AMD Seemingly Working on Cryptocurrency-focused Navi 10 GPU

[Raevenlord]

New Linux patches seem to point towards a cryptocurrency-focused graphics card from AMD. First spotted by Phoronix, the patches add descriptions for a "navi10 blockchain SKU" - it's a pretty self-describing, well, description. The device ID is reported as 0x731E, and Phoronix says that the major difference between this graphics card and the other Navi 10 offerings in the market (namely RX 5700XT and RX 5700) is the absence of Display Core Next (DCN) and Video Core Next (VCN) engines. Whether these are absent from the silicon, or simply disabled by other means is currently unclear. Their absence, however points towards cards with no graphical outputs, a lapalissian practicality for cryptocurrency-focused graphics mining products.

Phoronix estimates a release of no sooner than early 2021, considering the timing of the patch information on Linux. While the market for GPU-accelerated cryptocurrency mining isn't what it used to be (luckily), there is still a market opportunity to be taken advantage of here - while ASICs have become more commonplace, there are still many GPU-mining alternatives within the realm of crypto. A crypto-focused product might steer users away from gaming-oriented consumer products, thus easing strain on supply for AMD's upcoming RX 6000 series - especially if this Navi 10-based GPU (or should we call it a CHU - Cryptocurrency Hashing Unit?) features some voltage and power adjustments to increase power efficiency on these workloads.



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[fynxer]

Better buy used RX5700, market will be flooded for a while and prices cheap when people replace RX6000 series (RDN2) to get ray tracing.

All also depends on how RX 6000 series perform in mining since they are suppose to be 50% more power efficient.

Less power, cheaper Crypto, faster ROI.

 

[Frick]

Better buy used RX5700, market will be flooded for a while and prices cheap when they are replaced with RDN2.

Thing is they won't be cheap if miners go for them en masse.

 

[tomc100]

Is cryptocurrency still a thing?

 

[Sandbo]

Is cryptocurrency still a thing?

Actually Ethereum (the s*** behind the crazy price of Vega) just doubled its value in the past year. While less than most tech stocks, I guess they are still relevant

 

[Vya Domus]

What a surreal thing, using computers to generate data whose only value comes from other people doing the same thing and then trading it for other things.

 

[Raevenlord]

What a surreal thing, using computers to generate data whose only value comes from other people doing the same thing and then trading it for other things.

Paper money would like to have a word with you.

 

[kapone32]

If this is true is nothing but good news for AMD Gamers.

 

[nguyen]

So when gamers don't want your GPUs, sell it to miners...how the table have turned

 

[ZoneDymo]

This seems unlikely

 

[ObiFrost]

So when gamers don't want your GPUs, sell it to miners...how the table have turned

Pretty sure it's either:
1) divisive marketing mockering the rival (Nvidia having DLSS and ray tracing as a flexing tools);

2) "my friend has Nvidia, I don't know what the difference is between AMD and Nvidia so I don't care. I just want a desktop computer to play video games" or "my friend told me this so called AMD brand is bad so I'll carefully listen to his advice";

3) risk of facing off with unstable drivers, despite most of them being patched, they still pop up at random times;

4) lack of options on a certain price range and inconsistent pricing. In my area 5600XT costs +$10 over entry 2060. 2 AMD SKUs (5500XT, 5600XT) vs 5 Nvidia SKUs (1650,1650S,1660,1660S,1660Ti) in the low end (guess who wins the marketing vote), 1 AMD SKU (5600) vs 2 Nvidia SKUs (2060, 2060S) in the mid end, 1 AMD SKU (5700XT) vs 3(2080 kinda high end? 2070, 2070S) Nvidia SKUs in the high end, 0 AMD SKU vs 2 Nvidia SKUs (2080S, 2080Ti) in the top end.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

Paper money would like to have a word with you.

I'm waiting for tulips to come back into fashion!

 

[windwhirl]

I'm waiting for tulips to come back into fashion!

Give the world enough time and that will happen. I'd know, we changed the currency 5 times already in less than a century

 

[sutyi]

Hmm...

