AVX-512 CPUs are being used for cryptomining

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Marees

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consumers should be aware of a new problem and also look forward to how AMD wants to tackle this issue with the Zen5 architecture, expected to support AVX512 instructions as well. Intel CPUs should not be affected, as the company has abandoned AVX512 support with Alder Lake.

While GPU mining remains unaffected, CPU mining is proving to be profitable once again. Particularly, the Ryzen 9 7950X, equipped with 16 cores, is gaining attention for its efficient operation at sub-100W power consumption. Unlike high-end GPUs, this CPU is more accessible in terms of cost and can quickly turn a profit.

One cryptocurrency driving CPU mining profitability is Qbic, offering a daily profit of $3 on 7950X, which is more than twice the earnings from GPU-based mining. This disparity in profits is drawing miners towards CPU-based setups, particularly those with support for AVX2/AVX512 instructions, such as Zen4.

https://videocardz.com/newz/cryptominers-target-amd-ryzen-9-7950x-cpu-up-to-3-per-day-profit
 
Marees said:
consumers should be aware of a new problem and also look forward to how AMD wants to tackle this issue with the Zen5 architecture, expected to support AVX512 instructions as well. Intel CPUs should not be affected, as the company has abandoned AVX512 support with Alder Lake.

While GPU mining remains unaffected, CPU mining is proving to be profitable once again. Particularly, the Ryzen 9 7950X, equipped with 16 cores, is gaining attention for its efficient operation at sub-100W power consumption. Unlike high-end GPUs, this CPU is more accessible in terms of cost and can quickly turn a profit.

One cryptocurrency driving CPU mining profitability is Qbic, offering a daily profit of $3 on 7950X, which is more than twice the earnings from GPU-based mining. This disparity in profits is drawing miners towards CPU-based setups, particularly those with support for AVX2/AVX512 instructions, such as Zen4.

https://videocardz.com/newz/cryptominers-target-amd-ryzen-9-7950x-cpu-up-to-3-per-day-profit
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This is objectively false. Intel Sapphire Rapids chips support AVX 512.
 
Marees said:
Is saphire rapids a server/workstation product

I think the report meant to say consumer CPUs


EDIT:
From techpowerup:

Intel has deprecated what few client-relevant AVX-512 instructions its Core processors had since 12th Gen "Alder Lake," as it reportedly affected sales of Xeon processors.

https://www.techpowerup.com/320281/...-causes-amd-ryzen-9-7950x-stocks-to-evaporate
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Nah it’s simpler than affecting Xeon sales and way dumber.
Intel didn’t validate them for AVX512 because the voltage change when disabling the E cores to light up the AVX512 causes a frequency and voltage change the OEM’s didn’t want to deal with. It forces them to upgrade their cooling and MB components across their entire ranges for a function 99% of their user base doesn’t touch, know about, or care about. The OEM’s asked nicely and Intel acquiesced.
 
Cpu mining will not sustain profitability. No coins large enough for the amount of cpus out there.

Historically cpu mineable coins have been cache heavy algos. That's why they run best on amd chips. Plenty easy to target avx512 for an algorithm.
 
THIS will be the excuse AMD will use to disable AVX-512 on Ryzen. "it's for the environment 😢😢" and not "we don't need to compete with Intel now that they've disabled it, but needed an excuse or else we will get bad press and ruin our 'underdog image' and we can milk professional users to grab more expensive products"
 
KazeoHin said:
THIS will be the excuse AMD will use to disable AVX-512 on Ryzen. "it's for the environment 😢😢" and not "we don't need to compete with Intel now that they've disabled it, but needed an excuse or else we will get bad press and ruin our 'underdog image' and we can milk professional users to grab more expensive products"
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Nvidia was the one who disabled mining operations.

Intel is foolish deligating certain instruction sets to pro only chips.

Why would AMD be upset that cpus get bought and mined on?
 
cdabc123 said:
Nvidia was the one who disabled mining operations.

Intel is foolish deligating certain instruction sets to pro only chips.

Why would AMD be upset that cpus get bought and mined on?
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Need to see how AMD responds for zen5

Maybe AMD could segment the product line 3d V cache for consumers & rest (high-end multi-core) for workstations
 
This is a blip on the radar. If you've followed crypto mining on CPU for any length of time, it's profitable for 2-3 weeks and then the shitcoin goes away. The only really stable CPU minable coin, XMR, isn't generally CPU profitable. We had this same doom and gloom scenario when Raptoreum was taking over the CPU mining space only for it to go from $.10 per coin to $0.0001 per coin. I wouldn't worry about this at all.
 
