[MinnowBoard] Minnowboard and a standard Nvidia GPU?

[Ashot Arshakyan]

 If we're going to think about something the size of a NUC, aren't there mini-ITX/ Nano-ITX motherboards suitable for the job then?


>Среда, 15 июля 2015, 22:01 -04:00 от Scott Guthrie <scottgu3 at gmail.com>:
>
>You know...this type of thing has been tickling my brain lately.  I wasn't thinking Minnowboard though...but a NUC (i7 or i5) would seem to have enough oomph to do this.  Sadly they seem to be limited to 12 PCIe lanes and 4x1 or 2x4 lane configurations.
>
>And frankly, I can surmise this isn't really in the INTEL roadmap (after all a NUC is not really MEANT to be a Gaming PC), but damn, one x16 Slot, even if I had to through a slot extender to a second case and power the GPU separately.  
>
>Once can dream I suppose.
>
>Sorry....Tangent.
>
>S.
>
>
>
>On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 8:04 PM, John 'Warthog9' Hawley  < warthog9 at eaglescrag.net > wrote:
>>On 07/15/2015 08:42 AM, Ashot Arshakyan wrote:
>>> Hello. I have a project where I need to render thousands of OpenGL
>>> frames each second by using a x86 based PC and a typical high end NVidia
>>> GPU.
>>> The problem is I have a pretty limited space for the electronics of the
>>> device I'm working on so I was hoping I could use a single board PC
>>> instead of using a mini ATX.
>>> SInce the main rendering job is done on the GPU, I thought the
>>> Minnowboard CPU would be fast enough for the job. What are your thoughts?
>>> Now I just need to know how I can connect a standard GPU to Minnowboard.
>>> I'm thinking of powering the GPU with a flat 12V 30A power supply
>>> instead of ATX to again save some space.
>>
>>So there's a couple of things you should be aware of while pondering
>>this.  It *MIGHT* work, but you'll need to consider that modern graphics
>>cards use a LOT of bandwidth for moving data in and out of the graphics
>>card.  They usually employee 16 lanes of PCI-e, which at it's oldest and
>>slowest is about 4GByte/s.  So there's two potential issues here:
>>        1) The MinnowBoard only has a single lane of PCI-e v2
>>           available for use through the high speed expansion
>>           header.  This gives you a maximum throughput of
>>           about 500MByte/s
>>
>>        2) *MANY* graphics cards won't negotiate their PCI-e
>>           lanes down to the point where it will work in a x1
>>           connector.  This is mostly an assumption from the
>>           manufacturers that the card would never be used in
>>           such a slot.  Case in point when we tried to get a,
>>           admittedly rather high end, graphics card working on
>>           the MAX on April 1st this year, it didn't work as
>>           the card couldn't negotiate down to a single PCI-e
>>           lane
>>
>>The only way to overcome 2, that I can think of, is to put a PCI-e
>>switch on the bus that can provide 16 lanes, but only upstream via 1.
>>This still limits your maximum bandwidth to 500MByte/s though, but it
>>should get you past the lane negotiation issue.  That's a substantial
>>amount of work though, and likely a need for a custom lure to be built
>>to accommodate it.  Just some thoughts.
>>
>>- John 'Warthog9' Hawley
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>
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