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Talos II

raptorcs.com

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Re: Talos II

#31

Post by jabl »

cat199 wrote: post #29
arca_vorago wrote: post #10

I have been keeping an eye on Raptor and Talos for a while now, and it's super exciting to see another cpu-platform with security and openess in mind. As a GNU+Linux guy, has anyone had any experience with GNU+Linux on the Power platform? What kind of differences could I expect. I've been itching to build a new AMD Naples 64 core (2x cpu) server, but I have to admit I'm tempted to just do AMD Ryzen for my upcoming de…

No idea recently, but even back in the apple PPC days pretty much everything worked. The things that didn't were typically lesser used desktoppy things or more community written software that didn't take endianness into consideration. If you're not afraid to dig into sources alot of things only took adding an endianness hack / byteswap to certain lines to make things work properly. Also to check into are some languag…

Most Linux work for modern POWER seems to be for the ppc64le target, which runs the CPU in little endian mode.

That being said, there's probably a lot of libraries with x86-64 ASM kernels in them which will run slower if they have to use the generic C/whatever version on power.

Re: Talos II

#32

Post by madez »

pedrocr wrote: post #25

>Like many fellow Europeans I don't have a credit card, so if that is the only way to pay, I'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy this. I find this surprising. At least in Portugal it's now common to buy stuff online with a credit card, either with an actual card or with one of those simple services the bank provides where they generate a virtual card on demand for you to use for a single purchase.

Why do you find it surprising? They cost money and provide little benefit (for me).

Some vendors accept them but charge extra for it, which I consider fair.

Re: Talos II

#33

Post by cat199 »

dom0 wrote: post #4
freekh wrote: post #2

Looks interesting, I didn't even know that you still could buy PowerPC she. Anyone know of pros and cons?

POWER was historically the architecture for "I don't care about efficiency, I just want a fast machine!". This hasn't really changed. For some applications they are still substantially faster than any x86 system, but they're almost always far less power efficient. That's why they're not widely adopted in data centres.

> That's why they're not widely adopted in data centres.

I don't think that's the entire picture..

If you're running systems at full capacity, throughput vs power consumption becomes a relevant equation - e.g. if the chip runs code 2x faster but is 1.5x less power efficient, I'm still saving .5 of power to get the same data processed.. Not sure of power consumption specifics for POWER, but they've been about to 4x faster than PC for some workloads.. E.g. 4GHz CPU + giant cache and 4x the registers will tear through matrices like a hot knife in butter... Also, there's the question of density vs performance - e.g. I only need X sq units of datacenter to process this dataset within the timewindow..

Also, historically the only people 'needing' power and willing to pay for it were companies with deeper pockets who wouldn't mind shelling out for AIX and the rest of the IBM stuff that goes along; linux is to some extent an 'afterthought'/'second tier' OS for this market though that has been changing in last few years. People using IBM or AIX have typically tended towards being risk averse and have been on POWER for ages; for everyone else, people haven't wanted to spend the money to migrate to a platform controlled by one company, etc.

Re: Talos II

#34

Post by dEnigma »

4ad wrote: post #28
dEnigma wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal of course, but here in Austria I know a lot of people without credit cards (myself included). The people who own credit cards are mostly frequent travellers, since it's easier to buy plane tickets if you have one (I was lucky enough to always have had at least one person with a credit among my travel partners, so I could just pay them by bank transfer or in cash later). AFAIK no one in my close family circl…

I also live in Austria. People look at me very weird when I try to pay with Visa/Mastercard credit cards at retail shops rather than using the worthless Maestro debit cards. I don't have any friends who have credit cards. The real problem here has nothing to do with credit cards though, but with the unavailability of Visa/Mastercards debit cards in many European countries. For example, in my home country, Romania, ve…

Interesting. I have to admit, I didn't even know there were MasterCard/Visa debit cards. If I may ask: Why do you think Maestro debit cards are "worthless"? Because they aren't part of the whole MasterCard/Visa ecosystem, or for other reasons?

Re: Talos II

#35

Post by anoother »

madez wrote: post #32
pedrocr wrote: post #25

>Like many fellow Europeans I don't have a credit card, so if that is the only way to pay, I'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy this. I find this surprising. At least in Portugal it's now common to buy stuff online with a credit card, either with an actual card or with one of those simple services the bank provides where they generate a virtual card on demand for you to use for a single purchase.

Why do you find it surprising? They cost money and provide little benefit (for me). Some vendors accept them but charge extra for it, which I consider fair.

I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the UK most credit cards don't cost money.

Unless you don't pay your bills, of course. But direct debit takes care of that.

