Cryptocurrency Miner Bus Enumeration for Modular Compute Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing cryptocurrency mining approaches face inefficiencies due to the winner-takes-all compensation scheme, leading to an arms race for more efficient miners and the formation of mining pools to mitigate risks, which can result in increased computational capacity and difficulty in maintaining a steady block creation rate.
Innovation Solution
A cryptocurrency miner design incorporating a miner controller with a master-slave architecture, utilizing a serial bus interface and pass-through buffers to manage compute modules, enabling efficient job distribution and address assignment through an enumeration process, thereby optimizing power consumption and computational efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a winner-takes-all compensation scheme is used in cryptocurrency mining, then miners are incentivized to compete for blocks, but this creates an arms race and does not optimally utilize computational resources
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the mining system into a master miner and multiple slave miners, each with independent compute modules. This segmentation allows computational resources to be distributed and managed separately, enabling more efficient resource allocation and reducing the complexity of managing a single large mining system.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic control where the master miner can selectively activate and deactivate slave miners based on computational needs. This dynamic adjustment allows the system to optimize computational resource utilization by activating only the necessary number of miners for each mining task, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining high productivity.
2Productivity
If mining pools are formed to share risks, then computational resources can be shared, but this does not effectively optimize computational resource distribution
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where slave miners report their computational status and performance to the master miner. This feedback loop enables the master miner to dynamically adjust the workload distribution, optimizing computational resource allocation based on real-time performance data while simplifying management through automated control.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the operational parameters of the mining system by introducing selective activation and deactivation of slave miners. This parameter change allows for flexible computational resource distribution, improving productivity while ease of operation is maintained through centralized control mechanisms.
3Power
If more compute modules are added to increase mining power, then computational capability increases, but system complexity and power consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the compute modules into independent slave miner units, each with its own processing capability. This segmentation allows the system to achieve high computational power through modular addition while maintaining low complexity by treating each module as an independent, standardized unit that can be managed uniformly.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic control over compute module activation, allowing the system to activate only the necessary number of modules for each mining task. This dynamic approach increases computational power when needed while reducing complexity and power consumption during lower-demand periods.
4Productivity
If a master-slave topology is used with pass-through buffers, then job distribution efficiency improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces pass-through buffers as intermediary components between the master miner and slave miners. These buffers act as mediators that efficiently manage job distribution and data transfer, improving productivity by reducing communication overhead while the standardized buffer design keeps the added complexity manageable.
Data Source
AI summary
A cryptocurrency miner includes a serial bus, compute modules, and a controller. Each compute module includes upstream ports, downstream ports, a pass-through buffer coupling the upstream ports to the downstream ports, and a serial bus interface coupled to the serial bus via the first upstream ports and the first downstream ports. The controller controls operation of the compute modules via commands on the serial bus. The serial bus includes bus segments between respective upstream and downstream ports of the compute modules.