> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.sensecrypt.com/sensecrypt-v3.1.3/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.sensecrypt.com/sensecrypt-v3.1.3/sensecrypt-server.md).

# SenseCrypt Server

The first step in your eID journey is to run an instance of a SenseCrypt server. For your convenience, this is as easy as starting a Docker image via a provided shell script.

### Pre-requisites

You need AMD / Intel bare metal machine / VM running Ubuntu 22.04 or Windows 11 server, and with Docker installed.

At least 8GB of free RAM and 4 CPU cores are needed for the server. 

The server is optimized for [Intel](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html) CPUs and [NVIDIA](https://www.nvidia.com/en-sg/) GPUs and container images are available for both CPU only (Linux/Windows) and CPU + GPU variants (Linux only).

For CPU + GPU varaints, the host machine must have NVIDIA drivers 550, 555 or 560 installed. Furthermore, the host machine must also have the NVIDIA container toolkit installed.

### Best CPU Performance

For the best CPU performance, we recommend 4th generation Xeon hardware (Sapphire Rapids) with 8 cores or more. 

While instance selection will highly depend on you own use-case, you can achieve 10x performance gains through BF16 inferencing offered by [AMX](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t\&source=web\&rct=j\&opi=89978449\&url=https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/794441/amx-quick-start-guide.pdf\&ved=2ahUKEwj865yZno2IAxVDRmwGHeHGKY8QFnoECBcQAQ\&usg=AOvVaw1TLfd-Sak0C8c3wM9jvqp4) on these CPUs. The [AMX](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t\&source=web\&rct=j\&opi=89978449\&url=https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/794441/amx-quick-start-guide.pdf\&ved=2ahUKEwj865yZno2IAxVDRmwGHeHGKY8QFnoECBcQAQ\&usg=AOvVaw1TLfd-Sak0C8c3wM9jvqp4) link shows some current instance types with 4th gen Xeon on various cloud providers.