Shipments of GPUs are being slowed down or suspended in light of a slowdown in demand driven by cryptocurrency miners:
Taiwan-based graphics card makers including Gigabyte Technology, Micro-Star International (MSI) and TUL are expected to see their shipments for April plunge over 40% on month, as many clients have suspended taking shipments in response to drastic slowdown in demand for cryptocurrency mining machines, according to industry sources.
Channel distributors and larger mining farm operators have cut orders with makers of mining graphics cards and mining motherboards or asked them to suspend shipments due to the crypto mining craze waning abruptly from the beginning of April, the sources said.
Quite a few mining farm operators have even stopped purchasing graphic cards, as they are awaiting the rollout of Ethereum mining machines by China's Bitmain in the third quarter of 2018. They anticipate mining rewards to pick up gradually in the third quarter, as Bitcoin and Ethereum values may rebound following sharp declines seen in early 2018, the sources indicated.
Previously: AMD GPU Supply Exhausted By Cryptocurrency Mining, AIBs Now Directly Advertising To Miners
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
Ethereum Mining Craze Leads to GPU Shortages
Used GPUs Flood the Market as Ethereum's Price Crashes Below $150
Cryptocurrency Mining Wipes Out Vega 64 Stock
GPU Cryptomining Hurting SETI and Other Astronomy Projects
Related: AMD Profits in Q3 2017
Related Stories
AMD Radeon RX 500 series graphics cards, particularly the RX 580 and 570, have been out of stock for weeks now owing to the cryptocurrency mining craze. The market had shifted away from GPU mining a couple of years back after several China based companies launched specialized ASICs that were much faster and more power efficient at resolving the block chain equations necessary to mine Bitcoin and Litecoin, the Gold and Silver of cryptocurrencies.
However GPU mining has seen a massive resurgence over the past little while due to the rising popularity of ASIC resistent coins. Chief among which is Etherium which has seen its price more than triple in a matter of months. AMD's Add-In-Board partners have caught on to this and have already started directly advertising to miners.
There are many reasons for investors to buy chipmakers Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, but the recent rush for an indirect way to play skyrocketing cryptocurrencies bitcoin and ethereum should not be one of them, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Friday. "One of the reasons why AMD and Nvidia have been going up is their chips are used for mining, for cryptocurrency mining," Cramer told "Squawk on the Street." But he warned, "Do not play it for this is what I'm saying. But it is being played for that." [...] Cramer cited a recent note from RBC Capital Markets, which said the growing cryptocurrency mining market has contributed $100 million worth of GPU sales for Nvidia in the past 11 days alone. "AMD chips are the best ones for the ethereum platform," he added.
German retailer MindFactory has removed many AMD and Nvidia graphics cards from sale because the products have a delivery time of 3 months. According to them, the GPU shortage affects "the whole of Germany" or even the "whole Europe".
The demand for GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies, particularly Ethereum, has led to OEMs creating products specifically tailored to cryptocurrency mining. For example, new cards that are smaller, have fewer display ports, with cooling systems:
While the GPU shortage continues, there are some signs of improvement. There are now several models of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 in stock from various OEMs, but prices remain high and relatively close to the price of the GTX 1080. There are also a few more GTX 1060 6GB graphics cards available, and the price on the least expensive one has dropped significantly, down from $484.80 to $259.99.
At the same time, however, the price on the least expensive GTX 1050 Ti has climbed by about $10, and several models now cost around $200. The price on the least expensive Geforce GTX 1060 3GB has also climbed by roughly $20, as well. This likely indicates that sales of these cards have increased somewhat, pushing prices up accordingly.
Meanwhile, several OEMs, including Asus, Biostar, Sapphire, and Zotac, have announced new mining graphics cards that are tailored for cryptocurrency mining. We have also seen a new motherboard from Asrock that can support up to 13 GPUs for mining. Biostar has a similar board for AM4 CPUs that can support six GPUs. Although we haven't seen them yet, EVGA and MSI also have mining GPUs coming soon, and MSI will also have a motherboard designed for mining. Although these may be attractive to cryptocurrency miners, one source told us that they use the same GPU cores as traditional graphics cards, and thus don't address the underlying supply problem.