Marees said:
consumers should be aware of a new problem and also look forward to how AMD wants to tackle this issue with the Zen5 architecture, expected to support AVX512 instructions as well. Intel CPUs should not be affected, as the company has abandoned AVX512 support with Alder Lake.

While GPU mining remains unaffected, CPU mining is proving to be profitable once again. Particularly, the Ryzen 9 7950X, equipped with 16 cores, is gaining attention for its efficient operation at sub-100W power consumption. Unlike high-end GPUs, this CPU is more accessible in terms of cost and can quickly turn a profit.

One cryptocurrency driving CPU mining profitability is Qbic, offering a daily profit of $3 on 7950X, which is more than twice the earnings from GPU-based mining. This disparity in profits is drawing miners towards CPU-based setups, particularly those with support for AVX2/AVX512 instructions, such as Zen4.

https://videocardz.com/newz/cryptominers-target-amd-ryzen-9-7950x-cpu-up-to-3-per-day-profit
Click to expand...

What issue? The issue that AMD might sell a boatload of CPUs, over and above what they would have sold otherwise? That's an issue for you and I, but this is not an issue for AMD and its shareholders.
 
cdabc123 said:
Nvidia was the one who disabled mining operations.

Intel is foolish deligating certain instruction sets to pro only chips.

Why would AMD be upset that cpus get bought and mined on?
Click to expand...

No, ETH going from proof of work to proof of stake followed by a general crash in the crypto market due to widespread fraud by people like Sam Bankman-Fried was what disabled mining operations. Nvidia made a whole new class of GPU just for miners and just went on selling, as I recall. They launched "LHR" versions of their cards which were quickly worked around, but that was about it.
 
So what, among the hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of new crypto marketed makes Qbic so special? More to the point, what mechanism is going to cause people to actively use it in a way that provides stability and especially longevity to it? Otherwise, this almost seems like the SSD eating crypto, chia.
 
kirbyrj said:
This is a blip on the radar. If you've followed crypto mining on CPU for any length of time, it's profitable for 2-3 weeks and then the shitcoin goes away. The only really stable CPU minable coin, XMR, isn't generally CPU profitable. We had this same doom and gloom scenario when Raptoreum was taking over the CPU mining space only for it to go from $.10 per coin to $0.0001 per coin. I wouldn't worry about this at all.
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XMR is perhaps one of the only coins that I think actually keeps the original cryptocurrency ethos and is useful as a currency. it A) has both privacy features built into the core of how it is used unlike many other blockchain assets B) will vary the algo to prevent ASIC mining and other sorts of hardware dependent issues C) does NOT have "supernodes" that require a stake that, if you find it any time after te coin is even close to a $1, require 4-6 figures worth of the currency or require massively expensive hardware configurations to do jobs on the network , D) does not focus on a lot of smart contract platform based garbage minting sub-tokens, NFTs, or other scam-heavy nonsense E) has low transaction costs and is usable as an actual exchange medium combined with A.

Unfortunately, because of this it will both alway remain useful (especially on the closest thing to digital cash, including places that you'd want cash-style anonymity) yet conversely have its value limited because it isn't a tokenomics/defi swap scam patform and its privacy features mean it will be suspect for "big' investment given KYC requirements and fears of black market involvement. I can respect them not following every trend (at least last I checked) and keeping to their vision. Most others claims of "democratizing finance" with crypto fall flat in the face of making massive, often exploitative get rich quick schemes and/or platforms for those who have a relative fortune already can make passive income
 
HockeyJon said:
No, ETH going from proof of work to proof of stake followed by a general crash in the crypto market due to widespread fraud by people like Sam Bankman-Fried was what disabled mining operations. Nvidia made a whole new class of GPU just for miners and just went on selling, as I recall. They launched "LHR" versions of their cards which were quickly worked around, but that was about it.
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Nvidia was selling their crypto cards by the truckload though so it worked well enough for them to offload all the 2000 series chips they had left in stock.
 
Marees said:
consumers should be aware of a new problem and also look forward to how AMD wants to tackle this issue with the Zen5 architecture, expected to support AVX512 instructions as well. Intel CPUs should not be affected, as the company has abandoned AVX512 support with Alder Lake.

