By: James (no.delete@this.thanks.invalid), September 23, 2021 1:52 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Mark Roulo (nothanks.delete@this.xxx.com) on September 22, 2021 12:37 pm wrote:
> But very few folks are willing to commit to billions of dollars of wafer
> purchases a few years out (Apple may be the only exception here).
Also, crypto currencies are notoriously volatile. The return on mining varies wildly. This makes it almost impossible to predict where the market will be in even six months time: there could be huge demand for GPUs for mining; there could be none. Which makes it impossible for AMD and Nvidia to plan responsibly.
Nvidia, at least, seems to be much happier selling to gamers (and computer manufacturers) than miners, to the point that they'll cripple their own chips to make them less attractive to miners. They can be fairly sure, after all, that normal users will be back for more in a few years' time. They may well have compared the temporary profits they could make (through increased prices) to the longterm loss of goodwill, and decided it isn't worth it.
> But very few folks are willing to commit to billions of dollars of wafer
> purchases a few years out (Apple may be the only exception here).
Also, crypto currencies are notoriously volatile. The return on mining varies wildly. This makes it almost impossible to predict where the market will be in even six months time: there could be huge demand for GPUs for mining; there could be none. Which makes it impossible for AMD and Nvidia to plan responsibly.
Nvidia, at least, seems to be much happier selling to gamers (and computer manufacturers) than miners, to the point that they'll cripple their own chips to make them less attractive to miners. They can be fairly sure, after all, that normal users will be back for more in a few years' time. They may well have compared the temporary profits they could make (through increased prices) to the longterm loss of goodwill, and decided it isn't worth it.