Folding at home, donations made by people all over the world.
It's currently done with hardware that's less than optimized.
For a rack server/desktop system with Intel 4 core, low power, 3Ghz or more CPU, there are plenty of motherboards offering decent solutions.
What we need (a little better than decent) is 4x PCIE 3.0 slots.
Not so uncommon; however we need it in following configuration:
A 8x/4x, 4x, and 4x slot, and an additional 1x slot.
Most motherboards offer an 8x, 4x, and 3x 1x speed slots.
We need to have 3 slots of 4x speed minimum, with 1 port acting as 8x speed if less than 16 lanes are used, and an additional 1x port.
For AMD motherboards, a 6 core low power +3Ghz CPU with 4x PCIE 3.0 4x speed slots, utilizing the full 24 PCIE lanes.
All PCIE slots with 2,5 to 3 slot space in between the cards, for modern graphics cards!
The boards must support CPUs with 1 full CPU core per PCIE slot, and 1 additional core for the system.
Most ATX motherboards come very close in performance.
What we're missing is a portable alternative to this;
For a portable system, I'm dying to find an Intel quad core nuc sized board (5x5") with 3 PCIE 1x slots on the back,
Or an AMD quad/six core NUC (4x4" or 5x5") with 4 PCIE 1x slots; all PCIE 3.0 or 4.0
There are plenty of NUCs with a single mPCIE 4x slot, but not a single which has the option of connecting more than 2x dedicated graphics cards to them!
Aside from PCIE ports, and a quad/6 core CPU, it needs 1x port for SSD/emmc, or nvme drive; LAN port, 2x USB 3.0 AND 2x USB 2.0
, cheapest display out port (VGA, DVI, Display port or HDMI; I don't care as the primary graphics card inserted in the primary PCIE 1x slot will deliver the display imagery).
Wifi and bt optional, but I don't need it, as 1x PCIE 3.0 port should power a wifi antenna. Audio optional, but not necessary.
Basically pretty much your average NUC with the option to connect 3 to 4 dedicated graphics cards on them.
I wished some company could help us build this, as a donation for Folding at home (doesn't mean free, but at least affordable).
[URL=http://foldingathome.org]Folding at Home[/URL]
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