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The price isn't THAT high! Compare to an Intel 16 thread CPU + motherboard with ECC RAM and the ability to address more than 64GB of RAM. You're well into Xeo

by bradfa 8y ago

The price isn't THAT high! Compare to an Intel 16 thread CPU + motherboard with ECC RAM and the ability to address more than 64GB of RAM. You're well into Xeon parts probably in the $300-400 range just for the CPU, then to get a decent motherboard is probably another $200. So you're paying a 2x premium for this Raptor Computing offering, that's really not THAT bad of pricing! This pricing is an order of magnitude better than some of the previous Raptor Computing POWER systems which will hopefully open up their market to a wider audience and help drive down prices in the future.

mrweasel 8y ago
That's true, I didn't really considered what the same money would buy me in x86 hardware. Still I think the point is that many of us would like something like a Power9 for our desktop, but we honestly don't need that level of hardware, so we hope for something around half price to justify buying what is essentially a luxury item.
lunchables 8y ago
I agree, compared to x86, it is not that bad. I think the problem is, most people would have to buy this instead of their primary PC instead of a secondary machine to play with. That's a really big commitment for a lot of people. I genuinely hope this takes off, I would love to replace my primary desktop with a power system. And any way you slice it, this is just _AWESOME_.
wpietri 8y ago
Could you say more about what you see yourself as getting for that 2x premium? Skimming articles it sounds like the POWER9 line's main attraction is the potential for higher performance?
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  There's two, main attractions for Raptor: 1. All Intel and AMD CPU's are backdoored with management processors running black box software that's already had vulnerabilities. They refuse to remove the backdoors for consumer segment for probably shady reasons. These POWER CPU's have open-source firmware, OpenBMC, which is a little better on trust side. Personally, I think they're still backdoored somehow since IBM is one of NSA's longest-running partners. Still a risk reduction if we go from anyone might hit this closed software to open software anyone can analyze and improve. https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-intel-management-engine/ https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/what-you-need-to-know-about-... 2. People that want POWER ISA or just a RISC ISA at x86's performance. The x86 ISA is pretty horrible to some of us. It also locks you into specific patterns of execution, like its stack architecture, that can make it harder to efficiently implement alternative schemes. POWER could be more flexible for alternative designs. 2.1. PowerPC, like sold by NXP/Freescale, is still used in a lot of safety-critical fields along with sections of the embedded sector. While invisible to desktop programmers, it kept getting better and better for niches like with QorIQ CPU's for telecoms. I speculated developing on a POWER architecture for POWER-like targets might be easier somehow (idk though). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ 2.2. The separation kernels like INTEGRITY-178B were all originally designed for PowerPC boards like Curtis-Wright makes for aerospace and military. They might be easier to port in evaluated configuration to a Raptor than to x86. There are also a lot of hardware/software architectures for improving security that work better when you know what the hardware is doing in the first place and/or can modify the firmware. OpenPOWER has more potential for these designs with the main drawback being CompSci folks usually not able to afford expensive, new computers. Somebody might port an existing idea, though, that they were doing on MIPS, Leon3, ARM, etc. 2.3. The Amiga people also use PowerPC-based machines. They're willing to pay a premium to maintain their nostalgia. Wouldn't surprise me if someone ports MorphOS or something like that to these machines. So, there's a few ideas.
  - classichasclass 8y ago
    Some of the MorphOS people are dreaming about it and a few are purchasers. However, the MorphOS devs themselves haven't really said. https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11815&forum=11&start=225 https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id... Might be fun to see AmigaOS on one of these too.
tjoff 8y ago
Keep in mind that this board only has two ram slots. Having more than 64 GB of ram will cost twice as much as the motherboard+cpu.
- nrki 8y ago
  It support 2 x 128GB DIMMs, though :)
ac29 8y ago
Intel Quad Core Xeon's with ECC and >64GB RAM support are more like $250: https://ark.intel.com/products/134858/Intel-Xeon-E-2134-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-50-GHz- https://ark.intel.com/products/134858/Intel-Xeon-E-2134-Proc... Those are "only" 8 threads, but I doubt the 16 thread/4 core POWER processors are much better in practice than Intel's 8 thread/4 core processors.

