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

Talos II Lite

secure.raptorcs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: Talos II Lite

#21

Post by ajdlinux »

_b8r0 wrote: post #19
ajdlinux wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If "cannot" is truly literal (and it seems so - I can't see Raptor Engineering ever using a "buy an unlock code to enable socket 2" approach) My understanding is that the Lite board is essentially the full board, but with the second socket and related components removed from the design to reduce cost. > I'm not aware of anywhere else you can get a POWER9 box Raptor is the only company selling Power in a workstation…

> Raptor is the only company selling Power in a workstation form factor, and of course they've got the lowest entry price. Not sure if the AmigaOne X5000 board counts, but it might be worth looking here: http://amigakit.amiga.store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=3... - the motherboard is also available alone.

Right, I should clarify that when I said Power I really meant Power of the "Book 3S" variety (ie IBM server chips) rather than the embedded/QorIQ kind. Though I'm still very happy to see people selling and using PPC in all its forms :)

Re: Talos II Lite

#23

Post by archi42 »

mindcrime wrote: post #16

Nice to see us getting closer to the long awaited day when you can "order up an ATX form factor POWER motherboard, throw it in a case, add some RAM and boot it up". BUT... man, the price. Wowzers... This is still a bit steep for a hobbyist or anybody operating outside a corporate setting. Still, it's progress, so I'm not going to complain too much. And hopefully one day this catches on and as volumes scale up, the pr…

The "AmigaOne A1222" should be considerably cheaper, once/if released. Mind it's only a "QorIQ P1022 32-bit e500v2" though, so a little bit different than the Power9 (server?) CPU.

Re: Talos II Lite

#24

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #22

Issues with the EULA aside, this could virtualize at full speed Mac OS 9 and OSX/ppc vms, isn't that correct? Power 9 is a superset of the earlier ISA.

I don’t think ppc is compatible with power: it’s a derivative of an older version of the power architecture.

Re: Talos II Lite

#25

Post by madez »

daxorid wrote: post #12
Koshkin wrote: post #5

Open source firmware - nice! POWER9, supported by Linux - great! Not sure what the actual target customer base is, but the geek in me says I want it.

> Not sure what the actual target customer base is The target customer is someone who doesn't want to be spied on by IME, PSP, or TrustZone, but totally trusts IBM not to collude with FVEY :)

Is it unreasonable to generally distrust all of the big companies from the USA when it comes to security-sensitive components like for example networking and CPU?

Re: Talos II Lite

#26

Post by Unklejoe »

archi42 wrote: post #23
mindcrime wrote: post #16

Nice to see us getting closer to the long awaited day when you can "order up an ATX form factor POWER motherboard, throw it in a case, add some RAM and boot it up". BUT... man, the price. Wowzers... This is still a bit steep for a hobbyist or anybody operating outside a corporate setting. Still, it's progress, so I'm not going to complain too much. And hopefully one day this catches on and as volumes scale up, the pr…

The "AmigaOne A1222" should be considerably cheaper, once/if released. Mind it's only a "QorIQ P1022 32-bit e500v2" though, so a little bit different than the Power9 (server?) CPU.

Yeah, that’s a decent embedded CPU. I actually have quite a bit of experience with it (as well as the T2080, P1023, etc.).

I think it’s probably a little too weak to serve as a general desktop replacement though.

It’s somewhere in Raspberry Pi 3 territory in terms of actual CPU performance, but it’s a much more powerful SoC in general. It has GigE MACs, PCIe, SATA, etc.

It would make for a great router or NAS.

Also, even though they classify it as “QorIQ”, it’s really not like the other QorIQ chips. It doesn’t have the whole DPAA thing that chips like the T2080 do, which is honestly a good thing for the majority of use cases. The DPAA is overkill if you just need some Ethernet interfaces.

Re: Talos II Lite

#27

Post by navaati »

dis-sys wrote: post #18

Interesting! they are offering 22-cores Power9 chip for $2.5k each, that is significantly cheaper than a 22 cores Xeon (2696v4). can't wait to see some benchmark results showing what you can get from a dual 22-cores Power9. too bad that Phoronix only has the results for the dual 8-cores setup.

For the lazy, recommended price of the Xeon is $4000-ish on ark.

And the Power9 is SMT4, so that's 88 threads instead of 44 !

Re: Talos II Lite

#28

Post by kinsomo »

rbanffy wrote: post #10

My biggest complain is that it looks too much like a PC by default. I remember the distinctive looks of the beige-and-purple Sun and always colorful SGI boxes. But I totally understand why one would no go for a custom case when they are trying to make it less expensive. Heck... I may get one.

> My biggest complain is that it looks too much like a PC by default. I remember the distinctive looks of the beige-and-purple Sun and always colorful SGI boxes.

You could always spray-paint the case Indigo :)

Re: Talos II Lite

#29

Post by 4ad »

daxorid wrote: post #12
Koshkin wrote: post #5

Open source firmware - nice! POWER9, supported by Linux - great! Not sure what the actual target customer base is, but the geek in me says I want it.

> Not sure what the actual target customer base is The target customer is someone who doesn't want to be spied on by IME, PSP, or TrustZone, but totally trusts IBM not to collude with FVEY :)

If the firmware is open source, backdoors can only be present in the CPU itself. That is a posibility, however with Intel backdoors can be in so many more places, plus in the CPU itself. Sounds like an improvement?

Re: Talos II Lite

#30

Post by kinsomo »

I'd love to have a desktop like this, but I wonder how loud they are. I'd expect that POWER9 Heatsink/Fan assemblies are made more for data center use, where noise is an afterthought.

It's be awesome if they had heatsinks like this available for it: https://www.techpowerup.com/222984/noctua-unveils-prototype-.... I have something similar, and all I need is a slow 120mm fan to keep everything cool.

Post reply on HN