A possible light at the end of the tunnel for GPU shortages thanks to Ethereum

I would be rather skeptical about this, because consuming less energy doesn't really mean that more GPU less profit. But if most of the GPUs will just lay in the mining rig with minimal load I would say that miners will get rid of them.

EDIT: I didn't realized that PoS is actually the disk mining. In this case we didn't solve much, we just exchanged GPU shortage for HDD/SSD shortage.


Last edited by Zlopez on 24 May 2021 at 11:32 am UTC

Quoting: ZlopezI would be rather skeptical about this, because consuming less energy doesn't really mean that more GPU less profit. But if most of the GPUs will just lay in the mining rig with minimal load I would say that miners will get rid of them.

EDIT: I didn't realized that PoS is actually the disk mining. In this case we didn't solve much, we just exchanged GPU shortage for HDD/SSD shortage.

You're thinking of Proof-of-Storage, not Proof-of-Stake, both acronym down to PoS but are wildly different.
Proof-of-Storage requires harddrive space, Proof-of-Stake instead bases the whole blockchain off of the stake people have in it, basically using the ETH that's already been mined as a proof of stake in the handling of transactions.

Quoting: AnanaceYou're thinking of Proof-of-Storage, not Proof-of-Stake, both acronym down to PoS but are wildly different.

Proof-of-Storage, Proof-of-Stake, Piece-of-Shit... it all kinda blends together in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: AnanaceYou're thinking of Proof-of-Storage, not Proof-of-Stake, both acronym down to PoS but are wildly different.

Proof-of-Storage, Proof-of-Stake, Piece-of-Shit... it all kinda blends together in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Well, one causes harddrives to become a scarce resource for the entire population, the other only causes cryptocurrency miners to complain.

I'll take Proof-of-Stake over Proof-of-Storage/Work/etc any day of the week, I quite like having hardware actually be available for purchase.

Good news! ..
now let's just hope the CCP doesn't decide to invade Taiwan

So, actual rising cost of development for every process nodes will be on the shoulders of the players. End of desktop gaming and hardware diversity is coming.

Quoting: ArtenSo, actual rising cost of development for every process nodes will be on the shoulders of the players. End of desktop gaming and hardware diversity is coming.

Wat?

The cryptocurrency market hasn't been the driving factor behind process nodes ever, mining gains have been a byproduct of the increased compute that can be put to work for actually useful purposes. You may have heard of this little thing called machine learning, which seems to be selling a fair amount of GPUs and lately specialized hardware (so I guess hardware diversity will continue, who knew!). Apparently they can also accomplish stuff other than just burn watt-hours, so that's kinda cool.

Also, smaller nodes are running into a problem of diminishing returns anyway, crypto or no crypto. Laws of physics are tough to break, so future performance gains will come from architecture, both in terms of hardware and software. And both still have a fair amount to give for the purposes of desktop gaming. So I just don't find the doomer vision of desktop gaming dying because Ethereum won't be providing nonsense crypto-puzzles for people to solve very convincing. I'd say it's more likely that desktop gaming will thrive if some gamers can actually get their hands on some damn GPUs.

If you want to talk about a cryptocurrency that's stupidly popular, that would be Dogecoin.

(I mean, these days Venice is pretty much bankrupt, whole city's sinking into the ooze--no way would I buy a coin backed by the Doge .)


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 24 May 2021 at 7:19 pm UTC

Well, this seems like a fundamentally good thing. My opinion, as I've said before, is that cryptocurrency is generally tulips. Its popularity and rapidly rising price is a by-product of central banks aggressively pumping money into the financial system ever since about 2008; financial markets in general, whether stocks or whatever, have been unmoored from the broader economy ever since that began. Basically, unimaginably huge mountain ranges of cash have been desperately looking for something, anything, to speculate on; crypto has been going up (with a bit of obligatory volatility because you can't have pump-and-dump without a bit of dump) just like high end art has been.

But that's no big deal. There's all that money, there's gonna be tulips, whatever they happen to specifically be. And if there's gonna be tulips, it's better if they don't require countries' worth of energy to exist. So, good on Ethereum.

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: ArtenSo, actual rising cost of development for every process nodes will be on the shoulders of the players. End of desktop gaming and hardware diversity is coming.

Wat?

The cryptocurrency market hasn't been the driving factor behind process nodes ever, mining gains have been a byproduct of the increased compute that can be put to work for actually useful purposes. You may have heard of this little thing called machine learning, which seems to be selling a fair amount of GPUs and lately specialized hardware (so I guess hardware diversity will continue, who knew!). Apparently they can also accomplish stuff other than just burn watt-hours, so that's kinda cool.

