According to new information, NVIDIA might be working on a new CMP mining card which could be based on its A100 Ampere GPU, which is currently the company’s most powerful GPU. The Ampere A100 is NVIDIA’s most powerful GPU to date and is currently dedicated to AI and HPC workloads. But if the rumors are true, we may be seeing a new CMP card, which will become the fastest cryptocurrency mining GPU.
The rumor comes from well-known leaker Kopite7kimi who has made a lot of leaks of NVIDIA’s Ampere line of GPUs and respective SKUs for graphics cards. According to him, NVIDIA might be planning to release a CMP HX Cryptomining SKU based on its Ampere A100 GPU. The leaker refers to the A100 as a ‘Mining Monster’.
The NVIDIA Ampere A100 is a beast of a card that features HBM2 memory for a bandwidth of up to 1.6 TB/s. The PCIe variant of the A100 has a TDP of 250W versus 350W for the GA102 GPU. This could lead to much better efficiency and much higher hash-rate capabilities for the A100 in cryptocurrency mining.
The leaker says that we will have to wait to get some information about these A100 GPU-based mining cards. For now, there is nothing known about the specifications and dates of the rumored card. The hash rate of the A100 GPU is also not known right now.
But we can take an idea from the RTX 3090, which utilizes the GA102 GPU. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 has an average mining performance of 115-120 MH/s in Ethereum using the Daggerhashimotto algorithm. The graphics card is based on the GA102 GPU and features GDDR6X memory with a combined bandwidth of 936.2 GB/s
The GA102 is also rumored to be featured in the CMP 90HX card. NVIDIA in its announcement revealed the mining performance of the CMP 90HX, which has an average hash rate of 86 MH/s. It is most likely that it will feature GDDR6 memory instead of GDDR6X and on a 320-bit bus interface versus the 384-bit bus interface on the RTX 3090.
The main issue with the A100 GPU is the pricing. The Tesla A100 PCIe GPU accelerator costs around $11,000 US which is 7 times the price of a single RTX 3090 at MSRP. We will have to wait and see what NVIDIA is planning with the A100 GPU for a CMP card.
