We have FreeBSD running with radeon driver and will have a ~linux4.20 amdgpu driver up by the time blackbird ships. Most the performance work is usable, our goal is to have a usable daily driver around Q1 <a href="https://github.com/POWER9BSD/freebsd" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/POWER9BSD/freebsd</a>
Hmmmm... the $1,129.99 for the "Lite" motherboard seems like a better value, especially because the "Lite" motherboard supports 22-core (88-thread) CPUs... or more importantly... the 18-core (72-thread) CPU, which seems like a good value.<p>However, at $799 + 4-cores or 8-cores, the main purpose of this board is for "toy" uses. There's no way that the 4-core IBM is going to be anywhere as fast as a 16c/32t Threadripper 1950x (going for ~$450 these days btw), but it would be the cheapest machine to build for the Power9 system.<p>So that alone is important. The "Basic" box would be for developer machines, while the "production" machine would be 22-core, or maybe 12-core SMT8 (the "thicker" IBM design where 8-SMT is possible).<p>Consider this: what if you were developing for Summit? Do you want to rent supercomputer time when you're writing your code? Or do you test it out on a cheaper 4-core, $799 motherboard machine? <a href="https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summit/" rel="nofollow">https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summit/</a>
This is great! I’ve been hoping someone — IBM or one of it’s partners like Raptor or Gigabyte — would make a lower-end POWER8/9 system available. The price of this board ($1K) is much more affordable for a hobbyist developer who wants to tinker with POWER, try porting some open-source projects, etc.
What is the space to the immediate right of the right RAM slot for? (<a href="https://static.rptorcs.com/BK1B01/images/boardlarge.png" rel="nofollow">https://static.rptorcs.com/BK1B01/images/boardlarge.png</a>) The white connector almost looks like an M.2 connector.
For dev workflows the high-end 22 core with dual sockets seems to perform pretty well already: <a href="https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-threadripper-core9&num=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-t...</a><p>Having such a powerful (or at least performant), free and risc-y machine has been a dream of mine for quite some time now...
If I can only find a good argument to my wife as why we need one :P
From the specs:<p>> 2 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports
> 1 Isolated BMC Gigabit Ethernet port<p>What does 'isolated' mean in the context? AFAIK ethernet connections are always isolated using transformers, so I don't suppose they are talking about galvanic isolation here.<p>Can anyone elaborate?
So basically a quad CPU + motherboard for $1000. IBM doesn't seem confident enough in the performance of the power 9 to publish standard benchmarks like CPU2017.<p>So if you want something with published scores on a wide variety of benchmarks that are included in CPU2017 get an Epyc or a Xeon.
It doesn't seem to say anywhere what drives the HDMI output, just "2D". Is that just for connection to a PCI card? Or is there some rudimentary VESA frame-buffer chip on it, just to watch it boot?
Can anyone recommend a 2U case that's known to work with this bundle and the 2U heatsink assembly? I'd prefer a short-depth case if possible.
a little bit disappointed that the motherboard only support up to 8 cores and actually comes with a 4 cores processor.<p>such low core count is making the product not that attractive - I can go with µATX MB + Xeon if I want computing power or a decent 6/8-core ARM board for smaller form factor. to just try a different ISA, I'd probably choose RISC-V to maximize my potential investment return.