Maybe AMD plans to sell out the remainder NAVI10 GPUs this way instead of putting and keeping them in the retail channel?
Would be interesting if RTG does actually have good quantities of RDNA2 offerings.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

Give the world enough time and that will happen. I'd know, we changed the currency 5 times already in less than a century

If you're insinuating you're a part of this "we" who are changing the currency, make the next one dandelions. I have enough to inflate the economy into oblivion.

 

[Dante Uchiha]

Hmm...

Maybe AMD plans to sell out the remainder NAVI10 GPUs this way instead of putting and keeping them in the retail channel?
Would be interesting if RTG does actually have good quantities of RDNA2 offerings.

Nope, sounds like a different chip, but without the video engines the chip will be smaller and cheaper to produce.

"The device ID is reported as 0x731E, and Phoronix says that the major difference between this graphics card and the other Navi 10 offerings in the market (namely RX 5700XT and RX 5700) is the absence of Display Core Next (DCN) and Video Core Next (VCN) engines. "

 

[rippie]

ancient old question:
what are we gonna do with the containers of old junk that no gamer is gonna buy as soon as we release RDNA2?

throw this useless piece of silicon at the cryptoworld.

but serious:
does RDNA2 loose the fight against RDNA1 on this specific function? interesting...

 

[windwhirl]

ancient old question:
what are we gonna do with the containers of old junk that no gamer is gonna buy as soon as we release RDNA2?

throw this useless piece of silicon at the cryptoworld.

but serious:
does RDNA2 loose the fight against RDNA1 on this specific function? interesting...

It wouldn't be surprising, I guess? AMD is splitting the architecture in two variants, CDNA and RDNA, according to their end use. How different they are remains to be seen, but perhaps this is a hint to that.

 

[Jism]

So when gamers don't want your GPUs, sell it to miners...how the table have turned

AMD cards stood out in computational power. At least on AMD hardware you'd get a better hash for the buck compared to nvidia cards. Alot of cards where bought by miners and even caused a shortage of proper gaming cards. With AMD releasing certain mining specific cards with no video output, it means lower power figures can be accomplished, less memory on a PCB and overall for a miner, a better product. However in a short timespan, completely useless in a way because tech and hashing power certainly evolves. AMD can do this and proberly due to the fact to keep a spot for less good binning chips, which makes sense. Almost nothing gets lost from a silicon wafer.

 

[rippie]

i was just wondering on the technical side, that this could imply that RDMA2 does worse energyefficiency for mining compared to RDNA1.
What does (GPU) mining traditionally use: memory bandwidth: in other words saying the turbo-hyper-infinity-cache thing could perform worse in combination with lower memory bandwidth?

and actually now that i think of it, it could make sense:
for textures/shaders/pixels processing there is a clear order of operations that can occur, and when you know this loaded texture is no longer needed in the cache, thus invalidated/cleared.
for mining the order is not the same, so it is not clear when the data in the cache can be invalidated (or must always be invalidated)
hence requiring to fetch from memory, and hence requiring more memorybandwith.

 

[Jism]

It's a sidechannel, where AMD can sell the rest of the non-gaming functional or even professional line for that matter. At the end of the day AMD's best interest is selling chips, dont matter if thats for gaming, enterprise or mining market is. It's still selling chips that where made in huge quantities. Perhaps they could make a very well combination of chip + memory + VRM everything thats needed for best optimized mining experience. Who knows.

 

[owen10578]

Removing display outs defeats the whole point of GPU based mining advantage over ASICs. Which is that they can be repurposed or resold for gaming once they're done mining. Display outs from GPUs are also useful for troubleshooting.

 

[Jism]

In a way you could crossfire it, since you only have one card that internally communicates over the PCI-E bus.

 

[windwhirl]

In a way you could crossfire it, since you only have one card that internally communicates over the PCI-E bus.

No. Crossfire was dropped with Navi.

 

[Space Lynx]

climate change full steam ahead! ah humans and their hubris, amusing