Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#21

Post by _chu1 »

SpecialistK wrote: post #20

I suspect IBM opened up the ISA (and some hardware designs) because they were quickly losing market relevance. Apple and gaming have moved on, new projects will use Arm or RISC-V, so the only markets I can think of are: * automotive and other legacy embedded applications * data centers with existing POWER applications * niche workstations like the Talos I do enjoy alternative ISAs, so I'd love to be wrong on this.

Gaming still may be interested if there's compelling enough options to get a leg up over the competition. The PS4/XBONE and PS5/XSX were both identical hardware, but that's starting to drift away with the PS5 Pro and the recently leaked portable Xbox. Who knows, x86 performance may hit another dead end for a while like it did the early 2010s and ARM may not fit their performance profile. I would mention Nintendo but sadly I don't see them making another non-portable console.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#23

Post by weare138 »

_chu1 wrote: post #15

If a company is serious about making POWER based SBCs or motherboards that are affordable yet fast enough for enthusiasts (no ECC, commonly used components), there would be a lot more interest. The price is what would make me turn away from POWER, as much as I love it and the ability for it to be based on completely open hardware. Someone with a lot of new ideas and a lot of energy doing something crazy like x86 bina…

This was definitely the problem. I was interested in OpenPOWER when it came out but there were almost no vendors in the space. Expensive Talos and IBM workstations and a handful of dev boards were pretty much it.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#24

Post by sillywalk »

dilippkumar wrote: post #7

IBM is currently shipping Power10 while Raptor ships Power9 in the Talos II. If I understand correctly, they had issues getting to a fully open source firmware solution for a Talos III with a Power10 in it. This actually made me hold off on spending $10k on a computer that's last-generation technology. I suspect I'm not alone - a lot of interest in OpenPOWER is probably waiting for Power11 and Talos III or whatever p…

I believe it was the memory controller that needed a binary blob.[0]

[ The next Raptor OpenPOWER systems are coming, but they won't be Power10 ] ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963941 )

[0] [ In the future even your RAM will have firmware; and the subject of POWER10 blobs ] ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26029798 )

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#25

Post by sillywalk »

snovymgodym wrote: post #14

The Talos stuff is cool but it's priced way too high for anyone who isn't taking a business expense tax deduction for it. Especially post 2020, the pricing for their products has gone way up. It's what, $6000 for the 4-core, 8GB memory entry level model? I know it isn't that insane considering what new and used POWER servers cost, but also is anyone using these who isn't locked into AIX or IBM i? Is there any real re…

I don't think you can run (legally) Aix on Talos. And I doubt you could run 'i' as it needs special firmware support.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#26

Post by snovymgodym »

sillywalk wrote: post #25
snovymgodym wrote: post #14

The Talos stuff is cool but it's priced way too high for anyone who isn't taking a business expense tax deduction for it. Especially post 2020, the pricing for their products has gone way up. It's what, $6000 for the 4-core, 8GB memory entry level model? I know it isn't that insane considering what new and used POWER servers cost, but also is anyone using these who isn't locked into AIX or IBM i? Is there any real re…

I don't think you can run (legally) Aix on Talos. And I doubt you could run 'i' as it needs special firmware support.

I'm aware, I was more asking if anyone is invested in the ecosystem for reasons other than being locked into proprietary IBM operating systems.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#27

Post by SpecialistK »

_chu1 wrote: post #21
SpecialistK wrote: post #20

I suspect IBM opened up the ISA (and some hardware designs) because they were quickly losing market relevance. Apple and gaming have moved on, new projects will use Arm or RISC-V, so the only markets I can think of are: * automotive and other legacy embedded applications * data centers with existing POWER applications * niche workstations like the Talos I do enjoy alternative ISAs, so I'd love to be wrong on this.

