Talos II POWER9 Workstation With OpenBMC, PCI-E 4.0 Up For Pre-Ordering

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Talos II POWER9 Workstation With OpenBMC, PCI-E 4.0 Up For Pre-Ordering

Last month we reported that Raptor was planning to launch a new POWER workstation and now they have revealed their system specifications and pre-order details...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2-POWER9-Pre-Order

[Kendji]

What software can you run on one of these that can take advantage of this cpu & gpu horsepower?

[M@GOid]

How about a "starter kit" using a AMD FX CPU and a modest mobo, so the freedom and security of software are not something reserved to the rich?

[jacob]

Are you sure it's quad-core and not quad-SMT per core?

[jacob]

How about a "starter kit" using a AMD FX CPU and a modest mobo, so the freedom and security of software are not something reserved to the rich?

IIRC the website said it will also be possible to buy just the motherboard + CPUs. That should also bring the postage down quite a bit.

[Michael]

How about a "starter kit" using a AMD FX CPU and a modest mobo, so the freedom and security of software are not something reserved to the rich?

IIRC the website said it will also be possible to buy just the motherboard + CPUs. That should also bring the postage down quite a bit.

That's what the bundle is that's talked about in the article, $2300.

[Adarion]

Interesting to read the price difference between single CPU and dual one, it seems little compared to the overall price.
And yes, it has a price tag, so high, that few will be able to afford it. Same thing that (in my eyes) hampered their crowdfunding campaign efforts. Impressive as this may be, for normal end users it's probably too pricey (and few could actually use all the computing power). But maybe some enterprises will have interest in _trustable_ computing.

[M@GOid]

$2300 is $2000 more than the average dude is able to spend on something like this.

To me, this look like a scheme to grab money from fools that think they know a lot about security, and have a lot of money to spend.

IF they just target a cheap and common AM3+ ASUS/MSI/GIGABYTE mobo, people will just cry for the open firmware and never buy it from them, because obviously they will sell it for a profit with a price way above the market, like those refurbished Lenovo notebooks with FSF "Seal of approval".

The expensive IBM hardware is easy to put a extra on the price tag without too much foo..., I mean, people noticing.

[phoron]

Their preorder pages seem to fail sometimes (slashdotted?).
From what I gatther:
1 Power9 CPU 310 USD
1 CPU fan 110 USD
1 screwdriver to install/remove the cpu fan 12 USD (5"/32 hexagonal, is that easy to source locally?)
1 Motherboard 2150 USD
But:
1 Motherboard + 1 CPU + 1 Fan 2300 USD
1 Motherboard + 2 CPUs + 2 Fans 2750 USD

This does not include
-RAM (DDR4),
-disk controller (a SAS option is 300 USD, but I guess you can use any PCIe card, up to PCIe4.0, or a PCIe SSD, or even an USB3.0 HD).
-VGA (there's an VGA ouput on the mainboard, possibly from the BMC),
-any hard disk,
-power source,
-box,
-etc.

[WolfpackN64]

The expensive IBM hardware is easy to put a extra on the price tag without too much foo..., I mean, people noticing.

Do you actually know anything about hardware cost? To begin, the POWER9 CPU's are a LOT more powerful then anything on the AM3+ platform. It's the first motherboard with PCIe 4 expansion, has 2 CPU slots, lots of ECC ready RAM slots, redundant power supply's and probably the kitchen sink. You want brand new server gear at consumer prices? That's just impossible. That and the CPU's don't cost much considering what you're getting.