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This is extremely suspicious. A totally unknown company is making a high-performance PowerPC processor? Why?

• ikmckenz 3y ago
  Because they still sell like hotcakes even with the crazy price tag.
  • radicaldreamer 3y ago
    Why though? Is there something about the instruction set that is much faster for some kinds of processing (altivec?) or people just need to run old software thats hard to rewrite?
    • rus20376 3y ago
      At least part of the reason is not technical, but philosophical. See the third item in the FAQ https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html These CPUs are completely open and "free". In addition to the libre philosophy this guarantees a level of security unobtainable with any other CPU. The same rationale is behind the powerpc laptop project https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/
    • pram 3y ago
      Yes a lot of stuff historically that was built with IBM XL for AIX. A lot of Fortran software, a lot of bank related shit. This kind of stuff is simultaneously extremely critical and also just cruising on intertia.
      • wmf 3y ago
        Nobody runs that software on Raptor though.
    • numpad0 3y ago
      Maybe military? There were always $10-20k laptops in near-nonsensical architectures like POWER5, UltraSPARC, dual socket Pentium 4, and such. Maybe they run military radar tools and/or "gas/oil" workloads. Maybe it makes sense for somebody.
      • RedShift1 3y ago
        Dual socket pentium 4? I don't think that existed. Dual xeon sure, lots of those.
        • OmarAssadi 3y ago
          I haven't found a system with multiple Pentium 4s (but I think NetBurst Xeons were literally pretty much Pentium 4s without disabled SMP?). That said, who knows, I almost wouldn't be surprised; there's been loads of weird unique systems. Compaq SystemPro had custom SMP support to allow for dual 386s, which IIRC is even supported by Windows NT 3.1 officially. I think IBM x445s had some custom crazy interconnect for 32-way Xeon MPs, etc.
        • the-dude 3y ago
          Sure they did, the AsRock P4 Combo for example ( didn't find any in laptop form-factor though ).
          • RedShift1 3y ago
            You can't use both CPUs at the same time with that one. If you install both either something will explode, nothing will happen, or it'll just use one of them (probably configured using a jumper)
            • the-dude 3y ago
              Ah, oh. I suppose you are right. I just pulled that one out of zhe Google because I remember having a dual socket P4 motherboard, with just one CPU fitted though. This was in 2001, maybe I am misremembering and it was P3?
• MenhirMike 3y ago
  Raptor has been making POWER-based machines for quite a few years now. Their Talos line was one of the first systems to have PCI Express 4.0 back in the day: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Talos-2-Initial-Hands-On https://www.phoronix.com/news/Talos-2-Initial-Hands-On (EDIT: OP was talking about the chip manufacturer, not the system maker. And OP is asking a very good question.)
  • wmf 3y ago
    The chip isn't from Raptor; it's from Solid Silicon. Why does Solid Silicon exist?
    • MenhirMike 3y ago
      Ah, now THAT is a good and interesting question. I know that there's been a lot of funding for Texas chip fabs, but yeah, no idea who those guys are. (Edit: According to their website, they're fabless. So that's even weirder. And I'm surprised that one can trademark the paragraph symbol(§) like they claim to have done.)
      • jabl 3y ago
        Well, the fabless part is at least easy to understand. Building a new high end fab costs billions and requires deep expertise that takes years, if not decades, to build. Practically every chip company these days is fabless. Intel is the exception, not the rule. That being said, designing a new high end cpu is very expensive and complex. That a hitherto unknown company embarks on such a project is, indeed, very suspicious.
        • formerly_proven 3y ago
          > Practically every chip company these days is fabless. Intel is the exception, not the rule. A lot of analog and mixed-signal companies aren't: TI, NXP, ADI (with LT, ON Semi, Maxim, ...), Avago/Broadcom, AMS, Bosch, Infineon, Elmos etc.; also "the Japanese" (Sony, Fujitsu, Oki, Canon, Rohm and probably more)
• Shekelphile 3y ago
  The claim that these CPUs are 'cutting edge' despite being based on the older POWER9 uarch is dubious as well. I suspect this is simply a marketing sham and the CPUs talos continues to ship will be rebrands of their current offering. That said, if they have the original designs for these CPUs then it's not impossible for a startup to make meaningful improvements, but it almost certainly isn't going to be fabbed on a cutting edge node and certainly won't be competitive with anything else on the market (not that they were to begin with).