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Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

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Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#1

Post by sandwichbop »

I see a lot of energy around RISC-V but I never see anything similar for OpenPOWER, on paper it seems like the dream machine with actual performance like the Talos Workstations albeit a bit expensive but this sounds incredible https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2PA1/intro.html >Designed with a fully owner-controlled CPU domain, you can audit and modify any portion of the open source firmware on the Talos™ II mainboard, all the way down to the CPU microcode.

is there something I'm missing? why does no one seem to care about OpenPOWER

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#3

Post by sandwichbop »

h2odragon wrote: post #2

$6,804.74 for that system. This is for people who want IBM + total auditability? Who have severe commitments to the ecosystem already?

it is expensive, as far as I understand it (I'm still just learning about it all), it is for those need total auditability, they mention EU a lot but also this seems catered to actual individuals who really want a truly open system that doesn't scarifice performance (RISC-V seems great for embedded but is still not there for high end workflows). To me, this sounds like a reasonable price for what they're providing but I understand it's definitely outside the price point of many but I must wonder if there's anything more besides price, is it really just that they're too expensive and this is why there's so little talk about it?

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#5

Post by h2odragon »

sandwichbop wrote: post #3
h2odragon wrote: post #2

$6,804.74 for that system. This is for people who want IBM + total auditability? Who have severe commitments to the ecosystem already?

it is expensive, as far as I understand it (I'm still just learning about it all), it is for those need total auditability, they mention EU a lot but also this seems catered to actual individuals who really want a truly open system that doesn't scarifice performance (RISC-V seems great for embedded but is still not there for high end workflows). To me, this sounds like a reasonable price for what they're providing bu…

I have vague memories of PPC instructions sucking compared to alpha, sparc, and x86, 20 years or more ago. I've got no specific memories what my objection was; but I recall dropping my plans to support it as a platform after a very quick look at it.

Perhaps it didn't have atomics at that point? That would've killed it for that project.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#6

Post by ensignavenger »

There are some people who care, otherwise it wouldn't even be a thing... but as you say, it doesn't get a lot of attention. I think it would be interesting to hear why? Why do companies implementing RISC-V and actively working on developing it not choose OpenPOWER instead? For that matter, OpenSPARC? I am not well enough versed in instruction sets to really comment, but I would love to hear more from anyone in the know?

Perhaps it is because IBM and Oracle exercise too much control over their architectures making it hard for a community to develop around them? Perhaps it is something in the licensing? Perhaps more fundamental problems with the design of the other instruction sets, making RISC-V easier a better base to improve on?

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#7

Post by dilippkumar »

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 permutation that can ship a real product that isn't 5+ years old.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#8

Post by ensignavenger »

ensignavenger wrote: post #6

There are some people who care, otherwise it wouldn't even be a thing... but as you say, it doesn't get a lot of attention. I think it would be interesting to hear why? Why do companies implementing RISC-V and actively working on developing it not choose OpenPOWER instead? For that matter, OpenSPARC? I am not well enough versed in instruction sets to really comment, but I would love to hear more from anyone in the kn…

I did some looking, and it appears that OpenSparc is copyleft (GPLv2) which, combined with Oracle Yuck, may be a huge reason it is held back from wider interest. However, OpenPower stuff seems to all be Apache licensed from their repos. I could not find the RISC-V license, but it appears to be extremely liberal as well.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?

#9

Post by chasil »

I think that POWER in gaming was drowned by AMD, and ARM suffocated it everywhere else.

Apple dumped it because the G5 was not going to work in a laptop, and if it couldn't beat x86 in that space, then the M1 has closed that door forever.

The Cell was an innovative design, but an AMD core and an ATI GPU on the same die was an onslaught that IBM wasn't going to survive.

ARM has been the top supercomputer, and it runs in tiny things. The pervasiveness that it has came at the expense of architectures that were not as flexible.

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