| | | | | | 3.3.1 A Typical Beowulf Motherboard | | | | | | | | | It would be infeasible to specifically represent even a large (let alone exhaustive) list of available motherboards. Fortunately, this is unnecessary due to important similarities found among motherboards. For illustrative purposes, we present the general functional features of a current generation motherboard, the Intel SE440BX. Although some differences will exist with this and the boards that you may use, their overall capability will be mostly the same. | | | | | | | | | Form Factor This motherboard conforms to the ATX Slot 1 form factor of 12 x 7.75 inches. | | | | | | | | | Microprocessor A single PentiumII processor with an integrated 512K Byte L2 cache is incorporated through an SEC connector with host bus speeds of 66 MHz and 100 MHz supported. | | | | | | | | | Main Memory Up to 384 MBytes of synchronous DRAM is supported through three 168-pin dual inline memory module sockets with error checking and correction. | | | | | | | | | Chip Set The Intel 82440BX includes the 82443BX and 82371EB chips to manage general motherboard operation including a 100 MHz 64bit wide system bus, an accelerated graphics port, PCI bus control, a PCI-to-ISA bus bridge, DMA controller, two fast IDE interfaces for disks and devices, the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface, a real-time clock, and power management. | | | | | | | | | I/O The SMC FDC37C777 is an advanced I/O controller supporting conventional serial RS-232 and parallel I/O ports. Two USB ports are supported. | | | | | | | | | Expansion Slots Three PCI interface slots and one ISA interface slot is provided along with an additional interface slot that can be used either as an ISA or PCI interface. | | | | | | | | | 3.3.2 Selection Considerations | | | | | | | | | The motherboard restricts as well as enables functionality. In selecting a motherboard as the basis for a Beowulf node, the requirements for its use should be considered. These include: | | | | |