Gaming still may be interested if there's compelling enough options to get a leg up over the competition. The PS4/XBONE and PS5/XSX were both identical hardware, but that's starting to drift away with the PS5 Pro and the recently leaked portable Xbox. Who knows, x86 performance may hit another dead end for a while like it did the early 2010s and ARM may not fit their performance profile. I would mention Nintendo but…

I won't deny that it's possible, but I think it's unlikely. The introduction of AMD SoCs like the Steam Deck and Z1 suggest that a portable Xbox is possible with much less overhead than switching ISA (again)

I'm not even sure if the performance race is going to endure - Sony continues to hold the home console crown, Nintendo prints money with their hugely outdated Switch, and Microsoft appear to be pivoting to publishing more than a console exclusivity race they will probably never win ("going Sega")

As you said, the future of x86 isn't guaranteed, but if I were calling shots I'd look at Arm designs with embedded graphics like Exynos and Snapdragon before trying to build a fully custom design based on POWER and graphics from elsewhere (probably still AMD, and that single-source has been compelling enough to adopt even while the CPU performance was lackluster)

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#28

Post by duskwuff »

_chu1 wrote: post #15

If a company is serious about making POWER based SBCs or motherboards that are affordable yet fast enough for enthusiasts (no ECC, commonly used components), there would be a lot more interest. The price is what would make me turn away from POWER, as much as I love it and the ability for it to be based on completely open hardware. Someone with a lot of new ideas and a lot of energy doing something crazy like x86 bina…

> There's a group developing a POWER based laptop with a quad-core NXP processor

What I've seen from that project in the past does not fill me with confidence, and nothing I've seen since has changed that impression. Even if the project results in working hardware (which is uncertain), its performance is unlikely to be on par with expectations.

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23988511

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28578021

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#29

Post by _chu1 »

SpecialistK wrote: post #27
_chu1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming still may be interested if there's compelling enough options to get a leg up over the competition. The PS4/XBONE and PS5/XSX were both identical hardware, but that's starting to drift away with the PS5 Pro and the recently leaked portable Xbox. Who knows, x86 performance may hit another dead end for a while like it did the early 2010s and ARM may not fit their performance profile. I would mention Nintendo but…

I won't deny that it's possible, but I think it's unlikely. The introduction of AMD SoCs like the Steam Deck and Z1 suggest that a portable Xbox is possible with much less overhead than switching ISA (again) I'm not even sure if the performance race is going to endure - Sony continues to hold the home console crown, Nintendo prints money with their hugely outdated Switch, and Microsoft appear to be pivoting to publis…

I think a relatively substantial issue with swapping ISA is the software library, which is what's kept Intel in business all these years. Older/retro games is a large part of gaming, and being able to play 15+ year old PC games easily with a single download and no kajoogling is a major 1-up for the Steam Deck, especially when some games have better compatibility under Wine than Windows 11.

The Xbox Series consoles are capable of playing a select portion OG Xbox and Xbox 360 games almost natively, while presumably playing Xbox 360 games via an emulator, but they stopped adding new games to their backwards compatibility program for some god unknown reason despite the fact they were some of the best selling on the platform, but to me it seems like Microsoft wants to shift literally everything to the cloud, starting from Xbox and eventually getting to Windows somewhere down the line, which scares me honestly. Sun said the network is the computer, but I'm sure they meant a network you controlled, not goddamn Microsoft.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#30

Post by _chu1 »

duskwuff wrote: post #28
_chu1 wrote: post #15

If a company is serious about making POWER based SBCs or motherboards that are affordable yet fast enough for enthusiasts (no ECC, commonly used components), there would be a lot more interest. The price is what would make me turn away from POWER, as much as I love it and the ability for it to be based on completely open hardware. Someone with a lot of new ideas and a lot of energy doing something crazy like x86 bina…

> There's a group developing a POWER based laptop with a quad-core NXP processor What I've seen from that project in the past does not fill me with confidence, and nothing I've seen since has changed that impression. Even if the project results in working hardware (which is uncertain), its performance is unlikely to be on par with expectations. Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23988511 https…

I have felt the same way about it a bit, and I do think they need to change a few things if they plan to get anywhere with it. I do hope though that they're able to succeed, they aren't stuck with that design forever and what they learned could be applied to a successor model. They should really consider partnering or merging with Raptor Computing, the last thing the scarce POWER market needs is more fragmentation.
Post reply on HN