The shortages go all the way to the source. OEMs are reportedly having trouble getting GPU cores from Nvidia, and Nvidia can't get enough from TSMC. This is presumably the same situation for AMD and GlobalFoundries.
Previously: BitCoin, Ethereum and Gold
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Over the past few months, there has been a GPU shortage, forcing the prices of mid-range graphics cards up as cryptocurrency miners from across the world purchased hardware in bulk in search for quick and easy profits.
This has forced the prices of most modern AMD and certain Nvidia GPUs to skyrocket, but now these GPUs are starting to saturate the used market as more and more Ethereum miners sell up and quit mining. Some other miners are starting to look at other emerging Cryptocurrencies, though it is clear that the hype behind Ethereum is dying down.
Earlier this week Ethereum's value dropped below $200, as soon as the currency experienced a new difficulty spike, making the currency 20% harder to mine and significantly less profitable. This combined with its decrease in value has made mining Ethereum unprofitable for many miners, especially in regions with higher than average electricity costs.
Now Ethereum is valued at less than $150, with the currency costing $134.97 at the time of writing, which is less than half of the currency's peak value. The currency has the potential to bounce back, though it is difficult to see the currency go back over £250 [sic*] in the near future.
On second-hand sales websites like eBay and Gumtree, we have seen a lot of new GPU listing appear in recent days, with plenty of used AMD RX series GPUs appearing over the weekend. More hardware is expected to hit these sites over the coming days as some miners wind down their operations, though many will simply move to a more profitable currency or to invest their computing power into an emerging Cryptocurrency that has the prospect of high values in the future.
Recent related Ethereum/GPU coverage: Ethereum Mining Craze Leads to GPU Shortages; and Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
[* I'm not sure where they got a pound value from, or why, but a little bit of research shows ethereum peaked at $401 on June 13. (Needs javascript from *.coindesk.com and *.hotjar.com). Ooops, spent too long editing this, it went out before I'd completed my changes, sorry -- Ed.(FP)]
AMD's Vega 64 GPU is an underwhelming chip that competes against the GTX 1080, which is a 15 month old GPU. Nvidia could lower the price of the GTX 1080 and 1070 to better compete against Vega 64 and 56, or launch Volta-based consumer GPUs in the coming months. But Vega 64 is sold out everywhere due to cryptocurrency miners.
AMD has released an updated (Windows-only) driver called Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition Beta for Blockchain Compute. The driver improves the hash rate for Ethereum mining significantly, and Vega 56 performance may even exceed that of Vega 64 (it is a beta driver so these results are subject to change):
As you can see, we're getting some pretty significant gains already (at stock speeds) with this beta driver. We wouldn't be surprised if there are even further optimizations to be found, once AMD is ready to go with a production driver, but we'll take what we can get right now. We did have one performance anomaly that we ran into, however. When cranking up the memory speeds, the Vega 56 actually vaulted past the Vega 64, cranking out 36.48 MH/s. That's not bad for a card that's supposed to retail for $399.
Unfortunately, there is some confusion over the true price of Vega 64, although they are out of stock anyway aside from some hardware and game bundles.
Nvidia's market cap hit $100 billion on the day of the Vega 64 launch. Nvidia's CEO told investors that the company has the ability to "rock and roll" with the volatile cryptocurrency market (implying less shortages).
AMD turned a profit last quarter:
2017 has been a great year for the tech enthusiast, with the return of meaningful competition in the PC space. Today, AMD announced their third quarter earnings, which beat expectations, and put the company's ledgers back in the black in their GAAP earnings. For the quarter, AMD had revenues of $1.64 billion, compared to $1.31 billion a year ago, which is a gain of just over 25%. Operating income was $126 million, compared to a $293 million loss a year ago, and net income was $71 million, compared to a net loss of $406 million a year ago. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.07, compared to a loss per share of $0.50 in Q3 2016.
