The Talos Secure Workstation Is A High-Performance Libre System

Raptor Engineering is working on the Talos Secure Workstation, which is being advertised as a high-performance, open-to-the-firmware system that is much better than the commonly antiquated "freed" x86 systems. However, getting a high-performance, free software friendly workstation doesn't come cheap.

The Talos Workstation is built around the open-source-friendly IBM POWER8 processor. Raptor Engineering describes it as, "Talos is the world's first ATX workstation-class mainboard for the new, open-source friendly IBM POWER8 processor and architecture. Raptor Engineering's Talos Secure Workstation brings unparalleled performance, security, and user control to the desktop. Designed for security-conscious, high performance users, the highly flexible and extensible Talos Secure Workstation board includes two Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) capable slots, utilizes open-toolchain FPGAs, provides a plethora of PCI Express slots, and includes a GPIO header, along with open schematics and fully open and auditable firmware."

The system will set you back $3,100 USD. You can find out more pre-release information on the Talos Secure Workstation via Raptor Engineering's site. Raptor Engineering is kindly going to allow Phoronix access to one of these systems remotely so we can run our own benchmarks for seeing how this POWER8 open-source system performs. Hopefully those results will be ready within a few days.