AMD Linux Driver Preparing For A Navi "Blockchain" Graphics Card

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Linux Driver Preparing For A Navi "Blockchain" Graphics Card

While all eyes are on the AMD Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" graphics cards set to be announced next week, it also looks like AMD is preparing for a Navi 1x "Blockchain" graphics card offering given the latest work in their open-source Linux driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Navi-Blockchain

[tildearrow]

Is GPU cryptocurrency mining still a thing today? (I remember the Ethereum times)

[L_A_G]

Sounds to me like someone missed the boat and pretty badly on the cryptocurrency mining craze. Sure, people still do it, but there's boatloads of GPU hardware purchased for that very purpose in the hands of miners and, more importantly, ASIC and FPGA miners that do it in a much more efficient manner. Efficiency also matters as electricity is the #1 cost involved by a long shot.

For AMD's sake I hope it's just something meant for compute tasks like neural net AI, much like Nvidia's displayless Tesla accelerators, that has just been mislabeled by someone who doesn't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to the market.

[CommunityMember]

Sounds to me like someone missed the boat and pretty badly on the cryptocurrency mining craze.

Blockchain technology is useful for a lot of things other than cryptocurrency mining (which, as you say, as mostly moved to ASICs for the big players), all the way from contract validation, to health care, to voting. BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) is big business.

[cb88]

Sounds to me like someone missed the boat and pretty badly on the cryptocurrency mining craze. Sure, people still do it, but there's boatloads of GPU hardware purchased for that very purpose in the hands of miners and, more importantly, ASIC and FPGA miners that do it in a much more efficient manner. Efficiency also matters as it's the #1 cost involved by a long shot.

For AMD's sake I hope it's just something meant for compute tasks like neural net AI, much like Nvidia's displayless Tesla accelerators, that has just been mislabeled by someone who doesn't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to the market.

I think this is a concerted effort to use up old Navi 10 dies on miners, so they dont' buy newer cards and soak up all the supply.

[L_A_G]

Blockchain technology is useful for a lot of things other than cryptocurrency mining (which, as you say, as mostly moved to ASICs for the big players), all the way from contract validation, to health care, to voting. BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) is big business.

Sure, blockchain can be useful for various things, but so far the only uses that can be referred to as "big business" are subverting Chinese currency controls*, cryptolocker ransom payments, drug cartel money transfers and payments for contraband like narcotics, forged official documents and firearms that are either unlicensed or illegal for civilians to own.

*I.E people taking money out of the country, which the government heavily discourages

[karolherbst]

Blockchain technology is useful for a lot of things other than cryptocurrency mining (which, as you say, as mostly moved to ASICs for the big players), all the way from contract validation, to health care, to voting. BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) is big business.

it's useful for exactly nothing. For all the problem you think you are solving there are way better alternatives. Period.

[karolherbst]

Really.. why is blockchain still a thing? It doesn't work and it doesn't solve any problems, but causes more. Nobody gets it right and all this "smart contract" bullshit is just broken.

the only thing this is useful is for scammers scamming money from everybody else.

[SomeoneElse]

Maybe ...

(2020-10-21)

PayPal allows Bitcoin and crypto spending

PayPal has entered the cryptocurrency market, announcing that its customers will be able to buy and sell Bitcoin and other virtual currencies using their PayPal accounts.

[..]

[ms178]

What about Arcturus? Wasn't that supposed to be a compute focused offering which could be used for this purpose?