Saiweb

So I am still looking for a viable PICO itx motherboard supplier … but the concept is rolling along nicely, so here’s a little more information.

The “project” is to make a beowulf cluster but as efficent and therefor green as possible, current “Pico” itx power suppliers advertise a 96% efficency … not bad

So why the pico form factor?

The reason I am going for this form factor is due to it’s size and power draw, because of the lower power draw of this form factor it allow for other (greener) power options to be explored.

1. Have at least 4ghz (4 nodes), distibuted processing power
2. Not draw more than a total 30w / GHZ under load (Bringing the 4 node total to just 120w)
3. Fit into a 2u rack chasis.

The lower the power consumption per GHZ the better, obviously, and if I can reduce the power consumption under load enough, this should allow for offsetting the running of the cluster using alternative energy sources.

Anway I have now created a category green giant and will continue to post more information as the concept progresses, I hope to get some technical diagrams up soon.

So I have a concept for a 24 node cluster, I want to build to run folding@home and other cancer research projects

The spec is to make it as “green” as possible, the lower the watts/ghz the better, whilst still maintinaing performance.

The downside is the pricing of pico-ITX at the moment, I’m getting quotes for about £200 / node … and that’s without ram, or storage …

What I need is the following.

pico-ITX form factor motherboard with ~1ghz CPU, in quantities of 5 or more

So please leave a comment or use the contact me form if you think you can help, or have any information on suppliers.