Well I’ve got to say, I’m very impressed by the design of POWER10 overall, but I’m naturally disappointed by the fact that Raptor won’t be able to get a product out to enthusiasts based on the new chip in the near future. I’m really hoping for the best, because I sold my Blackbird in anticipation for either the Condor (which was recently cancelled) or a board using POWER10 instead.
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There is credible (in my opinion) suspicion that Raptor may in fact be concerned about part of the firmware stack being closed-source, or in some other way not owner-controllable.
The tweet reeks of an NDA being in place, and the court of public opinion doesn’t look too kindly on those that enforce NDA’s too harshly.
I’m really curious to see what RCS has to say about what anti-features their current product lineup lacks.
I sold my Blackbird in anticipation for either the Condor (which was recently cancelled)
Source on this, please? I’ve been waiting for this release, which I assumed was in the near future. If RCS has cancelled the Condor and isn’t rolling out Power10 based system to fill that niche, then it’s looking a lot like there are no compelling Power-based systems on the consumer front for the next few years.
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I can’t paste direct links here, but there is a story about the Condor’s cancelation on talospace, Cameron Kaiser’s POWER blog. I’d suggest giving that a read.
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[T]here is a story about the Condor’s cancelation on talospace, Cameron Kaiser’s POWER blog.
Thanks!
It looks like the cancellation post was already linked in the thread, I just missed it.
Timothy Prickett Morgan has an article that speculates on how the POWER10 SCM vs DCM (single vs dual chip modules) may fit into IBM’s future line up:
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An overview of I/O changes and possibilities in POWER10, also by Timothy Prickett Morgan,
Note that this article seems to think the POWER9′/AIO/Axone chip may still be released, but from my discussions at the weekly OpenPOWER Virtual Coffee Calls (previously mentioned by @Nawrocki) I am quite certain the Axone chip has been cancelled.
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At this point, I am really debating on picking up a Power 9 or Epyc for a home server. Power 10 seems enticing, but I don’t know if I can wait that long. I have been waiting on Zen 3 to figure out if I want to build a workstation around Zen 3 or save some money and got to Zen 2.5 as I am coming from Poor Dozer on AM3+
I have not seen the power consumption numbers on Power9. Are they anywhere comparable to Epyc on Zen 1.5 at least? That has always been the factor that has made me choose Intel Compatible in the past for home servers. Old Power/PowerPC was most efficient running at full tilt which meant space heater and high electricity usage.
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What do you intend to run on it, that you need Epyc or Power for home use? Just curious.
Phoronix has done benchmarking on Talos II devices, which I think are about as accessible to average users as Epyc systems.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-epyc-xeon&num=1
tl;dr - Performance generally falls between Epyc 7601 and Epyc 7551.
Unfortunately, he only had remote access for testing, so could not pull raw performance-per-watt numbers. 
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Would like to run a router in VM with fiber add in cards since I am currently wiring my house for 10Gb fiber. Plan to attach that to some layer 3 switches with VLANs so that I can separate my wireless home automation stuff from my regular wireless and hard wired stuff.
From there, a couple of build servers for ARM and AMD64 (and possibly Power)
And some home lab VMs for some certifications that I plan to acquire in the near future.
Currenly the home automation stuff is running on a RPI4 and Odroid N2 with their own network, but I would like to be able to access everything on one network instead of having to connect to a different wireless network and all that jazz.
For the most part, I need the PCIe lanes more than anything for add in cards
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Go Epyc.
Buy Power because you’re explicitly interested in Power, and for no other reason. You won’t see Power specialties listed in the majority of the jobs that care about those certifications.
Nothing you’ve mentioned requires the security of a fully open platform, and the price-per-performance-per-watt isn’t going to come out in favor of Power.
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Fair enough. I am a fan of Power and I would like to get back into the platform if it is viable. The only real issue is power consumption for me. I used to administer power servers and some MacOS Servers back in the day as well. Plus I was big in the iMac scene with G3s and G4s.
**Edit
Also going with power will force me to give back to the community to help with software optimizations. I have seen that Power is not doing to well with ffmpeg and media codecs
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For this, a Threadripper would probably be enough IMO, but I’m guessing you aren’t stopping just at virtualizing 1 router only. But you did your research and know your requirements better than I can guess them, just pointing out for others.
Why are you using a L3 switch with a router instead of a simple (managed) L2 switch (unless you already had it or you got a nice offer for them)? Currently doing CCNA3, so I have no idea how a serious infrastructure looks, aside from router-on-a-stick (which we have at my work) and a simple network with only L3 switches. Sorry for deviating from the POWER thread.
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I may be getting a good deal at DRMO on the layer 3. Otherwise, I am looking at some ubiquity or microtik layer 2 switches with SFP+ powers to allow me to divide the house into 4 major sections with ethernet connectivity as well.
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Larabel, Michael — 2020-09-15
IBM Contributing A2O Processor Core To OpenPOWER Community
IBM announced today at the OpenPOWER Summit 2020 that they are contributing the A2O POWER processor core and Open Cognitive Environment…
I do need to double check what this A2O core comes from, the previous core IBM open-sourced came from their BlueGene supercomputer, and this A2O does seem related. The ISA version (Power 2.07) is the same as used by POWER8, but this is clearly different, for instance, it is SMT2 rather than SMT8.
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Will do!
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So we shall.
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Phoronix now has an overview post about the recent OpenPOWER Summit NA event; this is where the previously mentioned A2O core announced. Videos are not yet available, but slides currently are.
Larabel, Michael (Phoronix) – 2020-09-20
OpenPOWER Summit 2020 Was This Week With Many Interesting Hardware/Software Talks
Videos have now been uploaded to YouTube, here is the OpenPOWER Summit NA 2020 playlist:
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Hangover, a Wine project to get Win86 binaries running on Arm, has merged in Power support.
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