Graphics cards have not only been rare for about a year, but also extremely expensive. There are many reasons for this (see also the article Why hardware will remain very expensive for a very long time
), but the mining of cryptocurrencies is very likely to play an important role. This is exactly the problem Intel wants to address.
What is the hardware giant up to? According to Raja Koduri, head of the graphics card division, who joined Intel from AMD in 2017, Intel is working on special hardware for mining. This should enable the necessary calculations (or blockchain validations) to be carried out particularly efficiently:
To be able to validate blockchains much more efficiently, at significantly lower costs and much lower power consumption, is a fairly solvable problem, and that is exactly what we are working on.
Currently, gaming graphics cards are often doing the arithmetic for certain cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum. This increases the demand and leads to the very high prices. If miners could instead reliably fall back on other hardware that is cheaper and more efficient to work, graphics cards would no longer be attractive to them.
The above quote is from a Interview with the streamer DrLupo. Specifically, Koduri was asked what Intel plans to do to address the graphics card shortage issue. In addition to the special mining hardware, Koduri also names its own production capacities as an important advantage for Intel, even if the chips for the upcoming Arc graphics cards are manufactured by TSMC.
You can find out everything you need to know about the new competition for AMD and Nvidia in the following article:
more on the subject
New player GPUs: when will Intel’s graphics cards appear?
At most a solution in the medium term
Koduri does not give exact details or even a release date for the special mining hardware. So it will be a while before this potential remedy can really make an impact on the market and prices. He just says it is at some point in the hopefully not too distant future
I will give more information on this.
Also not to be forgotten: Such hardware also requires manufacturing capacities and suitable raw materials, which are then lacking elsewhere. It remains to be seen whether Intel can really give its own factories a significant advantage on this point. You can read here how we assess the price development of graphics cards in general in the coming year:
more on the subject
Will graphics cards finally get cheaper again in 2022?
Nvidia has so far not had much success with a similar approach: Since Presentation of the special CMP graphics cards for mining they are not only too few and far between, but also too expensive to be a relevant alternative for miners. The mining brake announced at the same time for current Geforce GPUs has also not changed anything decisive in the situation.
However, Nvidia may have only approached the whole thing too half-heartedly. From a gamer’s point of view, it would be very much to be hoped that Intel would have greater success in diverting the attention of miners from gaming graphics cards.
How do you assess the situation? Can Intel, with special mining hardware, sooner or later ensure a clearly noticeable relaxation in the graphics card market, is the whole thing doomed to failure from the start or does it come down to something in between? Feel free to write it in the comments!