[...] The Computing and Graphics segment has been a key to these numbers, with some impressive launches this year, especially on the CPU side. Revenue for this segment was up 74% to $819 million, and AMD attributes this to strong sales of both Radeon GPUs and Ryzen desktop processors. Average Selling Price (ASP) was also up significantly thanks to Ryzen sales. AMD is still undercutting Intel on price, but they don't have to almost give things away like they did the last couple of years. ASP of GPUs was also up significantly, and the proliferation of cryptocurrency likely played a large part in that. Operating income for the segment was an impressive $70 million, compared to an operating loss of $66 million last year.
When AMD turns a profit, it is news. Stocks still plunged on concerns over future growth. Citi Research has predicted big losses for AMD as Intel ships its Coffee Lake CPUs.
Previously: AMD Ryzen Launch News
AMD GPU Supply Exhausted By Cryptocurrency Mining, AIBs Now Directly Advertising To Miners
AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
Ethereum Mining Craze Leads to GPU Shortages
Used GPUs Flood the Market as Ethereum's Price Crashes Below $150
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and 56 Announced
First Two AMD Threadripper Chips Out on Aug. 10, New 8-Core Version on Aug. 31
Cryptocurrency Mining Wipes Out Vega 64 Stock
AMD Expected to Release Ryzen CPUs on a 12nm Process in Q1 2018
Crypto-currency craze 'hinders search for alien life'
Scientists listening out for broadcasts by extra-terrestrials are struggling to get the computer hardware they need, thanks to the crypto-currency mining craze, a radio-astronomer has said.
Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researchers want to expand operations at two observatories. However, they have found that key computer chips are in short supply. "We'd like to use the latest GPUs [graphics processing units]... and we can't get 'em," said Dan Werthimer.
Demand for GPUs has soared recently thanks to crypto-currency mining. "That's limiting our search for extra-terrestrials, to try to answer the question, 'Are we alone? Is there anybody out there?'," Dr Werthimer told the BBC.
[...] Other radio-astronomers have been affected. A group looking for evidence of the earliest stars in the universe was recently shocked to see that the cost of the GPUs it wanted had doubled.
[...] Prof [Aaron] Parsons' radio telescope, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (Hera), is an American, British and South African project located in South Africa's western plains. [...] Three months ago, the Hera team had budgeted for a set of GPUs that cost around $500 (£360) - the price has since doubled to $1,000.
"We'll be able to weather it but it is coming out of our contingency budget." added Prof Parsons. "We're buying a lot of these things, it's going to end up costing about $32,000 extra."
When the inevitable flood of cheap GPUs onto the market happens, will it be a boon to science?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Friday April 27 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
Hopefully the gamers can get some good deals. There's no way most people would pay $900 for a $400 video card.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rleigh on Friday April 27 2018, @07:52PM (1 child)
I've been wanting to upgrade, but there's no way I can justify the inflated prices. I've never spent more than ~£250 on a GPU, and there's no way I'm spending £800+. When my three year old GPU is selling second hand for more than I paid for it brand new, there's something really screwed up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @01:21AM
Are GPU systems more energy efficient than CPU-based ones?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @02:50PM (14 children)
I see this news repeated in many places, but don't understand who is benefiting from it.
1. GPU makers don't benefit from lower prices.
2. GPU sales are going to halt until the impending crash.
3. Miners don't benefit from an impending crash from 2nd hand card sales.
Maybe whoever is pushing this news would benefit from alternative crypto currency that is optimized on GPUs, and would like to see a price crash.
Most gamers don't make money from gaming, so I doubt they have the influence to push this narative.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday April 27 2018, @04:19PM (10 children)
Exactly. The gamers pay from their hard-earned money hyperinflated prices for graphic cards, due to speculators in something that produces no value** and only waste energy.
