote: | I think number of video encoding streams is artificially | limited to 2 as well on consumer cards. | ChrisLomont wrote: | >Artificially limiting what you can and cannot do on your | hardware is a bad precedent. | | Everything does it - from Intel chips being binned by | performance, Windows versions and # of CPUs, and pretty much | any big software products. | | Another way to see it is: it costs X to develop a line, and a | vendor can charge everyone the same, no matter how they use it, | or they can design and partition the line so users with | different needs pay more or less. So, for example, a home PC | with 8 cores is not paying for software that handles 128 cores, | and those needing 128 core software pay more. When Intel does a | run of CPUs, and tests them, and finds some can run at 4 GHz, | and others only at 3 GHz, then they can either throw out the | 3GHz ones and charge everyone much, much more for the single | sku, or they can partition the same chip into bins for | different prices, effectively lowering the chip cost for every | single sku. | | The alternative to pricing in tiers is to charge the 128 core | user less, and the 8 core user more, then the majority of users | get charged more for things they will never use. Or only sell | the top of the top of the chip yield, making the per unit cost | astronomical, since now your yields dropped through the floor. | | Personally, I like market segmentation, since it allows me to | only pay for the things I want, while others can buy the things | they want. I prefer not being charged to support development of | things I don't want or need. And in some cases it lowers the | cost for everyone. | wtallis wrote: | Binning chips for yield is different from artificially | crippling chips. There's nothing wrong with taking an 8-core | CPU with a defect in one core and selling it as a 6-core | part, or underclocking it until all 8 cores are stable and | selling it as a slower part. The odious part happens when fab | defect rates drop and yield improves, so basically all the | dies can function as 8-core chips. When that happens, Intel | _et al._ start disabling perfectly functional cores to | artificially constrain the supply of high-end parts. That 's | a pretty clear cut market failure that's only possible | because the barriers to entry are so high. | | The most extreme instance of this that I'm aware of was when | Intel sold a ~$50 piece of software that would unlock the | rest of the L2 cache on a specific low-end processor model. | They didn't say it _might_ work on your chip; every instance | of that model had apparently passed QA with the full cache | enabled but shipped with a fourth of it (IIRC) disabled. So | Intel wasn 't saving any money or harvesting any otherwise- | unusable parts with that model. They were just price fixing. | | Product segmentation for software is also a different issue, | because all the scarcity is artificial to begin with, with no | natural underlying supply curves because there's no marginal | cost to making another copy. | mywittyname wrote: | > That's a pretty clear cut market failure that's only | possible because the barriers to entry are so high. | | I see that as a market success. People with lighter needs | can purchase a neutered chip at a lower price. While people | with greater needs can purchase an unlocked chip for a | premium. | | An alternative is to only have one chip, which is priced | higher than the neutered version. Because of lost sales, | fewer people overall buy the chip, so the price per unit | goes up. This is a net loss to the consumer. | | Another idea is to build two chips for each market. This | increases design and production costs. And is a net loss | for the consumer. | | Or they could always just avoid making the more powerful | chip at all, and stick with the volume seller. | | This is a really common strategy in consumer products | because it makes so much market sense. It sounds unfair | when you think of it as, "paying for a product which you | can't access the full potential". But it sounds pretty nice | when you frame it as, "getting a discount for not using a | feature." | p1necone wrote: | It's a market failure because in a market with proper | competition it wouldn't be possible for Intel to do this | without being undercut by someone else on the higher end | parts. | | If you're able to take e.g. an 8 core cpu, artificially | disable 2 of the cores and sell the 8 core for $300 and | the 6 core for $250, and still make a profit/break even | on both of them then you could be selling the 8 core for | $250 and your competition should be punishing you. | TomVDB wrote: | > Product segmentation for software is also a different | issue, because all the scarcity is artificial to begin | with, with no natural underlying supply curves because | there's no marginal cost to making another copy. | | What you're saying is that due to some irrelevant | production related factor, it's totally fine for a software | company to price their product based on what the market is | willing to pay, but as soon as a piece of hardware is | involved, that principle doesn't apply anymore. | | What about selling software that comes with a hardware | copyright protection dongle? Under which category does that | fall? The marginal cost of producing that dongle is not | zero after all. | ChrisLomont wrote: | > there's no marginal cost to making another copy | | Marginal cost is not the only cost. It's disingenuous to | treat it as such. It's also incorrect - making a copy for | someone to access is most certainly not free. | | And the economics is sound - partitioning markets allows | sales at lower prices to many purchasers. There's simply no | way around this, no matter how you feel about it. | | >That's a pretty clear cut market failure | | No, the same economics above apply - partitioning the | market lets those less needs obtain product at a lower cost | than those with more needs, no matter how the | device/software is created. | | Market segmentation replaces a single, ham handed consumer | and producer surplus with a multi level one, allowing each | side to capture more of the surplus for their benefit, | leaving less of the summed surplus on the table. | | Not every purchaser has the same surplus to trade. By | splitting the market some purchasers that would not | otherwise buy are now willing and able to do so, and the | tighter or possible non-existent margins there are offset | by selling to those accepting higher price points, almost | always offset by extra capability. | | And no matter how you slice it, commodity chips and | software are so incredibly cheap compared to the value they | provide it's hard to claim these prices are somehow not | reasonable. For less than a week's pay I can purchase an | incredible set of tools that I can then turn into orders of | magnitude more value for me. Pretty much any professional | making a living based on computers is in the same position. | wtallis wrote: | > Marginal cost is not the only cost. It's disingenuous | to treat it as such. | | Well, it's a good thing I didn't do that. I just said | that the lack of any real marginal cost means that | artificial market segmentation for software should be | analyzed separately from artificial market segmentation | for physical goods. And only one of those two analyses is | relevant to this thread. The software stuff you brought | up is a red herring. | ChrisLomont wrote: | >that artificial market segmentation for software should | be analyzed separately from artificial market | segmentation for physical goods | | This is akin to economic voodoo. There is no reason to do | anything different for either one - they are products, | customers buy them. | | Once you want this artificial split, I guess based on | your (incorrect) claim that there is no marginal cost | (original claim) or lack of any real marginal cost | (backpedaled claim) as the deciding factor, then when do | you start to add a continuum of how you analyze based on | a continuum of costs? | | If there is a marginal cost 3/4 between your two cases, | do we now need to interpolate your forms of analysis? All | because you personally don't like how markets work? | | Or why not simply use the same method, standard | economics, to analyze them? And realize all these | products have the same benefits to consumers via varied | pricing? | | >The software stuff you brought up is a red herring. | | No, it shows how markets work. That you move your | goalposts in the middle of a thread is the fallacious | reasoning. | | And you've failed to address that segmentation like this | allows people to buy that could not have otherwise. Do | you dispute that segmentation allows cheaper pricing for | some consumers, and in some products, all consumers? Are | you arguing for higher prices or just ignoring this | empirical fact? | travisporter wrote: | Off topic but does Tesla still software limit their batteries? | I always cringed at that; just knowing something exists that | isn't being used to it's full potential | Ciantic wrote: | > Artificially limiting what you can and cannot do on your | hardware is a bad precedent. | | Unfortunately it happens all the time. For instance Nvidia had | Quadro lineup, with nicer multi-display settings that to my | knowledge was always just driver thing. They never ported those | to GeForce line up, and people suffered with displays that wake | up too late and all windows were messed up when you waked up | your computer. | | It hasn't happened to me lately so they might have fixed it, | problem was that if one of the displays took longer to wake up | then Windows didn't recognize it until it was too late. With | Quadro you could force the EDI settings so that it faked for | operating system that the display was there. | driverdan wrote: | Unless they're cheap no one is going to buy them. Those hash | rates are terrible. I get 50MH+ on my 2080ti at around 200W. Why | would someone buy hardware that's worse than a 2 year old GPU? | Tenoke wrote: | This is from the company that previously brought you 'No GeForce | in data centers'. | serverholic wrote: | Wow nVidia really needs some serious competition. | theandrewbailey wrote: | Aside from AMD, there really isn't anyone competing on high-end | mass market PC GPUs. Intel is making some moves, but nothing | has been released yet. | | https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-xe-hpg-graphics-unve... | zokier wrote: | It's tsmc if anyone who needs competition. Without solving the | supply side, its unlikely that the situation will improve | meaningfully for the consumer. | TomVDB wrote: | Indeed. We can only hope that AMD implements a similar | slowdown. | serverholic wrote: | Why shouldn't people be allowed to use their GPUs how they | want? | TomVDB wrote: | Why shouldn't companies be allowed to do product | segmentation? | | Limiting mining performance on a consumer GPU is no | different than limiting certain professional or machine | learning specific performance features. | serverholic wrote: | This isn't about product segmentation. They're | artificially neutering their product. | | It's perfectly fine to offer a different product that's | designed for better performance but to artificially limit | product A so that people are forced to buy product B | (that's probably more expensive) is messed up. | TomVDB wrote: | Microsoft designed Office with professional features, but | they artificially neuter the Home version with a compile | switch. | | This is no different. | | As long as you know what you're paying for, segmentation | is fine. It allows consumers to pay for what they need. | ThePhysicist wrote: | In Germany, NVIDIA quotes 519 EUR as the starting price for the | RTX 3070 series. Unfortunately, the cards are sold out almost | everywhere and the few sites that accept back-orders list them | for almost 1.000 EUR now, which is crazy. So Kudos to them for | doing this, as the crypto craze seems to heat up there's no end | in sight for miners buying up GPUs and NVIDIA risks angering a | lot of regular people that weren't able to buy a new graphics | card for almost 6 months now. | | That said I'm not sure how effective this measure will be as in | my understanding all that miners need to do in order to | circumvent this throttling is avoid downloading the newest NVIDIA | drivers (?). In addition, I'm sure miners will quickly come up | with a crack that renders the throttling moot, so not sure if | this will fix the supply side. Offering specific hardware to | miners that doesn't compete with that for gamers seems to be a | better solution, but again if NVIDIA isn't able to satisfy the | demand for