I use CUDA for scientific calculations and I wonder how this will affect GPU performance since any detection algorithm may have fault positives. The only problem with such artificial limitation is that usually people who mine crypto are very inventive (if you have doubts about that just check laptop mining farms [1]), since they try to squeeze out as many H/s as possible. It is just a matter of time when the 'right' driver will be available.
> since any detection algorithm may have fault positives
Though not impossible, NVIDIA has been doing application detection for ages for the purpose of tuning the performance of the latest popular games. So as long as your scientific calculations don't calculate too much Keccak-256 hashes, they should probably be fine.
Their application detection is based on executable name. Fairly popular game I worked on was misdetected because apparently we used executable name of some decade old FPS. They fixed it in NVidia Control Panel, but Shadowplay continues to put gameplay recordings in wrong folder to this day.
They might doing the same thing video games do to combat piracy.
No DRM is unbreakable, all games are eventually cracked, so why bother?
The thought is that it buys enough time during the critical launch window to sway people who will have pirated the game to buy a copy instead.
The case for this kind of video card "DRM" is actually stronger because miners either have to gamble and buy cards they know they won't be able to use until (or even if) a "crack" is available, or wait until a solution is available before buying them.
If the miners wait, this is a win for gamers and Nvidia PR because the cards will be bought by gamers since cards have a limited supply unlike video game licenses.
I'm sure someone raised that objection internally, and was pointedly ignored (as they should be if all you care about is the PR angle of "we're doing something"!)
You're right, I forgot they package up drivers for all cards in the same versioning scheme, so using 4XX version of the package won't support the card.
