AMD Appears to Be Prepping Its Own Lineup of Cryptocurrency Mining GPUs

[Tsing]

Image: AMD



AMD could be tracing the steps of NVIDIA and preparing its own lineup of GPUs built specifically to satiate the demands of the booming cryptocurrency mining market. The possibility stems from Phoronix’s Michael Larabel, who published a story earlier this week detailing a series of AMDGPU kernel driver updates that included references to a potential Navi 12 model for miners. With this being a headless SKU that lacks Video Core Next (VCN) video support, enthusiasts are speculating that this is a card designed uniquely for blockchain purposes.



“‘Handle new NV12 SKU’ […] is in reference to Navi 12 coming to market and doesn’t support Video Core Next (VCN) video support as it’s going to be a headless SKU,” Larabel noted. “Details on this headless Navi 12 SKU remain light and...

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[MadMummy76]

But why? If they couldn't shift all the gpus for actual use I'd understand. Unless they are using rejected stock for this purpose that is not suitable for anything else.

 

[Burticus]

I would like to think these are sub-optimal dies that couldn't cut it as GPUs... but who are we kidding

 

[Endgame]

I believe the 6000 series isn’t ideal for mining due to the infinity cache. They could possibly make something that mines at a better rate using that die space for something else, or possibly use an older node that they have capacity for elsewhere. What node is glofo on these days?

 

[Riccochet]

I believe the 6000 series isn’t ideal for mining due to the infinity cache. They could possibly make something that mines at a better rate using that die space for something else, or possibly use an older node that they have capacity for elsewhere. What node is glofo on these days?

6000 series cards are decent at mining. About on par with Turing cards while consuming less power to do it.

 

[Endgame]

6000 series cards are decent at mining. About on par with Turing cards while consuming less power to do it.

Right, but does the infinity cache help much? If not, they could either remove it to shrink the die size, or replace it with something else

 

[hubaduba]

At least Nvidia is using Turing dies on 12nm for most of their mining cards. It makes no sense for AMD to use Navi chips from 7nm unless they do, in fact, have a significant store of dies with flawed display components.