Re: Talos II

#36

Post by abrowne »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #30
CrystalGamma wrote: post #21

I applaud them for pricing the board at around $2000 (though with the CPUs it's obviously more expensive). This sits squarely within my budget for a high-performance and trustworthy workstation like this (even accounting for taxes). However I would also have payed for faster CPUs (up to ~$1000 each for an 8- or 12-core processor). Does anyone know if all POWER9 processors fit into that socket, and if yes, if there is…

I'm stateside, but I've had lots of success paying for things online and at places in person that want a credit card by just giving my debit card (and not saying anything, ofc). That being said, YMMV.

If you're in the US, your debit card is likely a Visa or Mastercard debit card.

Re: Talos II

#37

Post by 4ad »

dEnigma wrote: post #34
4ad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in Austria. People look at me very weird when I try to pay with Visa/Mastercard credit cards at retail shops rather than using the worthless Maestro debit cards. I don't have any friends who have credit cards. The real problem here has nothing to do with credit cards though, but with the unavailability of Visa/Mastercards debit cards in many European countries. For example, in my home country, Romania, ve…

Interesting. I have to admit, I didn't even know there were MasterCard/Visa debit cards. If I may ask: Why do you think Maestro debit cards are "worthless"? Because they aren't part of the whole MasterCard/Visa ecosystem, or for other reasons?

In general, almost useless for online transactions (the whole point of this sub-thread).

Apart from that very low worldwide acceptance, and even when it's accepted in theory, it rarely works in practice in countries not accustomed to them. For example when I go to the US I often see the Maestro logo on various retail shops or PoS machine, but I have never been able to successfully make a transaction, ever. In fact, even ATMs are sometimes hit and miss, though those usually work.

Oh yeah, and they are in general unusable with hotels and car rentals, even in Europe.

It's the same with Amex in Europe. Almost all big supermarkets (Spar, Merkur, etc) display Amex sign on their entrance, but I have never met an employee that knew what to do with Amex cards. At least Amex cards, unlike Maestro cards, have, or can have good benefits like airline miles and whatever. You get nothing with Maestro.

Re: Talos II

#38

Post by qubex »

Despite the high cost (when compared to 'comparable' x86_64 hardware) I am very excited by this.

However I'm concerned by desktop Linux support and graphics driver support. It would be really miserable to get this kind of machine and then have a lacklustre desktop experience (though I'd be using it as a high-horsepower workstation, it would need to be able to dump computations onto the GPU and use ordinary free productivity software on the side).

Re: Talos II

#39

Post by fpig »

dEnigma wrote: post #34
4ad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in Austria. People look at me very weird when I try to pay with Visa/Mastercard credit cards at retail shops rather than using the worthless Maestro debit cards. I don't have any friends who have credit cards. The real problem here has nothing to do with credit cards though, but with the unavailability of Visa/Mastercards debit cards in many European countries. For example, in my home country, Romania, ve…

Interesting. I have to admit, I didn't even know there were MasterCard/Visa debit cards. If I may ask: Why do you think Maestro debit cards are "worthless"? Because they aren't part of the whole MasterCard/Visa ecosystem, or for other reasons?

A Visa debit card, at least the one I have, can "pretend" to be a credit card so you can enter it into a credit card payment form same as with an actual Visa credit card. It has worked for every online payment I tried so far. As far as I know, you can't do this with a Maestro card (at least not with mine).

The advantage of that over an actual credit card is security and cost control: I have a separate bank account only for my Visa debit card. This account has overdraft disabled and will bounce payments instead at no cost to me. I keep a balance close to zero on this account. When I want to pay something online, I quickly do a transfer in that amount from my main account to my "Visa account", then pay. This will immediately subtract funds from my account, or the payment will immediately fail if there isn't enough (but there will be as I just transferred it).

This means my card is fraud-proof except in the unlikely case of someone managing to make a payment during the couple of seconds between me pressing transfer in my bank app and pressing pay wherever I'm paying. And even if they did that, they'd be limited to the amount of my intended purchase.

Re: Talos II

#40

Post by madez »

anoother wrote: post #35
madez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you find it surprising? They cost money and provide little benefit (for me). Some vendors accept them but charge extra for it, which I consider fair.

I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the UK most credit cards don't cost money. Unless you don't pay your bills, of course. But direct debit takes care of that.

They surely do cost money, but you pay it indirectly. Somebody first pays the fees and the card itself, and ultimately you are going to pay.

There are alternatives that are cheaper and work just as fine. Thankfully not every country is already majorly infected by credit cards.

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