BitFury Group has signed an agreement to acquire Allied Control, a Hong Kong-based tech startup that provides cooling systems for supercomputing and data center applications.

The move will make Allied Control a subsidiary and in-house special department of the bitcoin mining and transaction processing company. The deal has not yet been closed and is subject to customary conditions.

Allied specializes in two-phase immersion thermal management platforms – a technology that could perhaps match the power and energy challenges posed by large-scale bitcoin mining operations.

BitFury told CoinDesk that the acquisition will make operations faster, more efficient and better able to deploy in scale, while providing the opportunity to enter a new market and eliminating a dependency.

It also means fewer capital expenditures, the company asserted, including almost no operational expenditures on maintenance.

Allied Control VP of operations Kar-Wing Lau said that BitFury is the “perfect match” for his company’s “disruptive” capabilities.

Lau added:

“Passive two-phase immersion cooling is especially promising for blockchain transaction processors as it addresses their need for flexibility and rapid deployment while allowing to take full advantage of higher hardware power density.”

BitFury said that in acquiring an experienced team and innovative technology, it will become strongly positioned to lead in its market.

Plans for high-performance computing

The move follows a banner year, in which BitFury dominated VC funding in the bitcoin mining sector, raising $40m in two funding rounds.

Last month CEO Valery Vavilov told CoinDesk that while the company is focused on bitcoin at present, it is a technology company more broadly that wants to move toward supercomputing.

Following the news of the acquisition of Allied, he said it will be better positioned to enter the high-performance computing (HPC) market.

“Our big scale production will get AC immersion cooling technology up to a new level,” said Vavilov. “Together, we hope to get leading positions on solutions for the HPC market.”

The IT infrastructure market was worth about $140bn in 2014, he explained; the HPC industry, $12bn.

In China, he added, the HPC industry has a compound annual growth rate of about 30% with increasing demand for HPC solutions from governments as well as corporations using big data analysis to improve productivity.

“It’s a very attractive high margin industry, which BitFury and Allied Control plan to revolutionize together,” he said.

Images via BitFury