Crypto

It’s not all about the CPU

The evolution of future processors Is it a revolution — or just evolution? The GPU with its hyper-dense compute capacity and relatively low cost, is an amazingly powerful workload accelerator for certain classes of problems — those that lend themselves to massive parallel processing and multi-threaded workloads. When programmable vertex shaders were first introduced in 2002 (by 3Dlabs), and the … Read more

AMD vs Nvidia hash test

Easter morning and things were quiet, so for fun I ran a couple of tests. One machine, an Alienware Aurora with 4 GHz i7-6700K with 16 GB DDR3, and an 8 GB Radeon Vega RX 64 (driving three screens, two-4k, and one-8k for a total of 50 Mpixels) with driver 18.3.4. The other machine—an Alienware Area 51 with a 3.3 … Read more

AMD vs Nvidia hash test

Easter morning and things were quiet, so for fun I ran a couple of tests. One machine, an Alienware Aurora with 4 GHz i7-6700K with 16 GB DDR3, and an 8 GB Radeon Vega RX 64 (driving three screens, two-4k, and one-8k for a total of 50 Mpixels) with driver 18.3.4. The other machine—an Alienware Area 51 with a 3.3 … Read more

Jon Peddie Research Adds Cryptomining to its Data

New data including in Market Watch and Add-in-Board Reports In spite of boost from crytocurrency mining, GPU shipments decrease in the fourth quarter of 2017. Shipments were -1.5% compared to the previous quarter. Year-to-year total GPU shipments decreased -4.8%, desktop graphics decreased -2%, notebooks decreased -7%. Over 363 million graphics units shipped in 2017. AMD has increased its market share, … Read more

MSPR finally means something

No longer a cheap discount disguise I’ve heard and used the term, MSPR (Manufacturer’s suggested retail price) for at least three decades that I can recall. In the past it has meant a discount was being offered, as in, we’re giving it to you at the manufacturers price. And as with all such promises, smelled a little off. Cryptocurrency-mining’s use … Read more

Cryptocurrency mining use of AIBs

The brutality of numbers: You need to make $5,000 a year to make it crypto-mining worthwhile. We have been investigating the impact on the AIB market by cryptocurrency monitoring for a while and we’ve written about it often. The following is an excerpt from an updated and curated monograph collection of our writings to give a perspective to the phenomenon … Read more

Inflated AIB prices will increase branded PC sales.

PC shipment models are out of synch  What will the run up in AIB prices do to PC pricing? Probably not very much immediately, as the OEMs negotiate their deals six months ahead of shipping a PC and buy direct instead of through the opportunistic distribution channels, which have enthusiastically raised prices. However, smaller white box (WB), custom system integrators … Read more

Cryptocurrency mining use of AIBs

The brutality of numbers: You need to make $5,000 a year to make it crypto-mining worthwhile. We have been investigating the impact on the AIB market by cryptocurrency monitoring for a while and we’ve written about it often. The following is an excerpt from an updated and curated monograph collection of our writings to give a perspective to the phenomenon … Read more

Just what is the impact of crypto mining on AIB prices

Those shovels are getting expensive. Supply and demand. AIB prices have been drifting down, subject to seasonality and product introduction dates, up till about Q4’16, as the following chart shows.’ Figure 1: ASPs of AIBs past five years   Looking into the segments you can its been the high-end and midrange that have enjoyed the uplift from crypto mining. Figure … Read more

The future of GPUs in crypto mining

ROI and the yellow-brick road Add-in boards for driving displays have been a major part of the PC since its introduction in 1981. Up until the advent of the integrated graphics chipset (IGP), introduced by SiS in 1997, every PC shipped had at least one graphics board. Even after the introduction of the IGP, PCs were shipped with graphics boards … Read more