such hardware miners will keep buying regular GPUs and | try to circumvent the software throttling. | Tenoke wrote: | > So Kudos to them for doing this | | I'd rather they have scaled up the demand. They've had years of | this to take the higher profits and invest them. Even if people | don't use them for mining, the demand for Machine Learning is | there - instead GeForce cards have been banned for use in data | centers for years. Not to mention that the crippling of 3060 | would be trivial for mining operations to get around. | TomVDB wrote: | > I'd rather they have scaled up the demand. | | There are car factories shutting down due to lack of chips. | The silicon for the systems that I work on has its lead times | increased from the customary <30 to 50 weeks. The supply | issues is worldwide, for all fabless semiconductor issues. | | How do you suggest they scale up demand short of building | their own fabs? (Which I hope you aren't suggesting...) | Klwohu wrote: | Building more fabs is the only sustainable solution. Demand | is higher than supply, and miners will just use older | drivers or figure out a workaround pretty quickly, unless | the new mining cards are substantially cheaper yet just as | fast as the "gaming" GPUs. | TomVDB wrote: | Building more fabs is the general solution to the demand | in silicon. And that's happening. | | But in the context of "I'd rather they have scaled up the | demand", where "they' is Nvidia (or almost any other | fabless semiconductor company), it's not a solution | because it's impossible for them to build fabs or to | foresee and plan for the supply chain disruption that was | caused by COVID-19. | flixic wrote: | Fab equipment is also massively back-ordered. | protoman3000 wrote: | This doesn't change anything, as the additional yield by reusing | binned chips is not enough to meet inelastic demand from miners. | They will buy anything | TwoNineA wrote: | Yup, there are laptop mining farms in China. Anything with 30?0 | GPU in it is instant buy for them. | nerdponx wrote: | This won't have an effect on any other workloads? | | (I am an ignorant layperson on this topic.) | Thaxll wrote: | Gamers hate miners, they're driving the price up, make hardware | impossible to get ect ... It's a really problematic situation. | Almost 6 month after launching new graphic cards from AMD / | NVIDIA good luck gettting an RTX 30xx or 6800. | | On a side note all those virtual currency are just plain wrong on | the environment side, it does not make any sense in 2021 to have | a currency that need heavy computation thus increasing power | consumption. When people designed those currency they def did not | think about that. | tromp wrote: | We did think about it but wanted both the simplest possible | consensus model and the widest possible distribution of coins, | which led us to Proof of Work (geared to lower-power ASICs) and | fixed block reward. Proof of Stake is much more complicated, is | subjective, and doesn't provide for coin distribution. | jki275 wrote: | Proof of stake is a solved problem, has a fixed block reward, | has no ASICS or need for them, is no more complicated, is not | in anyway subjective, and distributes coins just fine as both | ADA and XTZ are doing right now. | shawnz wrote: | They are correct that proof-of-stake doesn't solve the | initial wealth distribution problem. ADA and XTZ solve it | by pre-mining the coins. | | Ethereum is instead solving it by having an initial proof- | of-work period and then moving to proof-of-stake after some | amount of mining and wealth distribution has already | happened. | jki275 wrote: | That's not what they said. They said POS can't distribute | coins, which is not accurate. | | ADA and XTZ did pre-mine their initial distribution, and | now they distribute coins through stake rewards. | tromp wrote: | That's not distribution. That's just letting every owner | maintain their share of the pie by staking. | jki275 wrote: | You can argue whatever you want, it's distributing coins | to the people who secure the network. | sabalaba wrote: | The CBECI tool estimates that bitcoin consumes about 15.24 | gigawatts. | | There are approximately 2 million employees working at FDIC | insured banks in the United States.[2] There are approximately | 330 million people in the United States.[3] United States food | production uses about 10 quadrillion BTUs per year (about 332 | gigawatts = [10 quadrillion BTU / (365 _24_ 60 _60) sec to | gigawatts]). 332 gigawatts / 330 million ~ 1kW. That's | approximately 1 kilowatt per person in the United States. There | are probably some good arguments about exports etc but we will | hold that aside for now. In 2019, total U.S. primary energy | consumption per person (or per capita consumption) was about | 305 million British thermal units (Btu).[5] = 305 million btu / | (365_24 _60_ 60) sec = 10kW. So, we get around 11kW per person | for the total food and primary energy consumption rate. | | 11kW / person * 2 million people = 22 gigawatts | | So, we come to the conclusion that if you look at the people | employed by FDIC insured banks in the United States alone, they | have a larger impact on the environment than bitcoin. If my | calculations are correct, maybe we don't need this complaint to | be the same first post in every thread on crypto. | | Maybe I'm missing something or have done an incorrect | calculation, if so, please point it out. | | [1] https://www.cbeci.org | | [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/193286/number-of- | employe... | | [3] https://www.census.gov/popclock/ | | [4] https://www.chooseenergy.com/blog/energy-101/energy-food- | pro... | | [5] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=85&t=1 | andosa wrote: | How many people work on Bitcoin (mining, exchanges like | Coinbase etc)? What's the number of transactions (money | transfers, loans etc) per employee in banking vs Bitcoin | ecosystem? | jbob2000 wrote: | So Bitcoin is a weight in addition to all the banking weight? | | We're running two banking systems right now. It's inefficient | and stupid. | mam2 wrote: | bitcoin fans will agree with you and say we should remove | traditional banks ^^ | beefield wrote: | You miss the fact that what bitcoin does is a tiny fraction | of what banks do. | | I mean, how do you do for example mortgages or corporate | finance with