Nvidia says Ethereum mining activity contributed very little to its Q4 2020 revenue.
Although it lacks âthe ability to accurately track or quantifyâ the end uses of its graphic processing units (GPUs), Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said the company estimates that between $100 million and $300 millionâa ârelatively small portionââof Q4 revenue came from Ethereum miners buying GPUs to use in their mining equipment.
Nvidia reported a total of $5 billion in revenue for the Q4, implying mining sales represented 2%-6% of total.
Ethereumâs hash rate has grown 124% in the past year, according to data from Coin Metrics, in tandem with the general cryptocurrency marketâs rally. This has driven demand for Nvidiaâs GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, much to the dismay of the companyâs gaming customers. In the future, though, miner-contributed revenue for Nvidia is likely to come from purchases of another of the companyâs products.
Nvidia earlier this week said itâs altering its GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card to limit its own efficiency if the card detects itâs being used for Ethereum mining, a move designed to ensure GPU supply is available to gamers. âWe would like GPUs to end up with gamers,â Kress said on the companyâs earnings call Wednesday.
To serve the mining community, the company is launching Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMPs), which are âoptimized to improve Ethereum miningâ and will give the company âmore visibilityâ into the share of revenue contributed by cryptocurrency miners, Kress said.
Nvidia plans to sell its new CMPs to industrial Ethereum miners and expects the mining-specific product to generate roughly $50 million in revenue during its first quarter of sales. Nvidia also plans to quantify miner revenue contributions in all future quarterly earnings reports.