Cryptocurrencies are not "useful for society" claims Nvidia
Nvidia's no longer making huge profits selling GPUs to cryptocurrency miners
Published: 27th March 2023 | Source: The Guardian |
Nvidia's CTO claims that cryptocurrencies do not “bring anything useful for society”
In an interview with The Guardian, Nvidia's Chief Technology Officer, Michael Kagan, has stated that cryptocurrencies do not "bring anything useful for society", despite the fact that crypto had lead Nvidia to record profits in recent years.
During the interview, Kegan simply stated that the computational power that goes into cryptocurrency mining operations is better spent on AI and other tasks, citing the AI chatbot Chat GPT as an example. Now that demand for Nvidia's hardware from cryptocurrency miners has vanished, Nvidia's CTO can safely thrown mining under the bus as a poor use of computational power.
All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose. They bought a lot of stuff, and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does,
In 2021 and most of 2022, GPU demand related to cryptocurrency mining had a huge impact on the availability and pricing of graphics cards, which were commonly used to mine cryptocurrencies. While Nvidia did attempt to lower demand from cryptocurrency miners by releasing RTX 30 series GPUs with "Lite Hash Rate" firmware, it is also worth noting that Nvidia had also released their CMP HX series of dedicated mining GPUs at the same time to continue profiting from cryptocurrency mining operations. Later, cryptocurrency miners circumvented Nvidia's Lite Hash Rate technology (first partially and later fully) to unlock the full mining performance of Nvidia's gaming GPUs once again.
AI is the new hotness for Nvidia, Crypto is a thing of the past
It is clear that AI is the new cash cow for Nvidia. There's a reason why most of Nvidia's GTC 2023 keynote was about the potential of AI and its current applications. Right now, cryptocurrency miners do not buy a larger number of graphics cards from Nvidia, but AI customers can utilise thousands of GPUs.
The first version of ChatGPT was trained using a supercomputer that contained 10,000 Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia knows that AI is where the money is, and while Nvidia has been targeting this market for many years, it is clear that now is the time for Nvidia to push its AI marketing harder than it ever has before. Nvidia wants to be known as the AI hardware company, not as a simple GPU company.
(Nvidia's GPUs are hugely popular amongst cryptocurrency miners)
The cryptocurrency boom and crash had had a huge impact on the GPU market, inflating the prices of graphics cards to obscene levels while leaving many PC gaming enthusiasts unable to upgrade their gaming systems for years. Even now, GPU prices can be considered inflated when compared to their historic norms, with high-end GPU pricing rising with every GPU generation with value for money improving at a snails pace in the lower-end of the PC market.
While I am glad to see Nvidia stating that cryptocurrencies did not "bring anything useful for society", it is sad to see the price of gaming hardware remain as high as it is. Let's hope that "value" returns to the PC gaming market soon, as it looks like crypto is not set to ruin the PC gaming market again, at least anytime soon, and many PC gamers are fed up with high hardware prices.
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Most Recent Comments
The prices they have on the current cards are nuts, they are nuts as all they have done is have a huge amount of stock and materials they haven't shifted fully and by the time they shifted the 3000 series and reduced prices on the 4000 series they will have tons of stock of that to shift and release the new over priced 5000 series.
Idk what planet they are on but it doesn't seem like a good way to run a biz on stock they can't sell until 2 years later when it's then old stock and devalued, what is the point in making a product most can't afford.
The 4070 is midrange in the stack sold at older flagship prices, the gap in the list is huge only card worth paying for if you can afford one is the 4090 nothing else is going to be worth a dam thing for another year or so when it's time to clear the warehouse.
The worst part is the nm shrink as what are they going to do to break the 1nm level that in my view is going to be very hard and need a new idea or three like EUV did to get to where they are now and i also think it's not happening soon as there are so many things they need to think about in terms of the science behind it to make it work and be stable at a level that will last, otherwise your see more than dodgy power cords.
the world is a mess and their viewpoint sure has flipped once they milked that crypto but now that it's not part of there income oh now they dont feel it's good, whats the matter some one take away the jelly babies in the office lolQuote
| The worst part is the nm shrink as what are they going to do to break the 1nm level that in my view is going to be very hard and need a new idea or three like EUV did to get to where they are now and i also think it's not happening soon as there are so many things they need to think about in terms of the science behind it to make it work and be stable at a level that will last, otherwise your see more than dodgy power cords. |
i get the whole progress thing.... i am an engineer myself.
but the last years i ask myself where is this going?
is the world much better today then it was 20 or 30 years ago?
what new technology has really improved my life?
do i need a new phone every year or every 2 years?
i sure do not, my handy is from 2018.
i like new tech as much as the next guy.
but it has to make sense.
i don´t buy new stuff because it has useless gimmicks.
i don´t buy tech as fashion accessory or status symbol.
it has to offer me something of value.
with many things (features) i ask myself, who needs that, who really uses that?
and the worst thing is they pack more features into everything but it only last half as long as 20 years ago.
i have a 80.000 euro mercedes that annoys me with electronic issues.
nothing i can fix myself. i have to drive to a mercedes shop.
todays cars are full with sh*tty sensors i don´t really need.
and it gets worse with every new generation.
my first car got me from A to B and i could fix stuff myself.
i could disassemble the engine to replace a valve with no issues.
today everything has to be reseted or factory approved because the car has a computer inside that annoys the sh*t out of you.
sorry fo the rant... but my 5 year old washing machine just died.....Quote
Idk when i will upgrade, but like you say it has to make sense have a use or purpose which for me is gaming, so unless i need more power to enjoy things the way i like which is everything to the max at a half decent fps then no reason.
The biggest thing is just how much more powerful and in my view not every gen or even two gens, I went from 560ti sli to 970sli to 6800xt a fair gap between them thou i must admit the 970sli was aged heavily when they basically killed sli.
the 1nm issue is going to be a massive problem, so for nvidia they have to move chiplet and my feeling is the size of these cards right now is just crazy 4+ slots at times.
like you say where is it heading and what value is there, DXR at a decent level then what another form of rendering requiering a new set of software and more power.
I've seen gaming since the start and the whole time i've enjoyed it, when something is new it looks and feels good, that feeling doesn't change but of course you can see the drastic difference it's made, but games are still just the same really.
It's this constant refocusing on what they feel they want to do and create and feed the masses and lock it down to the newest gen keep it closed that is the worst part of it, might as well rent us cards and send back each gen at this point.Quote
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