Some time ago, NVIDIA was attacked by hackers. After continuous fermentation, it has now caused storm all over the city.

As a leading enterprise in the GPU industry, in this incident, NVIDIA not only stole a large number of confidential information due to hacker intrusion, but also attracted ridicule because of its performance in the crisis. It can be said that it lost its wife and lost its soldiers.

Lapsu $, the hacker organization that attacked NVIDIA, used software to blackmail NVIDIA in order to force NVIDIA to lift its restrictions on virtual currency mining. In fact, there has been a long-standing conflict between video card gamers and virtual currency “miners”, and the video card manufacturers represented by NVIDIA are caught in a dilemma between the two.

Graphics card and virtual currency: the evil fate of falling in love and killing each other

Since the advent of virtual currency, the controversy surrounding it has never decreased. Virtual currency is an electronic currency generated by open source P2P software. Different from real currency, virtual currency has the advantages of decentralization, high liquidity and secure private key. It is very popular among specific people. Some of the more famous virtual currencies, such as bitcoin and Ethereum, are even allowed to be directly converted into currencies in some countries and regions.

The method of obtaining virtual currency is actually a simple encrypted calculation. As long as there is enough computing power, we can “mine” virtual currency in the vast sea of data. This behavior is also vividly called “mining”.

At the beginning of the birth of virtual currency, “mining” behavior was sporadic personal behavior. At that time, it was less difficult to obtain virtual currency. People usually use the computing power of CPU to “mine”.

However, as the value of virtual currency becomes higher and higher in the speculation, more and more people participate in the “mining” cause. And there is a trend of large-scale and industrialization. This makes it more difficult to obtain virtual currency.

Although CPU has great advantages in complex computing, its absolute computing power is relatively low. This makes the efficiency and income of “mining” with CPU not high. Therefore, the “miners” in the virtual currency world have crossed the sea and tried to mine with other equipment. GPU is one of them.

Although the ability of GPU for complex computing is weak, it has high absolute computing power, and its mining efficiency and income are greatly improved compared with CPU mining. Today, the virtual currency “mining” army has formed a situation of GPU, ASIC and FPGA.

Although GPU mining is not as efficient as ASIC and its cost is higher than FPGA, GPU has high programmability. After the end of GPU’s “mining machine” career, it can also be used for other purposes, and even sold to game players as second-hand goods. This makes GPU mining popular with “miners”, which opens the evil relationship between virtual currency and graphics card.

The lack of cards caused dissatisfaction among players, and NVIDIA offered a “killing move” to crack down on “miners”

In recent years, more and more players have joined the virtual currency, and even wealthy businessmen such as elonmusk have also participated. This makes the price of virtual currency rise all the way, leading more people to participate in the “mining” army and want to take a share.

The sharp increase in the number of miners has made it difficult to find one card in the market. The GPU produced by NVIDIA and other manufacturers was originally designed for game players, but in fact, it has flowed into the virtual money market.

At the same time, many graphics card dealers noticed the business opportunity of GPU in short supply in the market and began to hoard strange things, resulting in the soaring price of graphics cards in the market. The dilemma between Yingda and GPU players has deepened day by day.

The conflict between game players and virtual currency “miners” broke out in 2017. In this year, the game company Blue Hole released the popular game “pubg” all over the world. The game spread rapidly through live broadcasting and other means, and won the attention of players all over the world. Due to the high requirements for computer configuration, the project set off an upsurge of configuration upgrading in the game circle that year. Meanwhile, the prices of virtual currencies bitcoin and Ethereum also continued to rise in 2017. Gamers and “miners” have a strong demand for new graphics cards, which finally makes the price of graphics cards reach an unreasonable position.

NVIDIA graphics card, which has always been loved by players, has become the focus of this conflict. A gtx1060 graphics card that meets the minimum game requirements of “pubg” was fried to 3000 yuan in 2017, while the official price of this graphics card is only 2000 yuan.

The huge premium has stimulated gamers who want to upgrade their configuration. They vent their dissatisfaction with GPU manufacturers such as NVIDIA on social networks in groups. In order to keep its core users and stabilize the market, NVIDIA has also made a lot of efforts.

In 2018, NVIDIA issued an announcement to dealers on the problem of insufficient graphics card production capacity, requiring dealers to give priority to supply to gamers rather than “miners”, so as to alleviate the current situation of “it is difficult to obtain one card” for gamers.

In the same year, NVIDIA also launched a new version of gtx1060 3G, which is the most concerned gtx1060 graphics card in this wave of card shortage. This new video card has only 3G video memory, barely meeting the demand of the game, and can not obtain the profit expected by the “miners” in “mining”.

However, whether it is the sharp decline of virtual currency in 2018 or NVIDIA’s various measures, it still does not solve the high price of graphics card and the embarrassment that it is difficult to find one card. And with the spread of COVID-19, the supply chain is more intense. Due to out of stock, gamers are increasingly angry with graphics card suppliers, NVIDIA has to make new moves.

In February 2021, NVIDIA launched CMP products for mining. CMP products do not display input and cannot process graphics. They can only be used for “mining”. “Through CMP, we can help miners build the most efficient data center while retaining geforce RTX GPU for gamers,” NVIDIA spokesman wuebbling said of CMP products

In May 2021, NVIDIA finally offered a killing move. NVIDIA said that in order to prevent its RTX 30 series from showing