While GPU mining remains unaffected, CPU mining is proving to be profitable once again. Particularly, the Ryzen 9 7950X, equipped with 16 cores, is gaining attention for its efficient operation at sub-100W power consumption. Unlike high-end GPUs, this CPU is more accessible in terms of cost and can quickly turn a profit.

One cryptocurrency driving CPU mining profitability is Qbic, offering a daily profit of $3 on 7950X, which is more than twice the earnings from GPU-based mining. This disparity in profits is drawing miners towards CPU-based setups, particularly those with support for AVX2/AVX512 instructions, such as Zen4.

https://videocardz.com/newz/cryptominers-target-amd-ryzen-9-7950x-cpu-up-to-3-per-day-profit
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It's sad to see so much coverage of such an obvious trolling of our hilariously weak tech news industry.
1) This isn't a problem.
2) There is no reason for AMD to solve something that isn't a problem.
3) The $3/day of profit is a total lie to begin with. It's more like $2.50 in total revenue minus $3/day in power usage ($0.95 for the CPU, $2.05 for the rest of the system it's installed in)
4) If we pretend that the profit statement weren't a total lie and electricity were free, it's still a $550 CPU. It would take a full 6mos if everything went perfectly simply to break even. That's not going to create some mad CPU-buying rush.

It looks like a lot of people are getting played here. Gotta leverage irrational fears in order to get clicks, I guess.
 
I may have to give it a test, normally cpu mining profitability hovered just around the cost of electricity. Rendering mining on a large scale inefficient.

I do have some intel phi cpus lying around...
Lots of cores, lots of onchip memory, and avx 512 support. May have to spin up one of the servers
 
By 'issue" for AMD do they mean finding a way to sell AVX512 for an extra ?

Thunderdolt said:
3) The $3/day of profit is a total lie to begin with. It's more like $2.50 in total revenue minus $3/day in power usage ($0.95 for the CPU, $2.05 for the rest of the system it's installed in)
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at the moment they wrote it it was $3.40 at 170 watt, that 4 kwh, 40 cent for 4kwh seem reasonable, the rest of the system ? must be quite low for cpu mining. $3 a day would what in a 10 cent market, 1250 watt unstop from a single CPU system, that a lot ?

One ofher difference, 4-5 gpu by system is much easier than lot of cpu by system.... platform cost by unit could much higher
 
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Some numbers:


Miners can reportedly earn twice as much money on a Ryzen 9 7950X CPU as on an RTX 4090, with the 24-hour earnings approaching $3 compared with about half that for an Nvidia GPU. The RTX 4090 also has a TDP of 450W, compared with just 170W for the Ryzen 9 CPU, which can also have its TDP lowered to around 100W without impacting mining performance significantly. Since an RTX 4090 costs roughly 4x that of a CPU, the math seems to add up here.

This isn't the first time miners have sought AMD CPUs for mining. Back in 2021, a coin named Raptoreum utilized the large L3 cache on AMD's Ryzen, Threadripper, and Epyc chips, causing a shortage of those CPUs as well.

If this mining funny business continues, the situation might deteriorate even further when AMD's Zen 5 architecture launches later this year. As TechSpot notes, Zen 5 is supposed to offer double the AVX-512 performance of Zen 4. It could lead to the now-familiar bots buying them en masse on launch day, which should be around September.


https://www.extremetech.com/computi...cpus-are-out-of-stock-thanks-to-crypto-mining
 
Teenyman45 said:
So what, among the hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of new crypto marketed makes Qbic so special? More to the point, what mechanism is going to cause people to actively use it in a way that provides stability and especially longevity to it? Otherwise, this almost seems like the SSD eating crypto, chia.
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I don't know anything about it, it may well just be the latest pump and dump asset that "oh hey you can mine with a CPU, FAST!". So much of crypto seems to work that way, or people are trying to make it work that way to their benefit. Chia, burstcoin and others had a short term in which you could at least make some profit with whatever hardware you had available provided you had a relatively recent SSD, GPU, RAM, and or/CPU but it woudn't be long until getting a return that would be worth the energy cost required very powerful hardware and, like most things in PoW crypto - as soon as those who can dump 5 figures on whatever the hot commodity is (GPU, ASIC etc)t they tend to drive up the difficulty and drive down the profitability so that there' almost no point if you're not putting serious cash into it and have a cohesive business plan - the nice idea of "everyone can contribute with what they have and while others may make more, you can still do well" is often obliterated before long unless the rare chance of crypto devs seeing it as a problem (as Monero's XMR thankfully did) which is unlikely for varying reasons. Though there are some that are even worse in another regard, where providers/supernodes etc...require you to make a truly massive investment in hardware (and sometimes the asset itself atop it).
 