bitcoin - without hiring all the people and | using all the resources current financial system does? | | Frankly, more proper comparison would be the resource | consumption of using gold in the financial system. | tzs wrote: | You are comparing (baseline US power use/person x number of | people working at banks) to (power consumed to do the | computations to operate the bitcoin blockchain). | | I fail to see how this is relevant to the question of how | bitcoin compares to the banking system as a system for | storing and transferring money from an energy perspective. | | The relevant comparison would be to compare the costs of | doing a similar volume of similar operations using bitcoin | and the bank system. | skocznymroczny wrote: | I feel so lucky to buy RTX 2060 two years ago. It's still a | good card if you're not doing 4K gaming, and right now it costs | more than when I bought it. | edem wrote: | Same here. I wanted to put together a computer for a friend | and I just bumped into these *insane* prices. | macNchz wrote: | When I started building a computer and realized these new | cards were going to be unobtainium last fall, I bought a used | 1080ti instead. Despite being older it still holds its own | against newer cards. Lacking RT and DLSS features (which | didn't matter much to me), it was reselling at a sizeable | discount vs comparable used 20x0 cards. | | Five months later I still have my eBay searches saved, and | the exact model I bought is now regularly selling for 40+% | more than it cost me. There's one right now with a few hours | left on the clock, currently going for 50% more than I paid, | with 75 watchers and 51 bids. It's wild. | CraigJPerry wrote: | Not to take a side in this fight but i find the counter | argument about the environmental cost of regular currencies | interesting. | | How much co2 is emitted in the clearing of dollar transactions | vs the clearing of bitcoin for example. That's a whole lot of | data centres. | | I'm not persuaded that we can put costs like legal (or even | military) protection under just the dollar column - if you | steal my $CO2COIN i can leverage the legal system to pursue | you. | asah wrote: | not to mention the humans involved in clearing dollar | transactions... | namdnay wrote: | > How much co2 is emitted in the clearing of dollar | transactions vs the clearing of bitcoin for example. That's a | whole lot of data centres. | | About 40000 times less I think? That's the figure I saw for a | SEPA transfer or Mastercard transaction vs the bitcoin | equivalent | notRobot wrote: | Source? | patrickaljord wrote: | The dollar is backed by the petro-dollar, the fact that | Saudi Arabia and friends only accept dollars when selling | oil is one of the reason the dollar is strong. When you | factor in that the US military protects the petro-dollar | while at the same time being the biggest consumer on earth | of oil, it starts adding up. Europe and therefore the Euro | is also protected by the US army. All of a sudden, your | fiat's energy consumption is probably much bigger than | bitcoin ever will be. | namdnay wrote: | The dollar being strong or not doesn't change the fact | that a transaction in _any_ currency is several orders of | magnitude more energy-efficient than with bitcoin. | DennisP wrote: | It's not like we'd stop protecting our oil supply if we | converted to Bitcoin. We'd still need oil for cars and | planes and so on. If we manage to stop using oil, we | won't need the military to protect it anymore, even if we | haven't converted to Bitcoin. | | So I don't think we can lay the military's oil | consumption at fiat's feet. | jki275 wrote: | The vast majority of BTC mining is done in facilities that | are colocated with hydro dams in China, so the CO2 emission | is not what you might expect just hearing the number of KWH | being used. | IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: | You think China is in the habit of building hydroelectric | plants in places where no one needs electricity? | | Also, a minute with Wikipedia and a calculator will show | you that transmission losses for the longest possible | straight distance in China are <5%. | jki275 wrote: | I think that the bitcoin mining companies that run in | China have a pretty good handle on how to get very low | cost electricity, and hydro doesn't produce the CO2 | emissions you're so concerned about. | | So what's your point? | IshKebab wrote: | His point is that crypto mining isn't using some carbon | neutral electricity that was just lying around unused. If | crypto minors didn't exist that hydro electricity would | have been used for something useful. So by mining crypto | _unless you actually build extra hydro power stations_ | for them you are 100% adding to CO2 emissions. | iexplainbtc wrote: | The environmental impact of "Proof of Work" could have been a | problem but the inventors did think about that and realized | that mining can be done pretty much anywhere, using renewable | resources that would otherwise be untapped. As usual the | ethical burden should be on the user of the tool, not the tool | itself. | | In the long run miners who do not use untapped (cheaper) | renewables are going to be priced out, it just takes some time. | That said other protocols much less computationally intensive, | such as "Proof of Stake", are starting to be tested. | | Anyhow, good idea NVIDIA! | [deleted] | hobofan wrote: | > the inventors did think about that and realized that mining | can be done pretty much anywhere, using renewable resources | | So where exactly did you read that in the Bitcoin whitepaper? | Because everything else is just guessing. | iexplainbtc wrote: | Proof of work was not invented (or envisioned to be used | with digital currencies) by Satoshi. It's been around since | 1993. I can't really find a reference to prove what I | claimed so I would agree I might have been misled to think | that. But the truth is that it doesn't matter whether it | was taken into account or not, what matters is that you can | mine Bitcoin (or do any PoW) using untapped renewable | resources (which is why big mining operations are based in | places with abundant geothermal/hydropower and very little, | if any, population) but you wouldn't be able to do much | else in those places. | magna7 wrote: | Ethereum has been designed from the very start