Hong Kong Authorities Seize 300 NVIDIA CMP 30HX Cards Smuggled For Illicit Ethereum Mining
NVIDIA's solution to this problem is to cripple Ethereum mining performance on its GeForce RTX 3060 (and future) graphics cards to dissuade crypto miners and push them towards an all-new Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) family of GPUs. Not surprisingly, the initial run of CMP 30HX cards has already proven to be quite popular. Now, Hong Kong authorities claim to have seized 300 CMP 30HX cards that failed to make it through customs.
Interestingly, no specific reason was given for the seizure, although both Hong Kong and Chinese governments have pushed back against the rise of crypto mining. In November, Hong Kong attempted to prevent retail investors from buying and selling cryptocurrencies to crack down on money laundering. Also, several Chinese provinces have imposed outright bans on large-scale mining operations due to the immense electricity requirements.
NVIDIA announced four CMP HX graphics cards back in February, but only the entry-level CMP 30HX and CMP 40HX were supposed to launch during Q1 2021. So far, we've only seen just a couple of CMP 30HX cards listed for preorder and no CMP 40HX cards (which leads us to surmise that CMP 30HX cards were seized in Hong Kong).
The CMP 30HX is based on GeForce RTX 1660 Super and has an Ethereum hash rate of 26 MH/s. The CMP 40HX steps up to 36 MH/s. The other announced -- but not yet shipped -- members of the family include the CMP 50HX (45 MH/s) and the CMP 90HX (86 MH/s). It's also rumored that a beastly CMP 220HX based on NVIDA's Ampere A100 GPU will reign supreme with an ETH hash rate of 210 MH/s.
