recall , some Universities and Pixar, did render farm, with Mac mini's .
It be real nice , having some options, for home, or work, to have affordable computing clusters, all the way to a super-computer, aka Beowolf cluster. Certainly it won't compete with a Cray. But having something available for the general public, scalable would open up the doors.
Look like, the intel C3000 chipset is the ticket. 16-cores, and 4x 10GBE, lets add 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports. This should be a good base. Mini-ITX format comes to mind. Since the CPU is embedded server, and has no GPU, the add-on PCIe slot, be good for an Nvidia GPU, half height. That way , it can double as a Desktop. Or be upgradeable. 2 M.2 slots be nice. a U.2 port and SATA. preferred power be less then 24V, single Voltage. TDP target 60W, what could also be powered over USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt. 6x USB 3.1 ports. and double BIOS, UEFI compatible. An iMac server, with 200x200mm footprint , be cool to. At least 2x DDR4 slots, dual channel, 64GB max be nice. Down the road a 24-48 core ARM , be also on the table. Unfortunately , it would not be mainstream Intel processor compatible with regular OS, like windows, linux, etc. So an ARM CPU setup, be strictly , for HPC. Certainly a Linux OS can be ported, compiled. But Intel be a easy bet. Also, VM as a huge appeal . An SD USH-II slot for easy boot config. In HPC config, it's mostly netboot. Stackable, off the self, efficient ATOM CPU, 10GBE ports, and 4 Thunderbolt ports , for linking, with off the shelf cheap cable, compared to Fibre-channel that is. That should hit a home run. Ideal, $500 target. But with options end empty, the configuration in small orders, could balloon to the 1k horizon. Still peanuts , compared to the big boys, rack mount infrastructure. Of Course , does have limitations, without a QPI-link interface. That could be worked out later. To bump the latency.
