Nvidia is not exactly eager to disclose the hardware specifications of its cryptocurrency mining processor (CMP) cards aimed at Ethereum miners. Instead, it gives the chipmaker flexibility in GPUs (and GPU configurations) it can use for a given hash rate. But as the lineup of Nvidia’s CMP cards is expanding and they leak to the open market, details about them start to emerge. As it turns out, Nvidia’s former flagship datacenter GPU — the GV100 — now powers Nvidia’s CMP 100HX board.
Nvidia has never publicly announced its CMP 100HX card, and the board is absent from the list of its cryptocurrency mining options on its website. However, the card has been available for a while. Someone has published a picture of the CMP 100HX at PC_Shopping forums and for Komachi_Ensaka to discover it. According to the post, the most exciting part about the card is that the accelerator produces around 80 MH/s, so it is not exactly clear why it is called the CMP 100HX (perhaps to differentiate from the CMP 80HX?).
Based on the images of the board posted, the CMP 100HX is based on Nvidia’s Tesla V100 compute GPU for data centers. It’s similar to the chipmaker’s rather extravagant Quadra GV100 and Titan V boards for Proviz professionals, enthusiast gamers, and ML/DL software developers. However, these are the only Nvidia Volta-based product aimed at client PCs and the only Volta-powered boards with display outputs.
For obvious reasons, the CMP 100HX mining card does not have any display outputs and comes with a passive cooler with two heat pipes, which further implies the data center origin of the board, but the mining nature of the product. Meanwhile, we have no idea about the GPU and memory configuration of the device. Due to its large heat pipes, the CMP 100HX might be too large for standard 2U rack servers, but since mining machines do not precisely follow standards, this is barely a problem as they can certainly fit into 4U boxes.
Given that Nvidia’s cryptocurrency mining CMP-branded business has been on the decline for quarters (at least officially), it’s not surprising that the company is selling its leftovers to miners. Meanwhile, it is still rather interesting to see a unique GV100 GPU — which can do graphics, compute, and display interfaces — mining Ethereum.
