graphics processing unit

Nicehash Software ‘Fully Unlocks’ Nvidia’s Hashrate Reducing Technology

08/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

On Saturday, the cryptocurrency mining platform Nicehash revealed the company has “fully [unlocked] Nvidia’s [Lite Hash Rate]” graphic processing units (GPUs). Nicehash says the firm’s Quickminer mining software is the first protocol that can unlock LHR GPU cards by 100%.

Nicehash Says Software Is the First to Fully Crack Nvidia’s Lite Hash Rate Technology

According to the digital currency mining platform Nicehash, the firm has developed software that completely unlocks Nvidia’s Lite Hash Rate-brand GPUs. “Nicehash has successfully unleashed the locked computing power for millions of people worldwide,” the company said on Saturday. “We are the first to fully unlock Nvidia’s LHR.”

Nvidia revealed the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) GPU cards in mid-May 2021 after the semiconductor giant said it wanted to put these chips back into the hands of gamers. “We believe this additional step will get more Geforce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere,” a Nvidia spokesperson said at the time.

The GPU manufacturer’s competitor AMD also introduced the first GPU dedicated to cryptocurrency mining called the AMD Navi 12. When Nvidia introduced the LHR technology it applied the protocol to three of its proprietary GPU cards.

Cracking Nvidia’s LHR Tech Started Months Ago

Nicehash is not the only person to be able to remove Nvidia’s LHR tech. Last January, Bitcoin.com News reported on solo miners that had overcome the mining reducing technology. The report further explained that Nicehash told pcmag.com that month that Nvidia’s LHR technology “did not discourage miners at all.”

However, at that time, the reports noted that the miners bypassed the LHR tech by a fraction. The announcement Nicehash made on Saturday claims the Quickminer mining software removes LHR reducers by 100%.

“We are very excited to tell you that Nicehash Quickminer (Excavator) is the first mining software to fully (100%) unlock LHR cards,” a blog post published by Nicehash says. “Now you can earn more profits than any other mining software on the market if you are using LHR graphics cards with Nicehash Quickminer.”

Nicehash’s new software that unlocks Nvidia’s LHR GPU cards, follows the recent charges against Nvidia by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to the SEC, Nvidia failed to disclose that crypto mining had increased revenue. The semiconductor firm agreed to pay a $5.5 million penalty for the lack of disclosure.

What do you think about Nicehash claiming that its software can fully unlock Nvidia’s LHR GPU cards so people can mine with them? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Report: Nvidia’s Lite Hash Rate Tech to Stop Crypto Miners ‘Was Pointless’

29/01/2022 by Idelto Editor

In mid-May 2021, the American multinational technology company Nvidia Corporation revealed that it added a hashrate limiter to curb the use of cryptocurrency mining with its graphics processing units (GPUs). However, crypto miners now say the move was pointless, and the mining organization Nicehash details that the hashrate limiter scheme introduced by Nvidia “did not discourage miners at all.”

Nvidia’s Hashrate Limiter Didn’t Stop Crypto Miners From Using the Products

Last year Bitcoin.com News reported on Nvidia’s “Lite Hash Rate” (LHR) technology, when the graphics cards manufacturer attempted to stop crypto miners from leveraging its GPUs to mine digital assets. Nvidia applied LHR to three specific GPU products, and the company said the motivation was to get its card back into the hands of gamers. Eight months later, reports say that the LHR tech did very little to stop crypto miners from utilizing these specific Nvidia devices.

The cryptocurrency mining Platform Nicehash told pcmag.com that LHR technology “did not discourage miners at all.” Moreover, a crypto miner named Blake Teeter from Colorado told pcmag.com’s Michael Kan that the LHR tech did not stop him from purchasing the GPUs and leveraging them for crypto mining purposes. Teeter said he added LHR-based Nvidia GPUs to his GPU farm, which gets $4.5K per month in ethereum (ETH) profits.

“Yes, I feel LHR was pointless,” Teeter remarked and further noted that LHR-based Nvidia GPUs “isn’t a deal-breaker for miners.”

LHR-Based GPU Miners Sold at the Same Rates, Ethereum Hashrate Coasting Along at Record Highs

Meanwhile, a week after Nvidia introduced the Lite Hash Rate products, the company admitted that it made $155 million from crypto mining chips in Q1 2021. At the time, Nvidia disclosed that cryptocurrency miners had boosted sales, but the company also explained it was trying to deter miners from using specific products. A digital currency miner named Tim Tarshis told Kan that he owns 30 LHR RTX 3060 Nvidia GPUs and he bought them because “everyone was flipping them.”

Tarshis further said that the LHR tech did not make the price of the GPUs cheaper, and he agreed that the Lite Hash Rate products “did nothing” to discourage people from using these devices to mine digital assets. “Many people, miners, and scalpers, still were buying cards at the same rates as before,” Tarshis added.

Currently, ethereum (ETH) is up more than 95% year-to-date and the network’s hashrate has tapped all-time highs this year. At the time of writing, the Ethereum hashrate is above 1 petahash per second (PH/s) or 1,038,957,431,086,586 hashes per second (H/s).