** Is the humanity better prepare or more advanced because of this cryptocurrency? Can humanity deal better with real-world problems?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Friday April 27 2018, @04:57PM (8 children)
Yes, there are a number of high tech industries that are developing further because of this activity. Those would check off your boxes. And the cryptocurrency idea has merit in itself. This massive development means we're developing currency ideas that aren't a variation of "Pay VISA in order to buy anything".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday April 27 2018, @07:26PM (7 children)
Broken Window Fallacy: If you're putting all this R&D into a fundamentally useless activity, that's not helping anyone else.
1. I don't have to pay VISA whenever I use those handy-dandy pieces of paper in my pocket with words like "Twenty Dollars" printed on them. Or if I use ACH and similar methods of going direct from 1 bank account to another.
2. Presumably, both the retailers accepting VISA and the customers accepting the increased prices involved because VISA gets a cut consider the extra costs worth it, because they continue to use VISA.
3. I'm guessing that all the middlemen involved in a mostly-hypothetical cryptocurrency infrastructure aren't interested in doing all the processing and verifying work for free.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 27 2018, @07:33PM (4 children)
They're doing it by choice. So I'm willing to take their opinion on the value of mining at face value.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:11AM (3 children)
"Doing it by choice" doesn't automatically mean is good for society as a whole.
2008 economic crisis, opioid epidemic - all causing actions were done "by choice" and legal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:38AM (2 children)
Burden of proof is on you to show that there is such harm. Your two examples set the bar pretty high.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:00AM (1 child)
Methinks the burden of proof for your position of "doing by choice is always good" is on you.
Without that proof, your choice to take it "at the face value" is just your personal choice and I can't deny you that. Don't expect me to accept it, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:50AM
That's not my position. I'm well aware of exceptions (not to mention your examples). We've had several opportunities to discuss the harm of cryptocurrency mining (here [soylentnews.org] and here [soylentnews.org], for example), and the primary complaint seems to be that the miners use electricity and take advantage of stupid electricity subsidies. I don't care much about electricity conservation (we're not running out) and I don't mind the end of electricity subsidies. So far, there just hasn't been much to concern myself with.
And that's where we are. If there is some serious harm from cryptocurrency mining, and I don't think there is, then please enlighten us as to what it is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @08:22PM
I do not think blockchain-based crytocurrencies are a good design for a system for financial transactions. No one should be using anything remotely resembling BitCoin as a currency.
But VISA is still bad for everyone because they are a single entity with way too much power (okay, they have a few competitors, but it's a very small space). Just because we don't have a better alternative doesn't mean the existing system isn't bad. And people very often participate in systems they do not fully agree with. In this case there's plenty of reasons including the fact that building good financial systems is hard and the existing services have a major advantage of already being used/accepted everywhere.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:07AM
To elaborate on my previous post, this is not the broken window fallacy because coin mining doesn't happen because we want better high tech industries (such as ASIC and FPGA development and GPU production, etc). That instead is a happy coincidence. Instead, mining occurs voluntarily, indicating that the activity has sufficient value to the involved parties to justify their investments in it. At this point, I merely am speaking of further benefit beyond that of the "fundamentally useless" mining itself.
Now, when one is second-guessing the value of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies, one is actually second-guessing free peoples' decisions and opinions. Which is fine as long as you realize that they have a similar level of respect for your non-binding opinion. Recall a key part of the setup for the broken window fallacy. Someone had decided that higher economic activity was more important than peoples' windows, and thus, broke those windows without the consent of the window owners.
We don't have a top-down government or other group forcing people to mine bitcoins in order to prop up their ASIC/FPGA/GPU industries. Thus, we don't have the initial conditions for the fallacy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @06:00PM
windows gamers: a prime example of a disgusting waste of human potential.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday April 27 2018, @04:32PM
Miners do benefit if other miners stop buying, and prices fall a bit.
Makers of VR gear benefit if more customers can afford the hardware to drive their product. Can you think of any VR manufacturer with ties to any companies distributing news?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 27 2018, @04:51PM
The original story was in a Taiwanese news source about a major Taiwanese industry suffering from a significant loss of demand. It's the sort of news you'd expect legitimately. Why did it spread? It's kinda big news for the tech industry. But we have two additional possibilities. First, that it's a convenient narrative where cryptocurrency miners are done in by hubris. That's always good for eyeballs. Second, that the US government is surreptitiously undermining the credibility of the thing. If you're the sort of person who thinks Iraq was invaded because they traded oil for Euros instead of dollars, then that's a natural conspiracy to leap to.
I think it's lazy journalists on a slow news day CCing another story about those wacky miners.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday April 27 2018, @06:15PM
So cryptocurrency volatility is causing GPU price volatility. That makes sense to me, and seems like news, independent of who benefits from changes in the market price.
Generally, though, doesn't volatility benefit speculators? I suppose it's zero-sum, so maybe not overall, but there will be winners and losers.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 27 2018, @02:56PM (4 children)
End in sight seen? We need a known linguist to analyze that for us. Do we have any linguists, or English majors around? Hey, don't look at me, I only speak 'Murican.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 27 2018, @03:45PM
Top result [google.com] for "end in sight seen" is this story, but #2 is Voice of America. If it's good enough for the American government, it's good enough for
meyou.[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday April 27 2018, @06:34PM (2 children)
The "end in sight" is a mythological creature. There are often reports of sightings, but all of the have been disproved. I'm guessing this is yet another report of a sighting of this mythical creature.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday April 27 2018, @07:28PM
It's ok I have really good night vision
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday April 27 2018, @08:22PM
Ah yes, the well known Hineylargius Disappearius. Not many know that Ogo Pogo, Nessie, and Champ are all part of this species, and that Sasquatch is a cousin of it.
But I see a variation of the species whenever I look in the mirror - it's a can't miss sight.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 27 2018, @03:16PM (2 children)
I've wondered for a while when the mining hardware demand would shift to ASICs, maybe when ASIC supply catches up with demand?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Spamalope on Friday April 27 2018, @04:00PM
*paging Alex Jones* Bitcoin was propped up by Nvidia to boost sales! Best guerilla marketing ever!!1!11
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @05:42PM
even the slightest research would give you a much more nuanced understanding of a pretty fundamental mining topic.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @03:41PM
Watch when prices of cryptos start to rise again, seen it before, will see it again.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @05:55PM
shipments being slowed? you stupid motherfuckers are just now getting the cards on the shelves after many, many months, the prices are still not where they should be, mining specific cards not fully available and you're going to "slow down"? fuck you! part of this dip is probably the fault of all you incompetent dipshits not even trying to keep up with demand to begin with. that being said, i will be happy if all these new windows-using miners would GTFO so they can quit polluting the whole ecosystem with their skankiness and stupidity and driving prices and difficulty up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday April 27 2018, @06:54PM (1 child)
Well I'm interested in experimenting with Tensorflow.
Any tips as to which cheap second hand graphics cards are good for it?
And is it true that Tensorflow doesn't run on AMD Radeon GPUs? :-(
BTW I get only OpenCL segfaults nowadays on my Radeon 5870 :-( are there any new-ish versions of Mesa / OpenCL / libclc / Clang / LLVM that work?
Stupid question, I know, but it's much too complex for me to debug on my own in my free time.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday April 27 2018, @10:58PM
Looks like you don't even need a GPU to use TensorFlow. CPU only versions are available. Probably a good way to get started.
https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow [github.com]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday April 27 2018, @07:24PM
Such as etherium and monero. Their algorithms require more memory than will fit on an ASIC
Sometimes confidence men claim to be selling ASIC etherium rigs. There aren't any. Not yet. So they take the money and run
Crypto prices have plummeted since December but my Bitmain LiteCoin rig still mints more than the cost of electricity. Bitmain's miner prices move up and down with the prices of the coins they mint so I'm going to buy a second Antminer L3++ soon
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:28AM
Is it be a mine, or a farm?