Remember Nvidia's CMP HX170 crypto mining cards from 2021? They were custom-built with limited processing but full memory bandwidth, and mostly ended up as e-waste after Ethereum moved to proof-of-stake.
Good news for their owners: a new vulnerability in Nvidia drivers has been found! Researchers published a paper outlining how to bypass the cards' limitations, and this led to a tool called `cmpunlocker`.
It turns out Nvidia had mostly just blocked 80% of the memory via software. So, those 10GB cards can now become 40GB (or even 80GB), and 8GB cards can go up to 64GB. The tool also removes computational limits. The biggest remaining hurdle is the slow PCIe 2.0 x4 interface, but some folks are already trying hardware mods.
Early buyers who snagged these cards for $100-200 essentially got a super cheap, less restricted A100-like GPU. Current prices are much higher though, making it less attractive now.
Paper: Paper
Tool: cmpunlocker GitHub
#Hardware
#AITools
4August 24, 2026 1.2K 2