Also, smaller nodes are running into a problem of diminishing returns anyway, crypto or no crypto. Laws of physics are tough to break, so future performance gains will come from architecture, both in terms of hardware and software. And both still have a fair amount to give for the purposes of desktop gaming. So I just don't find the doomer vision of desktop gaming dying because Ethereum won't be providing nonsense crypto-puzzles for people to solve very convincing. I'd say it's more likely that desktop gaming will thrive if some gamers can actually get their hands on some damn GPUs.

When i say it's driving force behind process nodes development? My point is chip development for new proces node. Every new chip design for new proces node is more expensive with every generation of process node and there is no silver bullet like machine learning - because machine learning slowly moving to specialized hardware and so they have they own chips. We need make more GPUs and ethereum do this job for us. Righ now, there is shortage, because eth price fluctuation, but that is only short term problem.
But without is limiting development of GPUs for PC, so we can in the end be tied to professional segment and game consoles chips as high-end and integrated GPU as low-end and nothink in-between.

Quoting: ArtenEvery new chip design for new proces node is more expensive with every generation of process node and there is no silver bullet like machine learning - because machine learning slowly moving to specialized hardware and so they have they own chips. We need make more GPUs and ethereum do this job for us. Righ now, there is shortage, because eth price fluctuation, but that is only short term problem. But without is limiting development of GPUs for PC, so we can in the end be tied to professional segment and game consoles chips as high-end and integrated GPU as low-end and nothink in-between.

What kind of corporate welfare are we planning here? GPU manufacturers ought to make decent products that meet the demand. There is, and always has been, demand for mid-tier GPUs. They aren't even prohibitively expensive to make, it's an industry standard practice to make mid-tier and low-end products by scrounging together half-broken chips from higher tiers and disabling the broken bits. I don't see the logical connection from Ethereum miners to mid-tier GPU availability, and even if such a connection did exist, I don't think subsidizing chip manufacturers by having their products be bought in massive volumes for the purpose of crunching useless numbers and gathering dust in some warehouse next to a newly reopened coal power plant that will power said warehouse is the way to do it.

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: ArtenEvery new chip design for new proces node is more expensive with every generation of process node and there is no silver bullet like machine learning - because machine learning slowly moving to specialized hardware and so they have they own chips. We need make more GPUs and ethereum do this job for us. Righ now, there is shortage, because eth price fluctuation, but that is only short term problem. But without is limiting development of GPUs for PC, so we can in the end be tied to professional segment and game consoles chips as high-end and integrated GPU as low-end and nothink in-between.

What kind of corporate welfare are we planning here? GPU manufacturers ought to make decent products that meet the demand. There is, and always has been, demand for mid-tier GPUs. They aren't even prohibitively expensive to make, it's an industry standard practice to make mid-tier and low-end products by scrounging together half-broken chips from higher tiers and disabling the broken bits. I don't see the logical connection from Ethereum miners to mid-tier GPU availability, and even if such a connection did exist, I don't think subsidizing chip manufacturers by having their products be bought in massive volumes for the purpose of crunching useless numbers and gathering dust in some warehouse next to a newly reopened coal power plant that will power said warehouse is the way to do it.

What corporate welfare? Crypto is free market. There is no welfare here.

RTX 3060 die 276mm^2, RTX 3070 die 392.5mm^2, RTX 3080 die 628.4mm^2. So its clearly different chip.
Link with ethereum is mining cards. NVIDIA CMP 30HX uses TU116 (GTX 1660), NVIDIA CMP 40HX uses TU106 (RTX 2060). And they use damaged chips, which are not usable for GPU.

About what imaginary coal power plant do you talk? I know only about one powerplant which has been rebuilded from coal to gas, so there is no reopened coal powerplant. If you read leftist propaganda in arstechnica, pleas read whole article, not only misleading title.


Last edited by Arten on 24 May 2021 at 9:45 pm UTC

Quoting: PendragonGood news! ..
now let's just hope the CCP doesn't decide to invade Taiwan

wouldnt really effect anything given china miltary might compared to Taiwans and the chinese government would have the fabs and factories open again in record time because well 1) they are not concerened with health and safety 2) They dont give a fuck what the world thinks of them and 3) see point 2 i realise its only 1 point but its so big it needs to be stated twice.

But back to graphics cards yeah something needs to happen especially when people are buying the 750 ti for over half its original rrp when it launched in 2012 and people want over 300 pounds for a graphics card that cost 129.99 when it was new in 2014/15 in the 1050ti