The Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department has recovered 300 NVIDIA CMP graphics cards from a smuggling boat near the Hong Kong International Airport.
As reported by MyDrivers and Tom's Hardware, the authorities found a fishing boat filled with illegal goods such as shark fins, alongside smartphones and computer hardware. Included within this was a collection of NVIDIA's crypto mining processor - currently unreleased in the West.
According to the report, the CMPs had no visible branding that could help identify the source of the GPUs.
Why were the CMP GPUs confiscated?
It might be a surprise to see an NVIDIA CMP stashed alongside the likes of shark fins. The smuggling of goods occurs when there is a demand for a product often outlawed by authorities, and this may have contributed to the smuggling of the crypto mining processor.
Cryptocurrency mining is currently legal in Hong Kong, but crypto mining farms have now been banned in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia as the country seeks to clamp down on the energy-intensive mining process, where electricity demand has surged.
It is possible the CMP cards were intended to be used in such crypto mining farms, although this has not been confirmed by any authorities.
What is the NVIDIA CMP 30HX?
The 30HX is a Turing variant of NVIDIA's crypto mining processor. NVIDIA created the CMP GPU to deter cryptocurrency miners from purchasing its RTX 30 Series GPU intended for gaming.
While it is yet to be released in the US or Europe, despite its Q1 release date, the 30HX appeared on a Dubai retail site in March for $723. Bearing similar specs to the GTX 1660 Super, the 30HX has an Ethereum hash rate of 26 MH/s.
NVIDIA has also confirmed it will release a 40HX, 50HX and 90HX variant of the CMP later this year.
READ MORE: Unhackable RTX 3060 broken even further with this crypto mining farm
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