to switch from | PoW (mining) to PoS (validating) and Phase 0 of that transition | has already started. | TomVDB wrote: | I remember that argument being made 2 years ago during the | last mining craze. | | Given the existing investment in Ethereum HW, it almost seems | like it's just a carrot to deflect criticism about power | consumption, but not something that will actually happen. | DennisP wrote: | It's already running with $5 billion in ETH deposited. | It'll take some more time before migrating the legacy | chain, but the really hard part is live. There was nothing | like that two years ago. | ppf wrote: | You mean "the really easy part"? The Beacon Chain doesn't | do much at all. Last time I checked, they hadn't even got | a design for how contract code would be executed in Eth | 2.0. | serverholic wrote: | This is why Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake. Saying that | virtual currency is wrong because the biggest currency is | unwilling to innovate is wrong. | striking wrote: | When? | DennisP wrote: | Beacon chain is live with over $5 billion in ETH deposited | so far, and has been running flawlessly since its December | 1 launch. There are minor tweaks coming this summer. A few | months after that, if everything still looks good, they'll | migrate the legacy chain to it and proof-of-work on | Ethereum will end. | | The migration is a decent amount of work but it's not the | difficult research task that the beacon chain was. Someone | did a proof-of-concept in about a day, though the exact | plan has changed since then. | viraptor wrote: | > they'll migrate the legacy chain to it and proof-of- | work on Ethereum will end. | | Likely closer to: they'll create a mirror on the new | chain and a group of unknown size will keep ETH 1 fork | alive. | serverholic wrote: | Literally as we speak. It's in production, but the process | of deprecating proof-of-work will still take a couple | years. | jki275 wrote: | Never. | | They've been "moving to proof of stake" for something like | three years. | | The miners are making money off of them not moving to proof | of stake. The miners stop making money when they move to | proof of stake. The only people who can actually allow the | chain to move to proof of stake are the miners. | | Meanwhile, xtz and ada have been proof of stake since their | inception, 3+ years already for both. | DennisP wrote: | There is nothing the miners can do to stop the migration, | any more than they can stop you from making your own fork | of Ethereum and convincing your friends to run it. | | The miners _can_ keep running the legacy version, and try | to convince users and exchanges to stick with it. Given | the massive community support for PoS, they 're not | likely to be very successful. | hobofan wrote: | I mean I'm also disappointed by the slow pace of the | transition, but they are clearly making progress towards | it. | | They've been _planning_ to move to PoS for ~3 years, with | a much too optimistic timeline. In the meantime a lot of | companies working towards that have collapsed or | refocused on other efforts, delaying the whole | transition. It will probably take another ~3 years (my | personal estimate) until the transition is reasonably | finished and core parts of the ecosystems have migrated, | but at least it's moving into the right direction. | bhaak wrote: | > They've been _planning_ to move to PoS for ~3 years, | with a much too optimistic timeline. | | PoS has always been on the roadmap even before their ICO. | But yes, with a MUCH more optimistic timeline. | hobofan wrote: | Yes, but back then nothing more than the first few ideas | towards their PoS existed IIRC. | | 2-3 years ago is when the Casper FFG paper was published | and subsequently the architecture of Ethereum 2.0 (and | the concrete 3-phase roadmap towards it) were published. | Tenoke wrote: | It's a continuous process that is already in progress and | aimed at (mostly) completing in 2022. For what is worth, | ETH PoS alternatives are also gaining a lot of ground in | the mean time. | lima wrote: | The beacon chain - the first step in the transition - has | already launched: https://beaconcha.in/ | jiofih wrote: | Wait, haven't they been moving since 2018? | moonbug wrote: | yeah, next year in Jerusalem. | lima wrote: | > _On a side note all those virtual currency are just plain | wrong on the environment side, it does not make any sense in | 2021 to have a currency that need heavy computation thus | increasing power consumption. When people designed those | currency they def did not think about that._ | | And they probably didn't factor in ASIC miners and large mining | pools, either. Proof of Work is legacy technology at this | point, it's a good thing Ethereum is moving to Proof of Stake | along with most of the ecosystem. | krsdcbl wrote: | I don't quite get why everyone seems to get onto the | environment train with crypto but seem to have had no issues | with gold | bhaak wrote: | _Warren Buffett, the renowned investor, famously dismissed | gold in a speech given at Harvard in 1998. He said: "It gets | dug out of the ground in Africa, or some place. Then we melt | it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to | stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching | from Mars would be scratching their head."_ | | It sucks that gold is so desired just for its look. If it | were cheaper it would be used a lot more for technological | devices. | | I can't wait until asteroid mining crashes the gold price and | hopefully puts an end to the ecological disaster that is gold | mining. | [deleted] | tibbydudeza wrote: | The same about diamonds. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | That's a false dichotomy. | thomastjeffery wrote: | Because we don't have any alternative to gold. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | As far as I know (last time I googled it) if speculation | was removed and hoarding, gold would be worth about $100 an | ounce for the things we need it for. | | So yes we do have alternatives to gold. Things such as | Bitcoin and crypto, which keep going up in value, while | gold speculation has stagnated and is even going down. | Weakening dollar and massive debts due to the pandemic | should mean gold skyrockets, but people are buying the | alternatives. It looks grim for gold. Tesla didn't buy | gold, they bought Bitcoin. | strangeattractr wrote: | What would be the price of BTC if speculation and | hoarding was removed? | pavlov wrote: | _> "When people designed those currency they def did not think | about that."