VSX wasn’t a thing until POWER7, POWER6 still had only VMX.
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Fixed. Thank you; I must have confused v2.06 with POWER6 while I was reading about it.
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I want to note that my current project is in creating better menu’s / usb boot for G5’s with an eventual OC menu hidden in OFW. OFW by itself could be an entire operating system. And hell, even going by what I see in the firmware files, it has access to airport and bluetooth. So literally you could just have fun with unlocked openfirmware.,
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Their “phase” naming is a bit confusing — unless they have decided to call the electrical design phase 0? Here is the roadmap as I understand it:
- ☒ campaign 1 electrical design – €12 600
- ☐ campaign 2 PCB design
- ☐ Phase 1A, initial PCB design – €19 000
- ☐ Phase 1B, Fast SI bus simulations – €5000
- ☐ Order of 5 prototypes – €10 500
- ☐ Hardware testing with vendor software – €14 000
- ☐ Certification (including CE) – €12 500
It does look like they have increased their cost estimates since the first campaign. By my counting:
| Campaign 1 estimate | Campaign 2 estimate | |
|---|---|---|
| 0 Electrical | 12 600 EUR | 12 600 EUR |
| 1 PCB | 11 950 EUR | 24 000 EUR |
| 2 Prototypes | 8800 EUR | 10 500 EUR |
| 3 HW Test | 14 400 EUR | 14 000 EUR |
| 4 Certification | 12 500 EUR | 12 500 EUR |
| Total | 60 250 EUR | 73 600 EUR |
Ah shit
I’ll donate soon
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@q66 i got the driver source for the pxcab (fixstars gigaaccel) they are from reallllllyyyyyyyy old fedora7 but i built them on debian fedora 31 deepin and void on my laptop i dont see these in any repo
http://ftp.unicamp.br/pub/linuxpatch/pxcab/Fedora7/ppc64/
the src files are in here
could they be added and maybe optimized for void installs?
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if you add them, maybe? 
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So… anyone hear anything new about the upcoming RCS Condor? I’m getting really curious about it.
In the meantime, my dad has procured two complete Blackbird systems from Raptor, since he’s getting big into the security-focused side of computing. Should serve as a nice complement to his massive pile of x86 boxen.
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Tell him about the G5’s!
Condor? Was ist das?
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Es ist die dritte Raptoren Komputer.
Condor is going to be an ATX sized single-socket LaGrange board, with the main benefit being LaGrange’s OpenCAPI/NVLink lanes. A quick bullet-list of information:
- Will use PCIe switch (tweet)
- Will have 8-channel memory (T. Pearson comment at Phoronix)
- Official support for OpenCAPI, but not NVLink (RCS tweet)
You can see footage of the official announcement (on YouTube @ 03:30), or Talospace’s post about the announcement on day one of the 2019 OpenPOWER Summit NA
(Apologies for the amateur German, that is probably not the proper way to turn “Raptor” into an adjective)
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Well with the current COVID-19 disaster in full swing and supply chains crippled, Condor will likely be severely delayed. In which case… I might as well wait for POWER10 to finally drop in around 2021, as that platform is rumored to support DDR5, PCIe 5, offer a 7nm feature size on transistors, and a possible bump up in SIMD instruction width, at around 256-bit or perhaps even 512-bit, which would be a massive step up from the AltiVec era 128-bit SIMD of POWER9.
Suffice it to say, POWER10 should be ridiculously future-proofed for me.
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Show me proof of that. I placed an order for pcbs from Shanghai on the 1st. They arrived at my door today.
I’m not entirely convinced that the supply chain is “crippled” so much as slightly slowed. Most of China is back up to 70% or better capacity.
That said, I don’t doubt condor will be delayed. The niche and volume will make it an interesting part to manufacture.
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as i sit ordering small pcb’s, ram, and clothes from china and they arrive no slower then before covid-19 showed up only thing from china that i’ve heard of being slowed down is deepin v20 which deepin being based in wuhan its a bit more stalled then most regions.
all in all this panic on covid19 is laughable unless it gets way more lethal or spreads faster
that being said i can order custom pcb’s and they show up 2 weeks from now like always
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A smart man (winkwink) said recently that these sort of pandemics have a selection bias to appear more deadly because a lot of the mild cases go uncounted until the wave is over and doctors can start running antibody tests on the general population.
Basically, this idea that it’s 5% is about as logical as not believing in the moon landing.
Believing 2% is probably high as well. I’m thinking 0.5% will be the final toll.
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As a quasi-segway to keep this thread on topic, the two fanciest POWER9 supercomputers (Summit & Sierra) are both getting tasked to work on protein-solving for SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19:
Sierra getting utilized is especially notable, since it is meant for nuclear stockpile management, and therefore unlike Summit is usually not available for academic research.
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Wait, why do you need a supercomputer for nuclear stockpile management?
But that’s definitely pretty sweet
It connects to each of the systems individually and runs checks like weekly or some crazy shit like that. Its part of the automation program for the governments redo of the silo’s. It also does compute stuff in its off time, so doing things like this. But its not always available.
Simulations of the weapons to ensure long-term-stability/effectiveness is the rough understanding I have. I have also seen it mentioned as the natural result of nuclear test banning; so maybe nuclear weapon research as well?
Here is some of the official writing about Sierra, ASC, and NNSA:
computing.llnl.gov./computers/sierra
[Sierra] provides computational resources that are essential for nuclear weapon scientists to fulfill the National Nuclear Security Administration’s stockpile stewardship mission through simulation in lieu of underground testing. Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program scientists and engineers use Sierra to assess the performance of nuclear weapon systems as well as nuclear weapon science and engineering calculations. These calculations are necessary to understand key issues of physics, the knowledge of which later makes its way into the integrated design codes. This work on Sierra has important implications for other global and national challenges such as nonproliferation and counterterrorism.
asc.llnl.gov.
ASC Program’s funding largely comes from the NNSA Office of Defense Programs for nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship activities.
Sierra
Meeting the challenges of maintaining and refurbishing weapons in the nuclear stockpile as they age well beyond their intended
deployment life.
www.energy.gov./nnsa/missions/maintaining-stockpile
Because the United States also voluntarily ended underground nuclear explosive testing, NNSA uses a science-based assessment of the reliability of nuclear weapons to assess and certify the stockpile without nuclear explosive testing, called the Stockpile Stewardship Program.
…
NNSA scientists are able to accurately model nuclear weapons performance and physics without nuclear explosive testing. To accomplish this, NNSA conducts new scientific research and combines it with existing data from past nuclear tests, the nation’s long history in nuclear science, and computer simulations.
…
NNSA delivers leading-edge computer platforms, sophisticated physics and engineering codes, and uniquely qualified staff to support addressing a wide variety of stockpile issues for design, physics certification, engineering qualification, and production.
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Ah, makes sense.
That’s a neat use case. Not really a fan of death and destruction on that scale, but I never really thought they’d need those sort of simulations.