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:
