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Nvidia's anti-cryptomining GPUs have finally been 100% unlocked:
It took almost an entire year from their initial release, but the LHR (low hashrate) versions of Nvidia's RTX 30 series graphics cards have finally been completely unlocked by a mining software called Nicehash, restoring each card's respective mining capabilities.
Many of the best graphics cards were nearly impossible to find available to buy over the last two years because of the global chip shortage, a broader supply chain crisis at ports around the world and demand for consumer tech putting even more pressure on the availability of semiconductors needed by AMD and Nvidia for their products.
Part of this demand also included cryptominers who were buying up the available stock in bulk of popular GPUs during the height of the recent crypto currency boom. And while there are mixed opinions about how this affected overall availability for gamers and building hobbyists, there was certainly no love lost between the two groups which resulted in Team Green putting measures in place to make its consumer graphics cards less desirable to those hoping to use them to mine currencies such as Ethereum.
[...] As reported by WCCFTech, NiceHash has now announced that it can utilize 100% of available mining speeds using these previously restricted Ampere-series cards [...]
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday May 10 2022, @09:02PM (6 children)
I keep hearing x-bit encryption will take gigayears to crack. Assuming Nvidea has somewhat qualified crypto types vetting the code, then either A) Nvidea cheaped out on crypto types; or B) x-bit encryption doesn't take gigayears to crack.
I'm voting for B, as modern crypto is based on elliptic curves with mysterious numbers provided by the NSA, arrived at by, um, trust us, these are good.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Opportunist on Tuesday May 10 2022, @09:43PM (3 children)
True, but considering the amount of waste heat these things produce, the time for the heat death of the universe has also been moved forwards.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 10 2022, @10:01PM (2 children)
Eh, it's fine, each GPU has a wormhole into which it dumps all the waste heat. The heat sink is just for show and to keep you warm, really.
(Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Tuesday May 10 2022, @10:40PM
Oh, you got the good kind...
The bad kind works like a 6502 in performance terms...
Its Heat Sink is the receptacle for the waste heat coming from other universes.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday May 11 2022, @01:34AM
That's fine, until the pocket universe collapses and destroys the solar system.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday May 11 2022, @07:54AM
What makes you think this has anything to do with encryption?
Are you confusing proof-of-work (which is not designed to be impossible, because that would make proving you did the work necessary impossible) with actual, proper encryption/decryption?
Sorry, but all the maths says that public-key encryption is perfectly fine, at least until quantum computing becomes significant, and even then there are QC-safe algorithms already in OpenSSL and in use on websites.
Those giga-years are not giga-years, by the way. They are exa-years, and beyond.
And nothing has yet "broken" public-key encryption in any significant manner whatsoever, precisely because that maths still holds.
If anything, elliptic curve is the trojan-horse, brought in to "replace" public-key and quite likely the common curves are indeed compromised or weakened. But there are an infinity of other, presumably more secure, curves to choose from. And always will be.
(Score: 2) by JustNiz on Wednesday May 11 2022, @06:14PM
FYI There's no 'e' in NVIDIA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10 2022, @10:41PM (2 children)
Will nvidia refund the 50% that bitcoin losers lost since November? Maybe give some coupons for discount on your next mining rig purchase?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10 2022, @11:13PM
Use you bitcoins to buy NFTs and you'll make it all back overnight.
(Score: 2) by JustNiz on Wednesday May 11 2022, @06:17PM
Why should they? no-one is forcing you to buy/use their products for mining. And it's not like they made a secret of intentionally degrading mining performance.
If you bought a crippled nvidia GPU for mining, its all on you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by unauthorized on Wednesday May 11 2022, @04:07AM
I swear to Cthulhu, when humanity finally kills itself with with nuclear weapons and our infrastructure slowly dies off, the very last computer on the planet with it's final processor cycle will be mining Bitcoin. A perfect allegory for our demise.