5 ms·

This was originally going to be published on the internal ticket, but since the issues were raised here I'm going to post here instead. First, I'd like to poin

This was originally going to be published on the internal ticket, but since the issues were raised here I'm going to post here instead. First, I'd like to point out that Raptor already identified one of the major problems here -- that front line support failed to keep you notified of back end progress in diagnosing the problem. Raptor Computing Systems is an OEM and ODM first and foremost, not a services and support firm -- their capacity to handle requests is limited by the amount their customers are willing to pay at time of product purchase, and internal management of RCS is trying to balance support costs with all other costs and overall product pricing. They may not always get it right, but they are trying nonetheless. Yes, this was brought to my attention as a result of the review. That review has apparently caused sufficient damage that Raptor will now be reevaluating whether they can afford to service the individual market at this time, or whether they need to focus on business users only. My personal take: I am saddened to see x86 and locked computing profiting from this, but at the end of the day individuals have always been a difficult segment to target. They tend to want extremely low (below cost) pricing, high levels of service, and generally want to run various proprietary games on Windows while simultaneously settling for a false sense of security through open source firmware wrapping large hidden binary components. Out of sight, out of mind, purchase price above all other concerns seems to be the general takeaway for that market. As a result of this mentality, individuals are not currently Raptor's core market, and at the end of the day the individual computing market will get what it is willing to pay for. If that's locked (but cheap) x86 computing, open source itself may be in serious trouble due to the impending final lockdown of those platforms. If it's instead cheap low power computing (RISC-V, low end ARM) there's an awful lot of fat that will need to be removed from near-essential projects like Qt, KDE, Gnome, Firefox, Chromium, GCC, Clang, etc. to better fit them on the lower end platforms. I have not seen any developers yet willing to put in the time and effort to re-architect those systems for low end computing resources; in many cases the fundamental design would need to be changed (i.e. remove interpreted scripts as much as possible, go back to C/C++ or a similar low level language, etc.). In the case of projects like Chromium, it may simply not happen as the intent of that particular project is partly to serve ads and DRM protected content through a portal system, which aligns nicely with the idea of locked end user computing on x86.

Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
This reads like blame shifting, not accountability. > Yes, this was brought to my attention as a result of the review. That review has apparently caused sufficient damage that Raptor will now be reevaluating whether we can afford to service the individual market at this time, or whether they need to focus on business users only. See: the review caused the damage, not Raptor's failure to provide a good support experience. In any case, if you can't handle the support load, then you're probably right in reconsidering. I am really rooting for Raptor here, I'm not your enemy. I agree that x86 monoculture is awful for the ecosystem and ARM hardly presents anything better. This is also why I got heavily involved in RISC-V, and I wanted to find something similar in POWER9. I haven't laid hands on a working Blackbird yet but if it is as good as I hope it is, then I think you have a good shot if you just focus on scaling and fixing your support problems. If you can solve the support and get the system working, I would be thrilled to amend my review and publish a new one with all of the things I like about my shiny new Blackbird system. > I am saddened to see x86 and locked computing profiting from this, but at the end of the day individuals have always been a difficult segment to target. They tend to want extremely low (below cost) pricing, high levels of service, and generally want to run various proprietary games on Windows while simultaneously settling for a false sense of security through open source firmware wrapping large hidden binary components. Out of sight, out of mind, purchase price above all other concerns seems to be the general takeaway for that market. I can't claim to know what the firehose of support tickets is like, but know that there are users who don't fit this strawman. I'm one of them. I'm not here to run proprietary games on Windows. My stated goal is to promote the development of portable software and the adoption of freer systems by using my board to introduce POWER9 support to builds.sr.ht, giving access to POWER9 cycles to tens of thousands of developers. It's causes like this which help address the problems you mention of fat software needing to be improved to make alternative architectures viable. No small part of why Chromium is slow on ppc and fast on x86 is because there's a JIT for x86 and not for ppc, not necessarily because of fundamental problems in Chromium's design. But yeah, there are fundamental problems in our entire ecosystem with respect to disreagarding performance thanks to the luxuries afforded to us by fast x86 systems. Is the answer to this that we should be writing off alternative hardware models? No, the hardware should strive to be fast and the software should strive to meet it. Both parties have a responsibility to performance and we can't lay the blame at each other's feet and ignore our role in it. It's a slow process to change the industry, we must exercise patience. EDIT: it's been pointed out to me that Chromium has a JIT on POWER9. This doesn't substantially change my response.

Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago

This reads like blame shifting, not accountability. > Yes, this was brought to my attention as a result of the review. That review has apparently caused sufficient damage that Raptor will now be reevaluating whether we can afford to service the individual market at this time, or whether they need to focus on business users only. See: the review caused the damage, not Raptor's failure to provide a good support experience. In any case, if you can't handle the support load, then you're probably right in reconsidering. I am really rooting for Raptor here, I'm not your enemy. I agree that x86 monoculture is awful for the ecosystem and ARM hardly presents anything better. This is also why I got heavily involved in RISC-V, and I wanted to find something similar in POWER9. I haven't laid hands on a working Blackbird yet but if it is as good as I hope it is, then I think you have a good shot if you just focus on scaling and fixing your support problems. If you can solve the support and get the system working, I would be thrilled to amend my review and publish a new one with all of the things I like about my shiny new Blackbird system. > I am saddened to see x86 and locked computing profiting from this, but at the end of the day individuals have always been a difficult segment to target. They tend to want extremely low (below cost) pricing, high levels of service, and generally want to run various proprietary games on Windows while simultaneously settling for a false sense of security through open source firmware wrapping large hidden binary components. Out of sight, out of mind, purchase price above all other concerns seems to be the general takeaway for that market. I can't claim to know what the firehose of support tickets is like, but know that there are users who don't fit this strawman. I'm one of them. I'm not here to run proprietary games on Windows. My stated goal is to promote the development of portable software and the adoption of freer systems by using my board to introduce POWER9 support to builds.sr.ht, giving access to POWER9 cycles to tens of thousands of developers. It's causes like this which help address the problems you mention of fat software needing to be improved to make alternative architectures viable. No small part of why Chromium is slow on ppc and fast on x86 is because there's a JIT for x86 and not for ppc, not necessarily because of fundamental problems in Chromium's design. But yeah, there are fundamental problems in our entire ecosystem with respect to disreagarding performance thanks to the luxuries afforded to us by fast x86 systems. Is the answer to this that we should be writing off alternative hardware models? No, the hardware should strive to be fast and the software should strive to meet it. Both parties have a responsibility to performance and we can't lay the blame at each other's feet and ignore our role in it. It's a slow process to change the industry, we must exercise patience. EDIT: it's been pointed out to me that Chromium has a JIT on POWER9. This doesn't substantially change my response.