Nvidia is considering restarting production of graphics cards for crypto mining

Well-known graphics card manufacturer Nvidia is now considering restarting the production of cryptocurrency mining GPUs. According to the company, they may start producing Ampere graphics cards dedicated to crypto mining . The company also mentioned that before starting production, they want to confirm whether there is currently a high demand for the latest graphics cards for mining.

Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress said:

“If demand for crypto mining starts to emerge, or we see meaningful demand growth, we can also use this opportunity to restart the CMP (mining-specific GPU) product line to meet continued mining demand.”

The CMP line removes the video element, making it ideal for cryptocurrency mining rigs, powerful computers that perform only one task: verifying cryptocurrency transactions on blockchain networks for cryptocurrency. However, they are not compatible with NVIDIA's key industry video games.

Nvidia believes gaming demand is greater than current supply

The past few months have seen demand for gaming graphics cards, consoles, and high-performance processors increase significantly beyond normal levels, especially the GeForce RTX 30 series . Nvidia now believes that the current supply is insufficient because gaming demand exceeds its supply. The company is unable to determine whether the current increase in demand and supply is due to miners in the crypto world.

When it comes to mining cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, miners often avoid Nvidia’s most advanced graphics cards due to their prohibitive prices.

Understanding the needs of crypto miners

Although the demand for Nvidia products has been high over the past few months, the company cannot determine where the demand is coming from. At this point, Nvidia needs to understand how much GPUs are needed by crypto miners. Miners only need the computing power of a GPU and do not care about video processing capabilities and disabled texture mapping units. This is why GPU developers need to understand the total demand of crypto miners.

The tension between mining and video games has led to legal problems for NVIDIA, which has been engaged in a court battle since 2019 with investors who claim the California-based company violated the Securities Exchange Act by underreporting revenue from sales of digital currency mining graphics cards by more than $1 billion.