Raptor Talos II POWER9 Benchmarks Against AMD Threadripper & Intel Core i9

[torsionbar28]

I didn't imagine POWER is so competitive with x86

POWER chips have been very competitive against x86 for many years now. The fastest supercomputer in the world runs RHEL on POWER.

[classichasclass]

If there are open drivers for the card, it just works for the most part. For using the GPU in petitboot (before the target operating system has loaded) the only obstacle is proprietary GPU firmware, which we do not ship as part of the base Talos II firmware image (unless a specific GPU was ordered as part of a built system).

We've been working on ways to simplify providing the proprietary GPU firmware to the bootloader, see for instance https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Talos..._To_BOOTKERNFW, but there's still some work to go (including making this as simple as point + click). Long term it would be great if AMD would provide open firmware for their GPUs and compute cards, so that either it could be flashed to the GPU itself or shipped as part of the base firmware image, but AMD has publicly stated they cannot do so at this time.

If you don't want to mess around with GPU firmware and the bootloader, you don't need to -- just use the onboard VGA or serial to interact with the bootloader and allow the OS to load the proprietary firmware for your GPU.

I'll have to say this is still rather a pain point. On my system I have the VGA jumper off because it just seems to work better that way (with the WX7100 workstation card). Looking forward to a better solution but right now it's just a matter of putting back on the VGA jumper when I want to muck around in Petitboot, and there are worse things in life. 8)

Cameron Kaiser

[classichasclass]

"The Talos II power consumption during this task was about a 400 Watt average." That's more then my ageing dual-core Apple "IBM 970MP" G5, … where can I sight up? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU1RK4TR-GA ;-)

Let me give you another data point. This 8-core (two 4-core SMT-4 Sforza) system with 1.5TB in NVMe storage, 32GB RAM, BD-ROM and WX7100 workstation card is running about 165W as I type this. I think that would be a more typical workstation loadout than what Michael is testing here.

Cameron Kaiser

[Sonadow]

Nice results, but until more applications get a proper upstream port to POWER that does not require making extensive patches to the code it's not even up for consideration as a desktop or workstation.

Upstream Chromium sources are still unbuildable on POWER. Ditto upstream Libreoffice and Firefox. And a bunch of other applications I use on a regular basis.

[pracedru]

Wow.....
Will this threaten the x86 dominance on the desktop maybe?
Will this threaten the x86 dominance in the super computers?
maybe... Would be nice with some competition.

[Michael_S]

So they have their "IntegriCloud" cloud-hosting, which looks cool. But it's kind of expensive. Again, you're paying for freedom and innovation and I respect that.

Ehm, unless I missed something, aren't these result kinda bogus since we're comparing a dual socket setup against a single socket one?

Not bogus. But worth keeping in mind. I think a lot of people would consider the cost of more free computing worthwhile. But no, it's not a small difference.

[classichasclass]

Nice results, but until more applications get a proper upstream port to POWER that does not require making extensive patches to the code it's not even up for consideration as a desktop or workstation.

Upstream Chromium sources are still unbuildable on POWER. Ditto upstream Libreoffice and Firefox. And a bunch of other applications I use on a regular basis.

I'm running this in current Firefox which I built from source at -O3 -arch=power9, so I don't know where you're getting that from.

Cameron Kaiser

[Sonadow]

I'm running this in current Firefox which I built from source at -O3 -arch=power9, so I don't know where you're getting that from.

Cameron Kaiser

https://www.talospace.com/2018/09/mo...irefox-62.html

Can't use Jemalloc. Can't do Release build.Can't use Clang. Can't use Gold.

And still no Chromium on POWER. And no stories of successful unpatched source builds working for ffmpeg, VLC, MPV, LibreOffice, FileZilla, Wireshark, tac_plus, OpenLDAP, GIMP and all of their respective dependencies.

And all the out-of-tree drivers for Realtek's 802.11ac USB adapters only support building for ARM or x64.

[classichasclass]

https://www.talospace.com/2018/09/mo...irefox-62.html

Can't use Jemalloc. Can't do Release build.Can't use Clang. Can't use Gold.

And still no Chromium on POWER. And no stories of successful unpatched source builds working for ffmpeg, VLC, MPV, LibreOffice, FileZilla, Wireshark, tac_plus, OpenLDAP, GIMP and all of their respective dependencies.

And all the out-of-tree drivers for Realtek's 802.11ac USB adapters only support building for ARM or x64.

Right, because that means the application is "unbuildable." It means you have a .mozconfig. All those are supported options. (Hint: I'm replying to you in it.)

I've also got VLC, LibreOffice and GIMP on this machine using the regular Fedora packages. They work fine. If you're going to be biased against the machine as a workstation, at least try to use one first.

Cameron Kaiser

[MaxToTheMax]

If you're running a data center, and the only thing you care about is performance/watt, then POWER9 actually looks quite good. As a workstation? Well, I am one of very few people who might be willing to shell out 3x as much for slightly worse performance, because I really care a lot about open source-- but it's certainly kind of a niche.

I bet it comes with horrid noisy enterprise fans though. Wonder if it's possible to jury-rig a closed loop cooler onto it with some modified brackets. We gotta get Stephen Burke one of these!

Let me give you another data point. This 8-core (two 4-core SMT-4 Sforza) system with 1.5TB in NVMe storage, 32GB RAM, BD-ROM and WX7100 workstation card is running about 165W as I type this. I think that would be a more typical workstation loadout than what Michael is testing here.

Cameron Kaiser

165W is still a lot at idle. I assume you're only running the usual suspects (browser and a couple terminals?)