Nvidia appears to be well aware of the GPU shortage problem that has been going on for some time. While production and yield issues are something that the company cannot address on its own, the company is also aware of the current ongoing boom in cryptocurrency prices which has led Ethereum miners, among others, to buy up a lot of the available GPUs. To address the issue, Nvidia has announced new dedicated "Cryptocurrency Mining Processors" (or CMPs) that have been designed specifically for mining.
These devices won"t be able to run graphics workloads and lack any display outputs. Hence, this space on the back of the card, says Nvidia, has been utilized for a better air-flow design for more cooling. As a result, multiple CMPs can be stacked together and can work in tandem with a single CPU. The CMPs have been optimized for power-efficient mining performance using lower peak core voltage and frequencies.
For now, Nvidia has announced four variants of its new CMP HX lineup. Their specifications, as well as their initial availabilities, are listed below:
| 30HX | 40HX | 50HX | 90HX | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum Hash Rate | 26MH/s | 36MH/s | 45MH/s | 86MH/s |
| Rated Power | 125W | 185W | 250W | 320W |
| Power connectors | 1x 8-pin | 1x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin |
| Memory size | 6GB | 8GB | 10GB | 10GB |
| Availability | Q1 | Q1 | Q2 | Q2 |
Like GPUs, the CMPs will be available to purchase from AIB partners like Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.
Alongside the announcement of the new CMPs, Nvidia has also announced that the company will be reducing the mining performance of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 GPU which launches exactly in a week on the 25th. The company says that upon detection of the Ethereum mining algorithm on the RTX 3060, the driver of the GPU will be able to reduce the hash rate of the 3060 by around 50%. This crippling of the Ethereum mining performance on the 3060, Nvidia hopes, should deter potential miners from buying the RTX 3060.