Bitcoin mining firm scores $30m worth of Nvidia GPUs

(Image credit: Yevhen Vitte / Shutterstock)

One of the largest Bitcoin mining syndicates in the world, Hut 8 Mining Corp., has made an order for $30 million worth of Nvidia GPUs.

Although it’s unclear which specific GPUs the company has purchased, the models come from Nvidia’s new cryptocurrency mining processor (CMP) range, designed specifically for mining workloads.

With the additional firepower, Hut 8 plans to expand its current Bitcoin mining operation, but also extend into other mineable cryptocurrencies. The group anticipates an aggregate performance of up to 1,600 GH/s.

Crypto mining GPUs

There has been a rising tension in recent months between PC gamers looking to get their hands on the latest GPUs and miners hoping to capitalize on the recent crypto bull run. And the problem has only been compounded by the global chip shortage and rise in demand brought about by pandemic.

In a bid to help gamers get their hands on GPUs, Nvidia even went as far as to throttle the Ethereum mining performance of the GeForce RTX 3060, although a bypass was quickly discovered.

Another way the company is seeking to safeguard GPU stock for gamers is by launching a new line of mining-specific GPUs, which it calls CMPs.

There are currently four CMP models: the 30HX, 40HX, 50HX and 90HX. The most performant GPU in the range, the 90HX, achieves an Ethereum has rate of up to 86 MH/s.

“The adoption and development of applications interacting with various blockchain networks have never been stronger, opening many possibilities across a variety of industries,” said Jaime Leverton, Hut 8 CEO.

“We are incredibly excited to have these high performance CMPs in our fleet. We believe mining with CMPs will open up new opportunities for Hut 8 and will allow us to continue to execute on our long- and short- term plans for increased and diversified revenue streams.”

However, it's possible that even more powerful mining GPUs will soon hit the market. Rumors suggest Nvidia may add new SKUs to the CMP range, based on its Ampere A100 GPU.

If rumors prove to be true, the CMP 220HX could yield a hash rate of 210 MH/s, which will have cryptocurrency miners licking their lips, provided Nvidia is able to overcome supply issues.

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Joel Khalili is the News and Features Editor at TechRadar Pro, covering cybersecurity, data privacy, cloud, AI, blockchain, internet infrastructure, 5G, data storage and computing. He's responsible for curating our news content, as well as commissioning and producing features on the technologies that are transforming the way the world does business.