Nvidia released two unrelated bits of news this week that caught my attention.
New GeForce GPU's will ship with reduced hash rate
On Tuesday, May 18th, a post on the Nvidia official blog announced that a reduced ETH hash rate will be applied o newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. This change will only apply to newly manufactured cards, which will begin shipping in late May. These GPUs will labeled with "Lite Hash Rate" or "LHR" in order to distinguish them from the earlier version of these cards that are capable of the full hash rate.
Nvidia's motivation for this change is to make these specific GPUs less appealing to cryptocurrency miners so that they are more accessible to gamers, stating that their "GeForce products are made for gamers."
This isn't the first time this topic has appeared on their official blog. In a post from February, the company announced they would be "limiting the hash rate of their GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs so they're less desirable to miners," aiming to reduce mining efficiency by 50%.
In that same post, Nvidia also announced a new product line: Nvidia CMP, short for Cryptocurrency Mining Processor. This product would not be capable of graphics and would be tailored toward professional mining, as implied by the name.
Creating tailored products for customers with specific needs delivers the best value for customers. With CMP, we can help miners build the most efficient data centers while preserving GeForce RTX GPUs for gamers.
I suspect the people that will most welcome these changes are those that solely game or solely mine. The people most adversely impacted by this will be gamers that moonlight as hobbyist miners, oftentimes to help recoup some of the cost from buying a high end GPU.
Proposal to issue a 4:1 stock split this summer
On Friday, May 21, a Nvidia press release announced plans for a 4:1 stock split, pending stockholder approval, which will be voted on during their Annual Meeting of Shareholders on June 3rd. The company cites their motivation as wanting to "make stock ownership more accessible to investors and employees." As of today, the current stock price of NVDA is roughly $600 per share.
Nvidia shares have increased in value ~1640% since their most recent stock split of 3:2 in 2007. For comparison, the S&P 500 increase 183% during this same period. Prior to 2007, Nvidia's stock split 2:1 in 2000, 2001 and 2006, which would make this proposed 4:1 split their largest.
As for timing, if approved by shareholders, "each NVIDIA stockholder of record at the close of business on June 21, 2021, will receive a dividend of three additional shares of common stock for every share held on the record date, to be distributed after the close of trading on July 19, 2021. Trading is expected to begin on a stock split-adjusted basis on July 20."
