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Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#111

Post by Ekaros »

oofabz wrote: post #57
nojs wrote: post #8

> Nvidia introduced LHR in February 2021 with the launch of its GeForce RTX 3060 models. Three months later, the company brought LHR to its GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards. The reason: to make the cards less desirable to people mining Ethereum and possibly other types of cryptocurrencies. What a bizarre move. Why would they do this?

It was an attempt to decrease demand for the cards, thereby reducing price. The simplest market solution to high demand and inadequate supply would be to raise the price of the cards. This would maximize short-term profits but Nvidia felt it was not the right strategic move. Why not? Here are some guesses: - pricing gamers out of the GPU market would damage Nvidia's historical market - video games - pricing AI users…

Gamers by new GPUs every cycle to every third cycle. Keep them covered and having hardware and the developers will continue supporting your hardware too. Decent market, with growth potential from countries getting richer.

AI, get your tech in, get them them invested on software level and as it scales demand will go up and stay up. Just see how long Intel has been around. Similar position and inertia is sure way to make money.

Crypto on other hand purely chaces profits. And you can't really rise the prices for partners, that is board manufacturers too much. So even if end user prices are high, not all or even big chunk transfer to Nvidia...

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#112

Post by codedokode »

I don't understand why gamers should have any priority over miners and programmers in access to video cards. Mining or computing is a serious business. Gaming is just a way to kill time and kids would get much more benefit if they read books or did sports instead.

Also, gamers don't need top video cards, 1 or 2Gb cards are fine for most games.

Therefore, all restrictions on hash rate should be removed.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#113

Post by Ekaros »

beebeepka wrote: post #47
HideousKojima wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia doesn't make their own silicon, they go through TSMC's foundries, which means they're competing for a finite amount of production slots.

I thought their gaming line of 3000 chips is being produced at Samsung

Doesn't really matter. 3000 chips are on the cutting edge node and thus competiting with everything else that also wants to make chips on it.

It really is multi-modal market. And demand for that node, is different from automotive woes...

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#114

Post by DangitBobby »

bouncycastle wrote: post #92
DangitBobby wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be much easier if crypto could just die out.

It won't, and it's a very important technology since it's the only way for humans to store digital property without relying on some government or corporation. Also, it ever gets attacked, much more will be at stake, including your freedom for choosing what software can be run on your computer.

Cryptocurrencies, not cryptography. My software freedom is not dependent on the existence of cryptocurrencies. My hardware freedom is currently significantly hampered by them.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#115

Post by pjerem »

mrtksn wrote: post #73
modeless wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No single piece of software has wasted more of my time than Nvidia's drivers, mostly (though not exclusively) on Linux. They've rendered my OS unbootable so many times over the years. So many times I've spent whole days of my life troubleshooting, upgrading, downgrading, configuring, rebooting. Then often reinstalling the OS after their installers mess stuff up in ways that are impossible to even know until they pop…

Oh, tell me about it. +Installs Linux, this time determined to make it daily driver. Why is this so slow though? - You need to install Nvidia drivers + Oh, OK makes sense. -- INSTALLS NVIDIA DRIVERS -- -- LINUX NO LONGER BOOTS, OBSCURE ERROR MESSAGE, FURIOUSLY GOOGLING ON A TINY PHONE SCREEN TRYING TO RESOLVE THE ISSUE -- Later made myself a Hackintosh, eventually bought an actual Mac. The Hackintosh stuff was much,…

Interesting. I’ve not used Linux as my mainly driver for years. I miss it and I want to come back but I basically don’t have any decent PC anymore so I have the freedom to get/build one.

When I used it, ironically, NVidia was the way to go on Linux and ATI/AMD was a shit show. Is AMD ok nowadays ? My needs are mostly confortable casual gaming where I don’t care having more than 60fps and I don’t play online (so this anti cheats situation doesn’t really bother me other than ideological issues).

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#116

Post by DangitBobby »

etataetaet wrote: post #70
DangitBobby wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. To actually help gamers and other legitimate users of GPUs

Yeah I think that was point 1. If they succeed in getting reasonably priced GPUs into gamers hands (While AMD can't) they get a lot of good PR!

Good PR and actual goodness are sometimes correlated and sometimes not.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#117

Post by randomsilence »

ehnto wrote: post #66
DangitBobby wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely support making GPUs less attractive to miners. I'd buy a card that could be remotely disabled when usage patterns matched crypto mining if it meant I could spend MSRP on a modern card.

Is there some practical way to delineate the two product usages that isn't arbitrary I wonder? Maybe make mining only cards more performant and affordable than consumer graphics cards, so that consumer cards will drop in price from less demand? I find it hard to believe that a use case specific device wouldn't be able to dethrone graphics cards as the better choice for miners at the right price, and it should be chea…

You would have to saturate the market with specific mining devices. Like with bitcoin ASIC miners, the crypto mining demands have to increase to the point where using gaming graphic cards becomes unprofitable. Otherwise miners will buy the specific mining devices and the gaming devices. The problem is that Etherum was designed to resist ASIC approaches.

Instead of locking cards down, Nvidia could manage the supply. They could sell their cards in cooperation with Steam: Only people with an active steam account are eligible to a new card. If their performance stats don't improve after the purchase, which means they have resold their hardware, they won't be allowed to buy another card.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#118

Post by heavyset_go »

0xedd wrote: post #69
squarefoot wrote: post #4

I would rather outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a harm for the planet with their crazy energy demands, besides also fueling criminals.

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm no fan of banks, but that doesn't mean I'm about to trust the same small group of people that brought us The DAO, MtGox, OpenSea and the endless churn of crypto scams.

Your arguments are the same ones that argue for cash, and not more layers of unaccountable middle men or networks that are controlled by a minority of wealthy stakeholders. I even made the argument for cash using that same exact anecdote about Cyprus that you used about a week ago[1].

At any point the government could order exchanges to take a haircut on deposits and transactions. If that happened, 99% of people who hold cryptocurrency would not have the ability to liquidate it without taking a haircut. Even LocalBitcoins needs to follow KYC laws in the US, and will comply with laws of the country as long as they want to operate in the US. If people used any legal exchange in the US, their wallets are associated with their identifying information and there will be a record of transactions on the blockchain that point back to them should they try to escape the haircut.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436347.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#119

Post by akvadrako »

modeless wrote: post #55
0xedd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Percentage wise it looks small but numbers are impressive. Monthly active steam users using Linux was reported at over 1 million last year https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/

That will easily double in the next year with the release of the $399 Steam Deck and accompanying Proton and Steam improvements. Linux is finally about to become a serious gaming platform. (No thanks to Nvidia)

Steam deck uses AMD GPUs though, so this wouldn't help.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#120

Post by eganist »

codedokode wrote: post #112

I don't understand why gamers should have any priority over miners and programmers in access to video cards. Mining or computing is a serious business. Gaming is just a way to kill time and kids would get much more benefit if they read books or did sports instead. Also, gamers don't need top video cards, 1 or 2Gb cards are fine for most games. Therefore, all restrictions on hash rate should be removed.

If you're mining, buy ASICs that do the job. That way the capacity is available for people who want to game casually, game professionally, render, or compute.
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