[Hardware] AMD to launch exclusive graphics card to mine cryptocurrencies in 2021

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There is no doubt that the market for cryptocurrency mining through graphics cards is a very lucrative one for manufacturers, but it has consequences such as the fact that they end up being like locusts devouring all the available stock, which can lead to problems in launching a new generation of GPUs if its mining performance is very high. That is why AMD, to ensure that the RX 6000 do not suffer the same fate as past generations, have come up with a solution that consists of launching a graphics card dedicated to mining.

Graphics cards not only serve to make games look beautiful but also have other utilities, and one of them is cryptocurrency mining, a task for which they are one of the fastest hardware components, which makes them coveted for those. who assemble system with this need.

AMD brings us an RDNA graphics card exclusively for mining
AMD RDNA

According to sources, there is a graphics card variant with device ID 0x731E based on the Navi 10 chip, which is based on the RDNA architecture and has been used in the entire Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5600 ranges. The difference with respect to the standard models is that it would lack or have inactive two of the accelerators usually integrated in the GPU: the display controller in charge of sending the video signal, Display Core Next (DCN) in RDNA, and the video codec, the VCN.

This means that this graphics card lacks video output and therefore cannot be used to render graphics, which means that it is out of the gaming market and thus becomes an exclusive option for mining. We also do not know if AMD has disabled ring 0 of the command processor that is used for the screen list during rendering.

We don't know which Navi 10 configuration AMD has chosen for this graphics card, but at its best it has 40 Compute Units and is equipped with a 256-bit GDDR6 bus, allowing it to 8 or 16 GB configurations. with that kind of VRAM. But remember that there are variants with 32 and 36 CUs and with 192-bit GDDR6 buses as well.

As for the release date, we shouldn't see this dedicated mining graphics card before 2021, and this means that it's going to come out at the same time as the Navi 22-based graphics cards, so it may be a measure. of containment to avoid lack of stock.

Where is CDNA?
AMD CDNA

The CDNA architecture was presented by AMD as a 100% computation-centric architecture and as an evolution in that sense of its GCN graphics architecture, the precursor to RDNA.

It is surprising that with the announcement of the CDNA architecture, which would be ideal for mining, we find that AMD has decided to launch a shortened version of RDNA for mining. Really, this seems to be AMD's covert way of cleaning up its stock of Navi 10 chips once and for all. The problem? Mining, although it seems that it is emerging again, is not what it used to be and contrary to what happened with the stock of AMD Vega, now it may not be so easy.

The reason we miss CDNA is that like this RDNA for mining, AMD would have also capped its ability to display graphics, but especially since mining is one of the strengths of computing through graphics processors.