Do Bigger Players Like AMD or Nvidia Have The Potential To Overtake The ASIC Mining Chip Game?
I have seen a handful of posts in the last few days talking about AMD and NVIDIA marketing their graphic cards towards those still GPU mining. Not only that, it looks like they are creating cards specifically for the purpose of GPU mining, with low energy operating costs and decent clockrates. This has some speculating that there is a possibility that one of these companies might invest into the Asic mining chip game. While I would like to believe that it is true, I just don’t see it happening any time soon and here is why.
AMD and Nvidia may be the world’s leaders on graphics card making, but they aren’t always the manufacturer. In fact the majority of cards you see on the market just have designs licensed out to companies like Gigabyte, MSI, ect. They take a percentage of the sale for the design but a large percentage goes to the company that manufactures and sell the product. So there is a much bigger chance that one of those companies would be the one to actually make the chips while AMD or Nvidia just designed it.
There’s also a pretty large sentiment that we are in a bubble right now by mainstream media which, whether or not is true, still scares big investors until we can show that we are sustainable for the long term. Nobody wants to be the one who invests at the height of a bubble before it corrects, so if they were going to do it, I don’t know it if would be any time soon. There is a possibility they would put out a design for a chip, but I don’t even know if that would be worth their time or investment either. It probably would be, but the companies doing it now could probably do it for much cheaper because they have been doing it for sometime.
Finally I don’t really know if AMD or Nvidia designing and building mining ASICs would even help the mining centralization problem at all. There is a misconception that if a bigger company was to create the chips they would be distributed more fairly, but in all likeliness, they will still go to Chinese mining farms first. They would still manufacture the chips in the foundries in China and the people who still run the large companies would still have connections to people who run companies like bitfury. One slighy thing that might change however might be that Taiwan might take a more active role in bitcoin mining, as they also have a decent amount of companies that have chip foundries.
If there was a possibility that the mining chips would be fairly distributed and the rate of hashrate change wasn’t so great because of something like hitting a current hardware limit (12 nm chips), there might be a chance. However I think that the market is already so specialized that there might not be the solid profit that companies like Nvidia or AMD want. They have shareholders and don’t want to hold bitcoin, just dollars and if the price falls, they don’t want to be screwed. Just my opinion though. What do you think ?
POS is coming.
This may be good in the short term but mining is becoming a thing of the past with a lot of new cryptocurrencies foregoing mining and just issuing all their tokens at once not to mention the move to PoS for Ethereum coming soon!
Tezos will be 100% POS too. Interesting to see how this all plays out. Personally, I think its like a gas engine compare to a electric. Yeah the electric is better and more efficient but gas is still going to be around for a long time. POS and POW will both co-exist. In the Bitcoin lightening network its a hybrid POW/POS system as staking BTC will be required to verify transactions.
The thing is, Asic don't let us mine other coin, besides the application specific.
AMD and Nvidia's GPUs have been used more than asic chips. Major mining companies too use Gpu mining to mine, ETH, Dash, ZCash, Monero etc.. So once they roll out with their New Gpus for mining edition, and being cheaper, will go hit..
I bet they may go out of stock in less than a month. :)
Regarding shares of AMD. They surged 12% higher, due to the demand of Gpus, and their future about mining gpus. we'll see a lot coming.
Nice post.
I think either way this is a good move for these companies. It is a good way for them to diversify their product and still meet the needs of their entire audience; gamers can still game off their gpus and miners won't be buying up all of them and will be saving on electricity this way. I think this is a good move, even if the mainstream adoption isn't entirely there; there is one way to revolutionize the market and that is to be the first at creating it's leading innovations. I hope this brings a little bit more of an even playing field for those who can't afford expensive asic miners, or who would want to build their own rig not just for mining rewards but for accomplishments. Not sure, but I like it either way!
Wow I never thought of that. Good post I just followed you- STEEM ON
I think it would be better if AMD or Nvidia can come up with a more detailed analysis or demo on how using their rigs will be more profitable compared to pool mining
AMD needs to look for the second hand market tho, the gamer will probably buy the GPU from the second hand market if mining becomes less profitable. Nvidia definitely think about it and therefore create a mining only GPU.
Another good post!
The idea of specialized crypto-mining equipment for private individuals, to me, is crazy. You have to cover not only your energy costs but hardware RoI, doesnt matter if that is ASIC, GPU or CPU.
I mine coins that I can just do with my existing kit, and guess what, its a real money spinner. OK I have to confess to having solar panels, but again I didnt buy them to do crypto mining, Im just getting the max RoI from my existing (solar and computational) hardware.
I agree with others here. More and more mining will become more of a thing of the past. Newer currencies are taking different approaches to mining. Either they are ASIC resistant, issue all currency at once or some other platform. New technology will continue to find new ways to distribute crytpos which won't rely solely on mining farms in places such as China.