Until Ethereum transitions from a proof-of-work (PoW) chain to a full proof-of-stake (PoS) model, it seems miners will leverage any device they can use to rake in profits. If Nvidia’s LHR products still produce ETH and other GPU mineable crypto assets, they likely will be used for such purposes.

What do you think about the crypto miners that say Nvidia’s LHR products didn’t stop them from using the GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Nvidia Posts Record Q3 Earnings, Sales of GPUs to Crypto Miners Reach $175 Million

21/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

Nvidia released its earnings for the third fiscal quarter of 2021 this week, showing better-than-expected results, driven by sales of its graphics processing unit (GPU) chips. The firm reported graphics segment revenue of $2.79 billion for the quarter, beating analyst estimates of $2.1 billion.

Within the graphics segment also falls the gaming division. Nvidia said that its new line of graphics cards based on a new technology called Ampere drew strong interest from computer and videogame console developers. For example, one of the new models, the Geforce RTX 3080, went on sale in September and sold out immediately.

Nvidia said gaming revenue climbed 37% year-on-year to $2.27 billion, a record for the company.

The graphics processing units produced by Nvidia are mainly used in video game consoles and graphics cards but they have also become popular with cryptocurrency miners, particularly those extracting coins like ethereum (ETH), monero (XMR), and zcash (ZEC).

For the quarter in review, Nvidia sold at least $175 million worth of new generation GPUs to ethereum miners, helping the outperformance, according to a note from RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves. The analyst had guided sales to miners to come in at $150 million for the quarter.

Steves noted that the upcoming network upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain, also known as Ethereum 2.0, which is scheduled to take place sometime in December, demands that miners switch over to more efficient mining hardware. Nvidia’s new Ampere GPU chips are thought to meet that need.

However, GPUs are no longer effective for mining bitcoin (BTC), which has moved on to more efficient application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners.

Overall, Nvidia reported revenue of $4.73 billion for the quarter, up 57% from a year earlier. Analysts expected revenues of $4.41 billion. The company revealed that it continues to face supply bottlenecks for its chips and cards in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in January.

It also said its acquisition of British chip designer ARM from Japanese conglomerate Softbank is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2022.

Shares of Nvidia fell 0.92% to $532.65 in Nasdaq stock market trading on Friday. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock has reached a high of $589.07 and a low of $180.68.

What do you think about Nvidia’s rising sales of graphics processing units to crypto miners? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Nvidia Posts Record Q3 Earnings, Sales of GPUs to Crypto Miners Reach $175 Million appeared first on Bitcoin News.

GPU Manufacturer Nvidia Buys Chip Maker ARM for $40 Billion

18/09/2020 by Idelto Editor

California-based Nvidia is buying British computer chip designer Arm Holdings from Softbank Group Corp. in a deal worth $40 billion.

Chip giant Nvidia, which specializes in making hardware for video game consoles, GPUs for graphics cards, processors for the AI industry, and whose chips are utilized by the crypto mining sector among others, said in a press release that it would pay Softbank a combination of cash and shares in the transaction. The Japanese conglomerate bought Arm for $32 billion in 2016.

The latest deal is expected to create “the premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence” (AI), according to Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia. He added that Arm would remain headquartered in Cambridge, England and retain its brand.

“We will expand on this great site and build a world-class AI research facility, supporting developments in healthcare, life sciences, robotics, self-driving cars and other fields,” said Huang.

The graphics processing units (GPUs) produced by Nvidia are mainly used in video game consoles and graphics cards but they have also been deployed to mine digital assets such as ethereum (ETH), monero (XMR) and zcash (ZEC). GPUs are now useless for mining bitcoin (BTC), which has moved on to more efficient application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners.

Arm’s technology is the backbone of most of the existing smartphone technology. The company creates designs that other companies such as Apple, Samsung Electronics and Huawei develop into customised chips. Its technology is also starting to gain ground in cloud data centers. To date, Arm says 180 billion chips have been made based on its designs.

Simon Segars, CEO of Arm, detailed: “By bringing together the technical strengths of our two companies we can accelerate our progress and create new solutions that will enable a global ecosystem of innovators.”

Under the terms of the transaction — approved by the boards of Nvidia, Softbank and Arm — Nvidia will pay Softbank $21.5 billion in stock and $12 billion in cash. At least $2 billion is payable at signing. Softbank may also receive up to $5 billion in cash or stock if certain targets are met. Nvidia will issue $1.5 billion in equity to Arm employees.

The deal gives Nvidia a way into mobile chips, but it is likely to face close scrutiny from regulators who might be concerned about issues around monopoly and conflict of interest. In the UK, several business executives have alreadh signed an open letter calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to stop the takeover.

Shares of Nvidia fell about 4% to $500.58 in Nasdaq stock market trading Wednesday before slipping further to $498.92 on Thursday. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock has swung between a high of $589.07 and a low of $169.32. Nvidia boasts a market capitalization of over $340 billion.

Nvidia was established in 1993 and initially started off selling computer cards designed to improve the video game experience. It later expanded into other markets, including at least one foray into the cryptocurrency mining hardware business.

What do you think about the acquisition of Arm by Nvidia? Let us know in the comments section below.

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