Computer chip manufacturer Nvidia has seen revenue from its dedicated crypto mining hardware slump from $105 million in Q3 2021 to just $24 million in Q4, a drop of 77%.
According to Nvidia's filing, revenue from its Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) for 2021 totaled $550 million—just 0.2% of its total revenues of $26.91 billion for the period.
That's in line with Nvidia CFO Colette Kress' earlier prediction that revenue from the CMP would "decline quarter-on-quarter to very negligible levels in Q4."
CMP sales performed below expectations throughout the year; despite a strong start to the year, with Nvidia raising its Q1 revenue estimate to $150 million, Q2 sales revenues fell short of its initial estimate of $400 million, with the company taking in just $266 million in the second quarter. In Q3, they slipped further, to $105 million.
That's unlikely to bother Nvidia too much, however; its total fiscal year 2021 revenues were up 61%.
Nvidia and crypto
Nvidia developed the CMP to reduce demand from crypto miners for its Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Although Bitcoin miners have moved on from GPUs to dedicated ASIC miners, it remains cost-effective to mine other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum using GPUs.
Facing a backlash from its core consumer base of PC gamers, Nvidia first attempted to limit its GPUs to make them "less desirable" to miners, before launching the CMP in 2021.
In its filing, Nvidia stated that while its GPUs are capable of cryptocurrency mining, it has "limited visibility into how much this impacts our overall GPU demand," citing volatility in the cryptocurrency market and changes in the method of verifying transactions, such as Ethereum's impending shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
The chip manufacturer doubled down on its commitment to limiting crypto mining on its GPUs, adding that, "Nearly all desktop NVIDIA Ampere architecture GeForce GPU shipments are Lite Hash Rate to help direct GeForce GPUs to gamers."
Other GPU manufacturers such as AMD and Intel have announced that they won't follow suit.
And Nvidia's CMP revenue woes don't appear to have dissuaded other chipmakers from venturing into mining hardware; last month, Intel announced that it was developing a new "energy-efficient" Bitcoin mining chip.