_ | | They did think about it, and decided that libertarian fantasies | outweigh environmental impact. | | Horrible waste is an explicit design choice in the Bitcoin | school of cryptocurrencies. | ravi-delia wrote: | I'm trying to imagine what you think went through the mind of | Satoshi Nakamoto. Do you imagine he just woke up one day and | said "You know what I like? Carbon emissions! For no reason | but carbon emissions! Somehow, I benefit from carbon | emissions!". I really just don't think that's how it panned | out. | pjfin123 wrote: | It seems like Ethereum 2.0 style proof of stake taking off could | really limit a lot of the harms with crypto mining. | mikkelam wrote: | Yeah this definitely seems weirdly late for nvidia to enter. | Mining is about to die. | corebuffer wrote: | > We're limiting the hash rate of GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs so | they're less desirable to miners and launching NVIDIA CMP for | professional mining. | | Limiting to justify a new product. Like they do to fp64 rates and | virtualization support. | | >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. | | Nice, one more reason to get the open source driver moving. | | edit: formatting | dannyw wrote: | I'm a miner (7x3070, 2x3080, 1x3090) and I support this nerf. The | reason is because I am also a gamer, and it's always regrettable | that cryptocurrency mining has made gaming cards out of reach. | vosper wrote: | Are you making a profit mining? Or is it more of a "supporting | the network" kind of thing? | dannyw wrote: | I'm projected to make a generous profit, but that actually | depends on the continued Ethereum price. | 0xfaded wrote: | Out of curiosity how did you get those cards? Did you manage to | buy them at retail or is the economics such that the miners are | willing to pay the scalper premium? | dannyw wrote: | I bought them through a IT reseller, at more or less retail | price around here. | patriksvensson wrote: | Honest question: Have you calculated your profits now VS | what your profits would have been if those same $$ | purchased the cryptocurrency of your choice on the day you | bought the cards instead? Which would have been more | profitable (taking selling the equipment after into | consideration as well). | hahahahe wrote: | This is a joke right? This also confirms their figure (5-10%) for | crypto mining was a blatant lie. | dang wrote: | A related article is https://wccftech.com/nvidia-launches- | cmp-30hx-40hx-50hx-and-... | | (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26180342, but we merged | the threads) | arsome wrote: | Sounds like it's time to crack some NVIDIA drivers. I already do | it for the video encoding limitations, why not this too? Miners | are willing to go to some really hacky extremes, reflashing | firmwares, custom fan mods, extreme overclock configurations, etc | to maximize hashrates and certainly won't care if they have to | jump through some hoops to patch a specific version of the Linux | driver or enable unsigned drivers on Windows, as long as they | make more profit. | | Good luck with this one NVIDIA but you're playing a losing game. | As soon as one un-restricted version of the driver exists, this | is as good as useless and demand will be the same as ever for | these cards unless they're able to ship CMP cards at a very high | rate, but my understanding is the restriction here is silicon. | | Let's not forget that last time they produced "mining only" | cards, people managed to crack the drivers to render graphics | too... this is no exception. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY4s35uULg4 | jsheard wrote: | Someone with early access to 3060 hardware, but not access to | the launch drivers managed to wrangle it into working on | pre-3060 drivers and still found that mining performance was | artificially reduced. | | https://videocardz.com/newz/zotac-geforce-rtx-3060-early-gpu... | | It starts high then falls off after a minute or so when some | heuristic decides that mining is happening. There's speculation | that the limiter might actually live in the cards VBIOS, which | is much harder to modify than the driver as newer Nvidia cards | require a signed VBIOS to boot. | hinoki wrote: | So we'll see mod chips for GPUs soon? | dheera wrote: | Maybe it's time to create an adversarial network that can | figure out how to mine on the GPU without causing it to halve | the hash rate, train that network on an NVIDIA GPU, and shove | it to them. | tus89 wrote: | Is it even in theory possible to produce silicon that does not | perform well on crypto operations while allows 3D to run at | full speed? Or do they simply rely on the same underlying | operations? | leetcrew wrote: | wouldn't hashing be mostly int operations, while 3D graphics | would be FP32? I dunno if they still do this, but nvidia used | to artificially limit the rate for other float widths on | geforce parts to segment the market. | panpanna wrote: | Will this work? | | One "excuse" miner had for buying GPUs was that they could sell | them 6-12 months to gamers. | supernes wrote: | Gimping their products through software is very on-brand for | NVIDIA, gotta admit. | eugene3306 wrote: | but how will it affect ML applications? | ur-whale wrote: | We sell you this product, but we will make damn sure to decide | what you can and can't do with it and will therefore throttle its | abilities. | | Linus was absolutely correct. | dekken_ wrote: | This should be illegal | nsxwolf wrote: | Why? You can always make your own GPU. | rrss wrote: | A product performs worse at some stuff than it might have in a | hypothetical reality, and it says so on the box. What should be | illegal about this, and why? | dekken_ wrote: | I suppose I'm free to not buy it. | | As for a reason, why should they be able to dictate what the | hardware they release is used for? | kcg wrote: | I think people are missing the fact that the 3060 that NVIDIA is | halving the hash rate on is not yet released. It is expected at | the end of this month and different than the already-in-market | 3060 Ti. | | The 3060 Ti was already NVIDIA's