Nivida’s foray into crypto mining technology has paid off handsomely, despite the fact that the company’s core business is PC gaming GPUs.
Nvidia’s entrance into crypto mining hardware has been beneficial, with the company taking in $155 million in revenue from its Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) cards in the most recent quarter.
Nvidia stated in its quarterly financial presentation on Wednesday that it expects CMP sales to exceed $400 million in the current quarter. Despite these data, CEO Jensen Huang insists that PC gaming hardware is the company’s core business. He hopes that cryptocurrency miners will prefer Nvidia’s CMP devices over its GeForce gaming GPUs.
PC gamers and cryptocurrency miners are fighting for Nvidia’s GeForce graphics cards, which are meant for high-end graphics processing in PC games but can also be used to mine cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.
“We expect that the CMPs will please the miners and remain in professional mines,” Huang said, adding that “CMP yields are superior, and creating them does not deplete the supply of GeForce.” As a result, the gamers’ supply is protected.”
The war between miners and gamers at Nvidia
Nvidia has struggled to strike a balance between its primary customer base of gamers and the lucrative crypto mining business, with prices for its graphics cards skyrocketing and pricing gamers out of the market.
As a result, the company attempted to impose hash rate limiters on its GPUs, limiting their crypto mining capabilities, while also developing a line of dedicated CMP cards to cater to the crypto mining sector. Nvidia’s CMP has proven to be a popular with miners, with studies indicating that it performs similarly to its RTX 3060 GPU.
Soon after the CMP cards were released, Hut 8 Mining Corp, a Toronto-based Bitcoin mining firm, purchased $30 million worth of them.
AMD, on the other hand, has chosen a different approach, stating that it will not attempt to reduce hash rate on its gaming GPUs, emphasising that they are designed first and foremost for gamers.
The conflict between miners and gamers, on the other hand, should be resolved quickly. Ethereum, which accounts for the majority of GPU mining, is currently undergoing an upgrade to Ethereum 2.0.
It will switch from its existing proof of work consensus system, which is dependent on mining, to a proof of stake approach as part of the update.
Nvidia NVDA, +0.33 percent surpassed Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, reporting record quarterly revenue of $5.66 billion, up 84 percent from the prior year. Gaming sales increased by 106 percent to $2.76 billion, and data-center revenue increased by 79 percent to $2.05 billion, indicating that the company’s two primary industries are booming.
Nvidia expects the trend to continue as gamers scramble for any gear they can get their hands on in the midst of a chip shortage. Colette Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, predicted revenue of $6.3 billion at the midpoint of the second quarter, a 63 percent increase that would result in yet another record sales period.
In an interview with MarketWatch on Wednesday, Kress affirmed a projection for more than double that amount – $400 million in sales in the current quarter — while emphasising that Nvidia’s primary consumer customer, gaming, is its primary priority.
