Raptor Is Going To Launch A New POWER9 Linux System

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Raptor Is Going To Launch A New POWER9 Linux System

Raptor Engineering who does Coreboot development work and is known for their previous Talos Secure Workstation system to provide a fast and fully libre workstation is going to be launching a new POWER-based workstation...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Talos-2-Teaser

[kylew77]

So excitement if they can pull this off successfully. Power 9 supports 4 or 8 thread SMP per processor core unlike SMP on x86 so with duel 24 core processors you get 384 threads of processing goodness! Also appears that rather you go with the 12 or 24 physical core chips you get a whopping 120 MB of L3 cache. You could actually install an entire mini linux distro and have it cache resident on this beast. If, a big IF they can get this into an affordable price range it sounds to be a heck of a system. 5,000 to 7000 would be great, like a high end gaming system but still obtainable. If it costs 10k, 15k, or higher it will be very niche. Also from what I've been reading this is the first platform to support pcie 4 so should be able to get some really fast nvme storage options going as well

[kylew77]

Does anyone know if any of the prior power chips were overclockable? Never had a powerPC mac when they were a thing so really don't know. Have heard of people changing voltage on ARM chips but I have never heard anything about overclocking on SPARC, MIPS, RISC V, or Power architectures. Is overclocking limited to x86 architecture? Wiki article on Power 9 says they operate at 4Ghz but was wondering if it was possible to push them higher like an equivalent Intel chip?

[Michael_S]

I downloaded the Power9 brochure from the IBM benchmark. This looks like a highly datacenter-focused part: 24 cores per socket, 120MB cache.

So my guess is that we're not talking "alternative to an Ryzen R7" or even "alternative to an i7-6900k" prices, we're talking the same prices as the previous kickstarter. Better value for your dollar than the kickstarter, but too expensive for my budget.

[Adarion]

I guess it won't be a bargain. But it still sounds interesting. If they're aiming for LibreCore/Libreboot support, I wonder if they also have a blob free USB3.

from the page "Accelerate you game development..." well, if someone does love to crosscrompile to x86 maybe. Iirc. the last gaming related device to use POWER were Nintendo's consoles.

[Dawn]

So excitement if they can pull this off successfully. Power 9 supports 4 or 8 thread SMP per processor core unlike SMP on x86 so with duel 24 core processors you get 384 threads of processing goodness! Also appears that rather you go with the 12 or 24 physical core chips you get a whopping 120 MB of L3 cache. You could actually install an entire mini linux distro and have it cache resident on this beast. If, a big IF they can get this into an affordable price range it sounds to be a heck of a system. 5,000 to 7000 would be great, like a high end gaming system but still obtainable. If it costs 10k, 15k, or higher it will be very niche. Also from what I've been reading this is the first platform to support pcie 4 so should be able to get some really fast nvme storage options going as well

The 24-core processor has 96 threads (4 per core), so you end up with 192 threads on a dual-socket system, not 384.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

dual seria,

[Dawn]

Does anyone know if any of the prior power chips were overclockable? Never had a powerPC mac when they were a thing so really don't know. Have heard of people changing voltage on ARM chips but I have never heard anything about overclocking on SPARC, MIPS, RISC V, or Power architectures. Is overclocking limited to x86 architecture? Wiki article on Power 9 says they operate at 4Ghz but was wondering if it was possible to push them higher like an equivalent Intel chip?

On Power8 you could do it with OCC changes. Power9 should be the same.

Perks of having open-source power management firmware.

[-MacNuke-]

the last gaming related device to use POWER were Nintendo's consoles.

They use PowerPC. It's an older ISA. Also the CPU is just a tuned up version of the PowerPC 750 from 1997. Also used by Apple with the name "G3 Processor".

[Michael_S]

The 24-core processor has 96 threads (4 per core), so you end up with 192 threads on a dual-socket system, not 384.

Still not bad, though.

Imagine playing Nethack on that bad boy.