Nvidia cautious that possible cryptocurrency demand might drop

GPU demand from the cryptocurrency mining industry is showing signs of slowdown recently and Nvidia has started taking measures to minimize possible damage, according to some market sources, reports digitimes.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) chairman Morris Chang has recently said that he expects the company to see an on-year revenue growth of 10-15% in the first half of 2018 thanks to the demand from the cryptocurrency segment. The market watchers believe many cryptocurrency miners are likely to turn to procure ASICs from suppliers such as Bitmain.

Bitmain is ready to release ASIC products in April eyeing cryptocurrencies that has been relying on GPUs for mining and the move is expected to reduce miners' demand for graphics cards. Policies from governments worldwide on cryptocurrencies and significant price changes also have weakened the returns for mining.

Seeing the trend, Nvidia has recently started placing restrictions on its downstream graphics card partners, forbiding them to publicly promote cryptocurrency mining activities or actively sell its consumer graphics cards to miners, the sources said. Nvidia hopes to shift its main sales target back to consumers in the gaming market, the sources added. Nvidia also has further increased its GPU quotes recently, which the sources believe is meant to help cover the gap that may occur after GPU demand starts sliding. Since profitability from graphics cards has been weakening, Nvidia and AMD have both been decelerating the developments of their new GPU architectures and prolonging their existing GPU platforms' lifecycle, the sources said, adding Nvidia's next-generation GPU architecture Turing will not enter the mass production until the third quarter.