There is a pending release of a new Ether (ETH) on Friday, as announced by the Cryptocurrency mining rig manufacturer, Bitman. Specifically made to run on the Ethereum blockchain’s Ethash algorithm, the Antminer E9 model is an application-specific integrated circuit chip.

The arrival of the machine may not be impactful as expected, though no official date has been announced for the E9 yet. There us likelihood of competition of the rig in the form of Nvidia’s CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) range of GPUs designed specifically for crypto mining. The E9 utility may be short-lived because of , Ethereum’s scheduled move away from proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism

Nvidia recently announced that its CMP range was expected to rake in $150 million in profits in the first quarter of the year — three times more than the firm had originally anticipated.

Despite the apparent booming popularity of its crypto-specific graphics cards, Nvidia chief financial officer Colette Kress said on an investors call this week that the company expected its GPU shortage to continue for the rest of the year despite increasing supply.

“We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year […] We will see supply continue to increase throughout this quarter as well as throughout the year,” Kress said, as reported by The Verge.

Nvidia has struggled to meet the demand for GPUs from its core gaming customer base for some time, as would-be miners gobbled up cards to mine Ether and other cryptocurrencies. The phenomenon of Nvidia’s supply shortage first emerged in late 2017 as the bull run of that year attracted more people to crypto mining. After cooling off somewhat in the following years, the GPU shortage emerged once again in 2020 and has shown no signs of abating.