mining efficiency leader (per W | and per $). I think the 3060 would be in the same ballpark, if | not better, which I assume is why NVIDIA is doing this. | | Presumably they will do nothing to the existing cards (in part | because it would solve very little if you could just use old | drivers to get the unthrottled MH/s). | dblooman wrote: | Ordered a 3080 Card 1 hour after launch months ago, it arrived | last week, never waited for a PC component of this cost for this | long | unanswered wrote: | A lot of comments are referring to hardware freedom to run what | you want but I don't see anywhere in the article saying that you | can't run whatever you want to on this hardware. It's just going | to pretend to be slower hardware, not cut off capabilities. It | seems entirely within Nvidia's moral rights to release a product | that is not the _best possible_ of all conceivable products; that | 's literally the point of the budget gpus anyway! | | The behavior on display in this thread is highly reminiscent of | the behavior of people demanding that open source authors do free | work for them. | judge2020 wrote: | The issue seems to be that it's the driver doing the halving, | not the hardware itself, which is a little odd. Given the large | profitability, anyone who actually buys 3060's for mining will | hack the driver/pay for a hacked driver that removes this | limitation. | | > 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. | ed25519FUUU wrote: | So they're hamstringing normal cards (to protect gamers of | course!) and releasing a "new" card without the hamstring at a | higher price and we're to believe this is simply to protect | gamers and not a money grab? | namdnay wrote: | It's a seller's market at the moment, so an easier "cash grab" | would just be to increase the price of the base card to the | higher price. | | No, I think the belief is that they need to keep at least a | minimal base of support among gamers and developers, for when | the inevitable crypto crash comes and they need to go back to | their original customer base | rrss wrote: | Wouldn't the easy money grab be to just set MSRP for all cards | way higher ($5k?) while the demand is ~infinite? | shawnz wrote: | > Wouldn't the easy money grab be to just set MSRP for all | cards way higher | | But then how do they capture the "just gamers"? They would | have to additionally sell a neutered card just for them, and | that is exactly what they are doing here | bronco21016 wrote: | It seems like manufacturers are now resorting to artificial means | to curb demand, rather than increasing supply. | | What are the practical reasons supply hasn't kept up? Obviously, | a fab is expensive but they have to be just printing money with | these things in the current market. This really goes across the | board with semiconductors as CPU supply issues are outrageous | right now as well. Why aren't more fabs being built? Is this just | plain and simple greed? | dannyw wrote: | The lead times for the machines used in fabs are in the years. | smcleod wrote: | Is it just me or does the model naming seem misleading - 30HX has | a hash rate of 26MH. | sneak wrote: | It's a real shame that companies think that they should be the | ones dictating how you use a piece of hardware you bought from | them. | | It's a further shame that they would _artificially hinder_ their | hardware for such purposes. | | I will avoid nvidia in the future as a result of this sort of | attitude, and I don't even mine cryptocurrency. I have no dog in | this race other than a philosophical one. | trynumber9 wrote: | it is annoying they limit their drivers this way but ultimately | this is in response to their core customers' frustrations. | Nvidia is trying to segment their products so that the video | game market can get their cards without dealing with the boom | and bust cycle of cryptomining. | | I somehow doubt these drivers will be enough to stop it, | however. | dannyw wrote: | Gimp the memory bandwidth, that'll do it. | glennpratt wrote: | That will also hurt games. It's a huge differentiator | between integrated GPUs and dedicated. | thefz wrote: | The real shame is allowing scalpers to run their stock dry and | generating this problem. | sneak wrote: | Scalpers do not alter supply _or_ demand. | | What, to you, is the difference between a scalper and a | dealer? | ComodoHacker wrote: | It's easy to speak philosophically when you have no dog in the | race. It's harder when you need a GPU for other tasks and have | to pay the crypto tax. | sneak wrote: | There is no "crypto tax", just supply and demand. I recently | bought a NIB 3090 (secondhand, because nvidia are in denial | of reality apparently) for gaming and video production. | xtracto wrote: | No. They (nvidia or someone else) should be building tons and | tons of cards for the existing demand. I just cant understand | why isnt someone salivating at such market inefficiency. | dahart wrote: | They did exactly that just 3 years ago when bitcoin was | hot, and (when bitcoin crashed) ended up with an oversupply | of GTX cards that delayed Turing sales and tanked the stock | for a while. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia- | cryptocurrency-earn... | Nullabillity wrote: | Doesn't really make sense to blame Turing's sales on this | when it was also a pretty bad generation in general | (price hikes, poor performance, RTX gimmick turned out to | be a flop). | dixego wrote: | A thought just occurred to me: is there an upper limit to | how much computing power (and energy) cryptocurrency mining | can reasonably use? Or could all computer hardware be | repurposed to mine crypto and there would still be demand | for more hardware? | unmasked_poker wrote: | Usually the amount of crypto that can be mined in a given | time frame is limited. So you could buy more hardware, | but it would not be profitable. | rrss wrote: | because building 8nm semiconductor fabs is slightly harder | than setting up a lemonade stand. | blibble wrote: | the vast majority of their customers will happily give up | crypto-mining for the chance to buy a card at a reasonable | price | | (... assuming the miners can't trivially patch to the drivers | to re-enable the functionality) | vsareto wrote: | Nvidia is in a "tough" spot. If they increased GPU prices to | take advantage of miner demand, they