NVIDIA mulling Ampere-based crypto GPUs but is unsure about demand

During the last cryptocurrency mining boom, NVIDIA sold a lot more GPUs to miners than what the official figures showed as a lot of gaming GPUs ended up in the hands of miners. With the cryptocurrency market once again trading at record highs, NVIDIA is weighing its options.

At an analyst conference hosted by J.P. Morgan, NVIDIA CEO Colette Kress said that NVIDIA may restart production of mining-specific GPUs if the demand is large enough. These are basically customized video cards without display connectors, a feature not necessary for the mining market. Miners only care about the compute capabilities of GPUs, so there's also a small opportunity to recycle some GPUs that aren't fit for the gaming market.

However, Kress says NVIDIA has limited visibility on how much of the GeForce RTX 30-series cards are sold to miners. NVIDIA does not believe demand from miners is a large part of its business today:

"If crypto demand begins or if we see a meaningful amount, we can also use that opportunity to restart the CMP [mining-specific GPUs] product line to address ongoing mining demand," said Colette Kress, chief financial officer at Nvidia, at the 19th Annual J.P. Morgan Tech/Auto Forum Conference (via SeekingAlpha).

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"We don't have visibility on how much of the GeForce RTX 30-series end demand comes from mining," said Kress. "So, we don't believe it's a big part of our business today. Gaming demand is very strong, and we think that's larger than our current supply."

Source: Tom's Hardware