AMD Releases Software to Increase GPU Efficiency

American Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) has received unprecedented attention this year for the sharp increase in its stock value that occurred as a result of the crypto gold rush. AMD’s Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) have been flying off of virtual shelves for months.

Taking full advantage of the trend, AMD has just released a software package that was developed for the purpose of cryptocurrency mining, verbosely titled the “Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition Beta Blockchain Compute”. The software is a driver that is intended to work in tandem with AMD’s GPUs to make them work more efficiently. It is compatible with Radeon HD 7×00 GPUs through AMD’s latest, the Radeon RX Vega Series Graphics. 

The effects of the driver have had mixed reviews. According to a test report from Hot Hardware, the driver delivers, although they note that further optimization is in the future (perhaps once the driver comes out of beta). Along with an increase in Ethereum mining speed, the driver helped keep card temperatures lower and maintained a more stable power draw with a lower peak draw. Additionally, the new driver seemed to end the crashing that was happening with the GPU’s previous driver.

Other sources have noted that the driver does not seem to have any specific effect on mining performance, but instead acts as more of a patch to fix more serious problems with some GPUs, including the Polaris DAG Epoch.

AMD has been shocking Wall Street with eye-popping increases in value for all of 2017. As of late July, AMD shares has increased 102% compared with a year earlier. By comparison, the S&P 500 managed a 14% return, paltry in comparison.

Despite this recent release and the veritable boom in AMD’s revenue, the company looks to the future of crypto mining with a wary eye. AMD does not count on crypto-related hardware and software to bear long-term fruits–at least, not yet. AMD President and CEO Lisa Su said in July:

“Relative to cryptocurrency, we have seen some elevated demand. But it’s important to say we didn’t have cryptocurrency in our forecast, and we’re not looking at it as a long-term growth driver. But we’ll certainly continue to watch the developments around the blockchain technologies as they go forward.”

This is in contrast to rival company Nvidia, whose CEO (Jen-Hsun Huang) seems to be very optimistic about the company’s role in the future of crypto. Said Huang (earlier this month):

“Cryptocurrency and blockchain are here to stay. Over time, it will become quite large. It is very clear that new currencies will come to market. It’s clear the GPU is fantastic at cryptography. The GPU is really quite well positioned.”

Indeed, Nvidia’s second quarter revenue saw a 56% year over year increase in revenue. According to the Nvidia CFO Commentary on Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2018 Results, “GPU business revenue was $1.90 billion, up 59 percent from a year earlier and up 21 percent sequentially”.

Some crypto investors are seeing the increase in the value of Nvidia and AMD shares as a more traditional opportunity to “make it rain”. Likewise, traditional investors are catching wind of the emergence of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology into the mainstream as a result of the recent rise in AMD and Nvidia revenues.