Raptor Is Going To Launch A New POWER9 Linux System

[torsionbar28]

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?

Overclocking is not limited to x86. It is limited to low budget kiddie peecees however. Those doing serious work on serious hardware have no interest in operating outside of spec, voiding warranties, or shortening component life.

[KellyClowers]

Overclocking is not limited to x86, however, it is limited to low budget kiddie peecee's. Those doing serious work on serious hardware have no interesting in operating outside of spec, voiding warranties, or shortening component life.

It's running around 4Ghz anyway, and of course all those threads. Not like you are going to be desperate for more power (or rather, if you are, you will just buy a bigger Power system from IBM...)

[mo0n_sniper]

Nice, thay have UnrealTournament running on it.

[Kendji]

Me want! Me cannot afford

[wizard69]

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

Perks of having open-source power management firmware.

Who in their right mind would overclock one of these systems? This is very much a workstation chip designed for reliability , it isnt a gamers platform.

[kylew77]

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

I was under the impression that there was going to be SMT4 and SMT8 variations so each processor has either 12 or 24 physical cores and with SMT8 you would have 48 or 96 virtual cores for the 12 core physical core SKU and 96 or 192 virtual cores on the 24 physical core SKU. That would mean for a duel socket with the 12 core part you have either 96 or 192 threads and for a duel socket with the 24 core part you have either 192 or 384 threads.

[kylew77]

How come we are starting to hear about these higher thread models of SMT from SPARC64 and POWER 8 and 9, but not from Intel or AMD? Would it be possible to make an x86 chip with say SMT4 so you take say an 8 core Ryzen and each core has 4 threads for 32 virtual processing cores? Not enough demand? Never see one in action but the Xeon Phi has SMT4 and isn't it supposed to be x86 architecture, why couldn't it trickle down to Xeon E5s or i7s or something?

[eigenlambda]

X86 smt is about the cores being too wide for one thread to use all of. 4 or 8 is probably about cache behavior, a gamer with smt4 would be annoyed about threads being resource starved on the processor

[Brane215]

Also, many threads on the same core tend to kill caches. There is a reason for that 120MB L3. It isn't there just to impress naive buyers...

[Brane215]

Anyway, they gave a big hint WRT to price when they mentioned biomedical research.
These folks aren't usually scrounging for cheapest gaming system.

Also, it seems like this time they have had much bigger support from IBM itself. I wouldn't be surprised if it is just a slight adaptation of existing IBM design.

NIce, but they'll have to show why exactly would one go for such a thing instead of classic AMD/Intel x86 portfolio.

Good price per thread processing power might be the reason. It depends on the price, ofcourse.

Power9 could be the next Alpha. I mean in a good, not "a tragic death" way ;o)