One cryptocurrency driving CPU mining profitability is Qbic, offering a daily profit of $3 on 7950X,
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So 3 dollars a day using 100 watts? Let's see 0.1kw x 24 hrs = 2.4 kWh, at my highest energy tier which is around 53 cents that's be electrical costs of nearly $1.30, so $1.70 profit, about $620/year if the numbers are true, hell that could pay for a new CPU right there.
 
I saw MEGAsizeGPU Tweeting about this the other day and had a nice "aw sh*t, here we go again" moment. :-|
Great stuff. Super cool. /S

Absolutely 100% a pump-and dump. Ok, maybe some people involved are genuinely convinced that THIS coin will be THE ONE. But cmon. Can the coin be used as currency in stores? Will the coin be a robust long-term investment? No.

Good thing I'm not planning on building an AM5 system for awhile.
 
NattyKathy said:
I saw MEGAsizeGPU Tweeting about this the other day and had a nice "aw sh*t, here we go again" moment. :-|
Great stuff. Super cool. /S

Absolutely 100% a pump-and dump. Ok, maybe some people involved are genuinely convinced that THIS coin will be THE ONE. But cmon. Can the coin be used as currency in stores? Will the coin be a robust long-term investment? No.

Good thing I'm not planning on building an AM5 system for awhile.
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That is especially the case for cpu mineable coins, often its difficult to even convert to another crypto let alone be worth anything when you do. There just isn't nearly enough demand for a random altcoin when so many are produced via mining.

Xmr is a good exception as its been around for awhile and has had decent dev action.


This won't even cause a blip as far as hardware availability goes. Amd makes alot of cpus. There will be very few people buying chips for the sake of mining. All these articles and tweets are fud.
 
Zen5 specs are already written in stone (sillycon) there is nothing they can do at this point except some microcode sillyness
 
cdabc123 said:
That is especially the case for cpu mineable coins, often its difficult to even convert to another crypto let alone be worth anything when you do. There just isn't nearly enough demand for a random altcoin when so many are produced via mining.

Xmr is a good exception as its been around for awhile and has had decent dev action.


This won't even cause a blip as far as hardware availability goes. Amd makes alot of cpus. There will be very few people buying chips for the sake of mining. All these articles and tweets are fud.
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Yep I see them as some sort of marketing campaign to sell more CPUs based on FoMo.
 
Lakados said:
Yep I see them as some sort of marketing campaign to sell more CPUs based on FoMo.
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They are good cpus to buy. A powerful x86 chip with lots of cache and threads is useful for many workloads. Gaming to monero mining.

This crypto is kinda weird though. It's not a conventional blockchain wasting cycles to ensure solid math. It more or less runs distributed workloads.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Bitcoin.
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In that case the term "stores" is being used VERY loosely.
I'm no crypto newbie and know that in most cases you can choose what coin you want to be paid out in or else you figure out your conversion path to a main coin you will then cash out to currency.
My point being to NattyKathy is that NO coin is universally accepted at retail and it isn't hard to have your coins converted to fiat currency.
 
funkydmunky said:
In that case the term "stores" is being used VERY loosely.
I'm no crypto newbie and know that in most cases you can choose what coin you want to be paid out in or else you figure out your conversion path to a main coin you will then cash out to currency.
My point being to NattyKathy is that NO coin is universally accepted at retail and it isn't hard to have your coins converted to fiat currency.
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Not really. Also not all coins can be readily traded to btc.
 
funkydmunky said:
Agreed. But my main point once again is that "stores" do not universally accept any coin.
Are we going to have to go in this circle many more times GT?
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Yes. Some stores do, and many will accept it by automatically converting it to fiat on their end. Btc is much more useful than some random junk coin that's being pushed here.
 
Lakados said:
Yep I see them as some sort of marketing campaign to sell more CPUs based on FoMo.
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That's almost certainly what this is. There is an excess supply of these CPUs right now, which is why they're all marked down $100 or more. The next gen is coming soon enough that now is a bad time to be sitting on inventory. Pushing a false narrative about crypto would be one great way to try and incite some panic buys and FOMO.
 