could be rich but lose the | gaming segment. If they keep the price accessible for gaming, | then they end up dealing with scalpers and low availability | which, fair or not, impacts their brand. This is really an | attempt to get the miners to buy something else so they can | have both market segments. | sneak wrote: | Segmentation has always left a bad taste in my mouth. I had | to buy my 3090 (for gaming and video production) secondhand | NIB because nvidia was playing dumb with prices. | | And don't get me started on DVD region locks. | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | Support working hardware in the future (AMD) | christkv wrote: | 1.2.3 Class action lawsuit. | namdnay wrote: | Class action lawsuit relative to a product that isn't sold yet? | | What next, class action lawsuit against Apple when they | announce the next iphone won't have any external ports? | moralestapia wrote: | I agree GP's argument is a bit exaggerated, but this would be | more akin to Apple announcing "we will no longer let you play | music from XXX". IANAL but maybe there's grounds for a | lawsuit on that. | christkv wrote: | Duh for some reason I already thought it was on the market. | Yeah as long as it's clearly stated I imagine its fine. I | guess the 3080 and 3070 will become even more premium. | reilly3000 wrote: | GPU supply is a huge problem, but this is a massively problematic | solution. It likely won't even work; if it can be done w/ | firmware, it will be reversed by firmware patches. I've been all | through GPU firmware flashes in a quest to get both NVIDIA and | AMD cards passed through to VMs w/ QEMU on Unraid, and I feel | like this could be easily circumvented based on that experience. | pizza234 wrote: | > I've been all through GPU firmware flashes in a quest to get | both NVIDIA and AMD cards passed through to VMs w/ QEMU on | Unraid | | I you refer to the infamous Error 43 on Nvidia, it can be | worked around by setting some QEMU flags. | Justsignedup wrote: | This is a terrible move. | | This is also a fantastic move. | | Personally I am very very VERY much okay with this. This will | keep consumer cards in correct demand. And if miners want to | throw away money for mining, they can. | | People talking of modding, its a high effort and high risk. | Again, I'm okay with that. The cost of modding will likely be the | same as just buying a specialized card. Overall mining is a | horrible environmental impact. | ENOTTY wrote: | there's going to be a brisk market in reverse engineering the | drivers and getting around this | | "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." | glsdfgkjsklfj wrote: | nvidia going to learn a lesson. | | first, this is very obviously because they noticed cloud | operators are offering these RTX cards and they do not have a | 10x-the-price-enteprise-quadroRTX yet. | | what they think will happen: | | they will blame miners for their production issues, make RTX | cards less attractive for cloud operators, sell a truck load of | quadro cards to them while offloading RTX cards to actual gamers | who then generate revenue in other ways (they do not have those | free game bundles deals for nothing) | | What will happen: | | nerf cards, lose sales for gamers and ML startups. | | impact production lines even more with multiple models, lose | sales for cloud operators. | | cause actual miners (not their strawman 'oh the prices are up' | for their production issues) to either reverse engineer the | drivers, or just keep the old drivers running and buying the now- | cheaper RTX cards, compounding the production capacity. | | game studios that started to use those features to speed up crowd | AI etc will just slap a "AMD Recommended" on their games. | Hammershaft wrote: | Do you have a source on game studios using hashing for crowd | AI? | notum wrote: | I hate that I wasn't able to get a 30x series because miners | grabbed them. I hate that my preorder was canceled by the | supplier on the day it was supposed to ship, just because a farm | had a better price. | | But guess what Nvidia? I no longer want your products. As much as | I may dislike the fact crypto is affecting gaming (rendering, | machine learning...) I can't help but ask: Who in the holy F are | you to tell me what to do with my product? | | I take it back actually, I'll buy one to use instead of toilet | paper. Fix THAT with a bios update. | DennisP wrote: | It's probably not even necessary. They're also introducing a | card that removes everything not needed for mining. Unless | they're overpricing that card, it will be more cost-effective | for miners and outcompete the gamer cards. | swalls wrote: | This ignores the fact that cryptominers sell their old cards | on to gamers, at a value which, due to the shortage, is | potentially even higher than what they bought it at. The only | way out I see is flooding the market or a crypto crash. | thefz wrote: | > Who in the holy F are you to tell me what to do with my | product? | | It is the same with hardware video encode, RTX cards are locked | up to 2x streams at maximum while they are in most cases | capable of many, many more (i.e. Plex transcodes). Not that | this is an issue though, since it's a driver lock with a | working fix. | jki275 wrote: | I suspect there will be a bios fix for this lock about a day | after they're released. Unless they put this in hardware | somehow, it's not going to be effective. | | And, they mention the ETH algorithm specifically is what they | detect -- there are a bunch of other algorithms that aren't | ETH that are profitable to mine. | notum wrote: | Christ I had no idea. I beg to differ, it's a HUGE issue. | my123 wrote: | Same thing for ECC being disabled on customer GPUs. | | And ECC disabled on customer Intel CPUs and AMD Ryzen APUs. | (AMD is quite sneaky there, non-Pro CPUs have ECC but non- | Pro APUs don't). Market segmentation is a usual thing on | the computer market. | kmeisthax wrote: | Nvidia uses boot-chain security to prohibit third-party drivers | from using their GPUs - if you don't use Nvidia's own power- | management blob, the card will lock itself to the lowest thermal | bucket and highest fan speed until you reset it. It's arguably | why they're able to segment their GPUs by application so | effectively. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-18 23:00 UTC)