by bradfa 8y ago

mrweasel 8y ago

That's true, I didn't really considered what the same money would buy me in x86 hardware. Still I think the point is that many of us would like something like a Power9 for our desktop, but we honestly don't need that level of hardware, so we hope for something around half price to justify buying what is essentially a luxury item.

lunchables 8y ago

I agree, compared to x86, it is not that bad. I think the problem is, most people would have to buy this instead of their primary PC instead of a secondary machine to play with. That's a really big commitment for a lot of people. I genuinely hope this takes off, I would love to replace my primary desktop with a power system. And any way you slice it, this is just _AWESOME_.

wpietri 8y ago

Could you say more about what you see yourself as getting for that 2x premium? Skimming articles it sounds like the POWER9 line's main attraction is the potential for higher performance?

nickpsecurity 8y ago
There's two, main attractions for Raptor: 1. All Intel and AMD CPU's are backdoored with management processors running black box software that's already had vulnerabilities. They refuse to remove the backdoors for consumer segment for probably shady reasons. These POWER CPU's have open-source firmware, OpenBMC, which is a little better on trust side. Personally, I think they're still backdoored somehow since IBM is one of NSA's longest-running partners. Still a risk reduction if we go from anyone might hit this closed software to open software anyone can analyze and improve. https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-intel-management-engine/ https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/what-you-need-to-know-about-... 2. People that want POWER ISA or just a RISC ISA at x86's performance. The x86 ISA is pretty horrible to some of us. It also locks you into specific patterns of execution, like its stack architecture, that can make it harder to efficiently implement alternative schemes. POWER could be more flexible for alternative designs. 2.1. PowerPC, like sold by NXP/Freescale, is still used in a lot of safety-critical fields along with sections of the embedded sector. While invisible to desktop programmers, it kept getting better and better for niches like with QorIQ CPU's for telecoms. I speculated developing on a POWER architecture for POWER-like targets might be easier somehow (idk though). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ 2.2. The separation kernels like INTEGRITY-178B were all originally designed for PowerPC boards like Curtis-Wright makes for aerospace and military. They might be easier to port in evaluated configuration to a Raptor than to x86. There are also a lot of hardware/software architectures for improving security that work better when you know what the hardware is doing in the first place and/or can modify the firmware. OpenPOWER has more potential for these designs with the main drawback being CompSci folks usually not able to afford expensive, new computers. Somebody might port an existing idea, though, that they were doing on MIPS, Leon3, ARM, etc. 2.3. The Amiga people also use PowerPC-based machines. They're willing to pay a premium to maintain their nostalgia. Wouldn't surprise me if someone ports MorphOS or something like that to these machines. So, there's a few ideas.
- classichasclass 8y ago
  Some of the MorphOS people are dreaming about it and a few are purchasers. However, the MorphOS devs themselves haven't really said. https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11815&forum=11&start=225 https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id... Might be fun to see AmigaOS on one of these too.

tjoff 8y ago

Keep in mind that this board only has two ram slots. Having more than 64 GB of ram will cost twice as much as the motherboard+cpu.

nrki 8y ago
It support 2 x 128GB DIMMs, though :)

ac29 8y ago

Intel Quad Core Xeon's with ECC and >64GB RAM support are more like $250: https://ark.intel.com/products/134858/Intel-Xeon-E-2134-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-50-GHz- https://ark.intel.com/products/134858/Intel-Xeon-E-2134-Proc... Those are "only" 8 threads, but I doubt the 16 thread/4 core POWER processors are much better in practice than Intel's 8 thread/4 core processors.