I would doubt it, they're much simpler explanation (people doing the crypto chain project, the people using CPU for it, AVX-512 helping the algo, talking about it, and nice click story for the site talking about it, can all easily happen without planning, specially from AMD)
 
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Thunderdolt said:
Have you tried stopping in at a Seven Eleven lately and paying with krone?
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We have a downtown store here that has a crypto ATM machine. Since I don't trade in crypto I've never bothered to look and see what coin it trades in.
 
Crypto is all good and well, and I'm sure it has some real uses (although most of them seem somewhat contrived to me) but I feel I can say with certainty that crypto will never replace or even become a minority viable alternative to fiat currency.

And we should t want it to. That would be a huge problem. Relaying on a currency without central bank control and ability to pursue monetary policy is an absolute disaster that will result in worse boom and bust cycles in the economy than we have seen since the bad old days of the gold standard.

In the last 85 years since the great depression and the end of the gold standard we have had exactly one really bad recession (2007-2009). Prior to that they were a regular occurrence.

In the 100 years prior to that during the "free banking" era of the 19th century there was seemingly a panic and run on the banks every few years. It was nuts.

You can thank fiat currency and central bank monetary policy f (as well as increased banking regulation and the FDIC) for that we no longer live in that horrible world of economic uncertainty, and it would be awful if we had to go back to a pre-monetary policy world.

I don't want to live in an economy where the Fed does not have absolute control over the currency. It would be a bloody nightmare.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Crypto is all good and well, and I'm sure it has some real uses (although most of them seem somewhat contrived to me) but I feel I can say with certainty that crypto will never replace or even become a minority viable alternative to fiat currency.

And we should t want it to. That would be a huge problem. Relaying on a currency without central bank control and ability to pursue monetary policy is an absolute disaster that will result in worse boom and bust cycles in the economy than we have seen since the bad old days of the gold standard.

In the last 85 years since the great depression and the end of the gold standard we have had exactly one really bad recession (2007-2009). Prior to that they were a regular occurrence.

In the 100 years prior to that during the "free banking" era of the 19th century there was seemingly a panic and run on the banks every few years. It was nuts.

You can thank fiat currency and central bank monetary policy f (as well as increased banking regulation and the FDIC) for that we no longer live in that horrible world of economic uncertainty, and it would be awful if we had to go back to a pre-monetary policy world.

I don't want to live in an economy where the Fed does not have absolute control over the currency. It would be a bloody nightmare.
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Abit of a adjacent rant there.. Can't see the word crypto without posting this?

Control of large fiats is important. If crypto was that size it would indeed be frightening. As it acts more like a free market and not a currency.

However the governments of the world do a terrible job of controlling currencies. They bairly practice the economic manipulation to stabilize cycles and instead print obscene amounts of currency with no regard to the impact. Many fiats have failed doing the same. It is lucky that the US can get away with it being the world power it is.

Now if powers fall, or fiats fail? I'd rather have some bitcoin based on a independent market. Crypto is also technically very sound. Transactions can be quick and cheap. Even beating ach or money transfer services. It can be mathematically secured, you don't have to trust a bank. And in the digital world it is trivial to use it as a currency.

I don't want it to be a currency and I'd love to see the usd continue defying gravity indefinitely into the future despite horrendous government action. But crypto is already an adiquate currency that will be adapted to some degree across the world.
 
Looking at the specs to run a comparator at https://github.com/qubic/core 256GB of RAM is pretty steep. Factor in a board that supports it, plus the required ram, what is the amortization of the CPU+RAM+BOARD?
Definitely looks push to the top end of consumer systems to be more of a HEDT type thing, IMO.
 
cdabc123 said:
However the governments of the world do a terrible job of controlling currencies.
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Not of the OCDE and many other countries, I think many by now would have been born and lived exclusively in country with superb institution and money, making it hard to appreciate it.

Human used mostly debt instead of money for a long time because it was not good enough (too rare being a common reason) for most of the history, had terrible inflation-deflation, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Russia, there countries with a very spotty recent history of money system and where I imagine crypto for currency got popular first, but the US-Canada, etc... has been just incredibly good since the early 90s (in the 70s-80s yes they had the ability to print without enough consequence, now it tend to show up has debt at least)
 
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