4 ms·

I think the main problem is that there are no low-cost POWER systems for people to tinker with like there are for x86 and ARM. You are limited to expensive high

I think the main problem is that there are no low-cost POWER systems for people to tinker with like there are for x86 and ARM. You are limited to expensive high-end servers, and that leads to a lack of software support.

dragontamer 8y ago
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/TWR-P1025/TWR-P1025-ND/3198171 https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/TWR-P1... Power certainly exists, its just less popular. The above board is under $250 and seems to be good enough for tinkering usage. Software support is certainly weaker. I think Power9 primarily exists for people who are planning to write their own application servers, or otherwise are willing to spend time recompiling OSS over to the Power9 architecture (Gentoo style or similar). A "real" server application will want to buy a Talos II Workstation, for $3000+. If you're worried about performance, you have to develop and test on the big stuff. If you're planning on a high-performance database optimizations (ie: lets say you wanted to improve PostgreSQL's performance), you wouldn't test on a Rasp. Pi or Intel i7. You'd buy a Thunderx2 ARM, Intel Gold, or AMD EPYC to test on. The architecture of "big boy" chips is grossly different than the smaller scale stuff. ---------------- And the way you "test" on big-boy machines, is through cloud services. You don't necessarily have to buy a full machine if you're testing (although local access is certainly useful).
- lambda 8y ago
  Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html That is starting to approach the price point where it's worth it if you want to tinker, but with something that is a lot closer to a real machine than a $250 embedded board. I tried taking a look for cloud services that offer POWER machines, but couldn't find anything that I could just sign up for and try for relatively cheap. There are a couple of universities that have free POWER clusters that you can request access to, but for tinkering I'd actually rather be able to pay for what I'd need rather than having to manually request access. Do you have references to cloud services that would allow you to easily get access to POWER9 systems by the hour? IBM's own cloud services only seem to offer bare-metal POWER8 servers by the month; as far as I can tell (from their fairly confusing pricing page and docs), all of their virtual servers or hourly servers are Intel.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    I remember hearing of some Power cloud offerings, but unfortunately I can't find any these days. I find old-press releases going to broken web-pages: https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom_offers_ibms_power8_on_runabove_the_public_cloud_instance_up_to_100_times_faster https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom... But that's not really helpful. Hmm, I guess Power8 / Power9 cloud systems seem to have disappeared. IBM really needs to work on getting cloud-instances ready for tinkering. > Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html With RAM and storage, it will be $3000+. With "price/performance" parts, like the $1300 18-core CPU (something that would make the entire purchase worth it IMO), you'd be above $4k+.
    - lambda 8y ago
      Oh, yeah, looks like you also have to add the CPU, that's not included in the base price. Although, for RAM and storage you can purchase that separately at cheaper prices. I just tried to sign up for IBM's cloud, to see if I could use the limited free trial or $200 credit to try out one of the bare-metal systems. Nope. The limited free trial only seems to apply to a few of their SaaS offerings; and the $200 credit also doesn't apply to their "infrastructure services" like VMs, bare metals servers, storage, etc. Additionally, it looks like you need to get manual approval for you account to be able to use the VMs; even once I added my credit card info, they tell me my account needs to be reviewed by someone before I can actually rent server time. On AWS or GCS, you just sign up and spin up VMs. I've used that many times for quick compat testing against different operating systems, some quick extra CPU cycles, deploying test servers, and so on. But on IBM's cloud, you need someone to actually manually approve your account before you can do anything but use their SaaS offerings. They really don't seem to want to attract people casually trying things out. edit: after a bit, they did approve my account for infrastructure access. But the bare-metal POWER servers can't be rented by the hour, only by the month, and they start at $1000 per month. Still not really helpful for casual exploration. They also have such wonderful usability features as requiring you to allow popups in order to configure and order servers or VMs.
  - 8y ago
- justincormack 8y ago
  That board is a 32 bit power board, not really much use for ppc64 development.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    And the Rasp. Pi 3 uses a small 4-core in-order ARM-A53 instead of the out-of-order bigger core ARM-A57 that's behind the ThunderX2. Point being: if you want to really develop for big things (like ThunderX2 or Power9), you buy the big thing. I'm not entirely sure if the "small embedded" stuff, like Rasp. Pi, really help.
- slededit 8y ago
  QorIQ is moving to ARM though, so don't expect that segment to continue. Also there's a pretty big difference between embedded PPC that has lost to ARM and POWER9.

