Unblock Leveraging Thermal Management in Argentine Summer

Background

Unblock Computing  — the leading off-grid Bitcoin mining company in Latin America  — provides valuable offtake of gas to the large O&G sector, while mitigating vast amounts of flared gas in the region. Unblock successfully deployed LuxOS across its fleet.

Challenge

The harsh summer temperatures in Argentina (often exceeding 35°C) and the remote nature of Unblock’s mining operations presented large challenges. These conditions increased the failure rate of ASIC hashboards and reduced the fleet’s realized hashrate, due to thermal throttling and hardware instability.

Solution: LuxOS and Advanced Thermal Management (ATM)

In late 2023, Unblock transitioned to LuxOS firmware from a different firmware provider. The key feature differentiating LuxOS was Advanced Thermal Management (ATM). It is a dynamic system engineered to adjust the miner's operating parameters (such as frequency and voltage), based on environmental conditions and user-defined settings. This ensures optimal performance while preventing shutdowns due to overheating.

In high-temperature environments, ATM smoothly underclocks the miner as temperatures rise, preventing shutdowns. As the ambient temperature drops (especially during cooler evenings), ATM automatically restores the miner to its default settings or even overclocks it, if configured by the user. This entire process operates without the need for integrations, triggers, or any manual intervention.

Results

• Hashboard Failure Rate: Dropped from over 4% a month down to ~0.6% a month, entirely attributed to ATM’s ability in preventing prolonged overheating.

• Operational Stability: Reboot frequency and error logs decreased significantly, allowing for more uptime and less manual intervention.

Conclusion

The integration of LuxOS firmware has transformed Unblock’s mining operation, improving equipment lifespan and operational excellence. In a country where energy location and climate pose unique challenges, LuxOS proved to be a cost-effective enabler for performance and reliability.