Earlier this year, NVIDIA introduced Ethereum mining restrictions for its GeForce GPUs, in an effort to get more cards in the hands of gamers. So far, this effort hasn't been very successful as the protection has already been circumvented, partly because NVIDIA accidentally released a developer driver with code that bypassed the cryptocurrency hash rate limiter. This code was intended for internal use at NVIDIA -- but got pushed out to the Internet.
Two months ago, NVIDIA also introduced its first Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMPs). The first CMPs are Turing-based so they don't compete directly for foundry capacity with the latest GeForce cards. So far, sales of these chips are beating the firm's expectations. Back in February, NVIDIA estimated it would sell $50 million worth of CMPs during its fiscal first quarter. Actual sales have turned out a lot higher. NVIDIA now projects its first-quarter CMP revenue will hit $150 million:
NVIDIA today announced at its annual Investor Day that first quarter revenue for fiscal 2022 is tracking above its previously provided outlook, with outperformance in each of its market platforms.
“While our fiscal 2022 first quarter is not yet complete, Q1 total revenue is tracking above the $5.30 billion outlook provided during our fiscal year-end earnings call. We are experiencing broad-based strength, with all our market platforms driving upside to our initial outlook,” said Colette Kress, executive vice president and chief financial officer of NVIDIA.
“Within Data Center we have good visibility, and we expect another strong year. Industries are increasingly using AI to improve their products and services. We expect this will lead to increased consumption of our platform through cloud service providers, resulting in more purchases as we go through the year. Our EGX platform has strong momentum, and we expect this will drive increased revenue from enterprise and edge computing deployments in the second half of the year.
“Overall demand remains very strong and continues to exceed supply while our channel inventories remain quite lean. We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year. We believe we will have sufficient supply to support sequential growth beyond Q1,” she continued.
NVIDIA’s market platforms include Gaming, Data Center, Professional Visualization, and Automotive. The company also raised its first-quarter revenue estimate for its new CMP product for industrial-scale cryptocurrency mining to $150 million, up from $50 million previously expected.
In its Feb. 24 earnings release, NVIDIA had provided a revenue outlook for its first fiscal quarter, ending May 2, of $5.30 billion, plus or minus 2 percent.