dragontamer 8y ago

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/TWR-P1025/TWR-P1025-ND/3198171 https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/TWR-P1... Power certainly exists, its just less popular. The above board is under $250 and seems to be good enough for tinkering usage. Software support is certainly weaker. I think Power9 primarily exists for people who are planning to write their own application servers, or otherwise are willing to spend time recompiling OSS over to the Power9 architecture (Gentoo style or similar). A "real" server application will want to buy a Talos II Workstation, for $3000+. If you're worried about performance, you have to develop and test on the big stuff. If you're planning on a high-performance database optimizations (ie: lets say you wanted to improve PostgreSQL's performance), you wouldn't test on a Rasp. Pi or Intel i7. You'd buy a Thunderx2 ARM, Intel Gold, or AMD EPYC to test on. The architecture of "big boy" chips is grossly different than the smaller scale stuff. ---------------- And the way you "test" on big-boy machines, is through cloud services. You don't necessarily have to buy a full machine if you're testing (although local access is certainly useful).

lambda 8y ago
Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html That is starting to approach the price point where it's worth it if you want to tinker, but with something that is a lot closer to a real machine than a $250 embedded board. I tried taking a look for cloud services that offer POWER machines, but couldn't find anything that I could just sign up for and try for relatively cheap. There are a couple of universities that have free POWER clusters that you can request access to, but for tinkering I'd actually rather be able to pay for what I'd need rather than having to manually request access. Do you have references to cloud services that would allow you to easily get access to POWER9 systems by the hour? IBM's own cloud services only seem to offer bare-metal POWER8 servers by the month; as far as I can tell (from their fairly confusing pricing page and docs), all of their virtual servers or hourly servers are Intel.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  I remember hearing of some Power cloud offerings, but unfortunately I can't find any these days. I find old-press releases going to broken web-pages: https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom_offers_ibms_power8_on_runabove_the_public_cloud_instance_up_to_100_times_faster https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom... But that's not really helpful. Hmm, I guess Power8 / Power9 cloud systems seem to have disappeared. IBM really needs to work on getting cloud-instances ready for tinkering. > Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html With RAM and storage, it will be $3000+. With "price/performance" parts, like the $1300 18-core CPU (something that would make the entire purchase worth it IMO), you'd be above $4k+.
  - lambda 8y ago
    Oh, yeah, looks like you also have to add the CPU, that's not included in the base price. Although, for RAM and storage you can purchase that separately at cheaper prices. I just tried to sign up for IBM's cloud, to see if I could use the limited free trial or $200 credit to try out one of the bare-metal systems. Nope. The limited free trial only seems to apply to a few of their SaaS offerings; and the $200 credit also doesn't apply to their "infrastructure services" like VMs, bare metals servers, storage, etc. Additionally, it looks like you need to get manual approval for you account to be able to use the VMs; even once I added my credit card info, they tell me my account needs to be reviewed by someone before I can actually rent server time. On AWS or GCS, you just sign up and spin up VMs. I've used that many times for quick compat testing against different operating systems, some quick extra CPU cycles, deploying test servers, and so on. But on IBM's cloud, you need someone to actually manually approve your account before you can do anything but use their SaaS offerings. They really don't seem to want to attract people casually trying things out. edit: after a bit, they did approve my account for infrastructure access. But the bare-metal POWER servers can't be rented by the hour, only by the month, and they start at $1000 per month. Still not really helpful for casual exploration. They also have such wonderful usability features as requiring you to allow popups in order to configure and order servers or VMs.
- 8y ago
justincormack 8y ago
That board is a 32 bit power board, not really much use for ppc64 development.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  And the Rasp. Pi 3 uses a small 4-core in-order ARM-A53 instead of the out-of-order bigger core ARM-A57 that's behind the ThunderX2. Point being: if you want to really develop for big things (like ThunderX2 or Power9), you buy the big thing. I'm not entirely sure if the "small embedded" stuff, like Rasp. Pi, really help.
slededit 8y ago
QorIQ is moving to ARM though, so don't expect that segment to continue. Also there's a pretty big difference between embedded PPC that has lost to ARM and POWER9.