> Great or Awesome (depending on the price)

Indeed. And the Talos II (which includes Blackbird in this context) has not been a sideshow at the summit apparently:

"Front and center at OpenPOWER Summit Europe is the Talos II developer workstation by Raptor Computing Systems. The first POWER9 developer workstation, the Talos II will enable more developers to begin working on Power technology due to its affordable price point."
https://openpowerfoundation.org/blogs/developer-adoption-summit-europe/

Impressions from the Blackbird announcement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvey2Nsc3oY
https://openpowerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/06-RaptorCompSys-TimPearson-keynote.pdf
https://openpowerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_4270.jpg
https://twitter.com/stewartsmith/status/1047757825898897408
https://twitter.com/michellearankin/status/1047758225062461440

Phoronix news article:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Blackbird-Announced

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 02.11.2018 - 14:52 ]

Quote:
I have the onboard SAS-controller and I use SATA drives on the SAS inputs. The speed of the drives is only slower by a marginal amount compared to a SAS hard drive. This thing is just blistering fast, and although the fans run at full speed during the boot cycle, the machine is whisper quiet during operation.

Quote:

This would be cool, could bring life again to my quite liked cooler Master atc 620 case which currently still houses the retired peg1 and is just coollecting dust AT the attic.
But needs a certain os of course to attract me.

> a big improvement are the onboard SATA-connectors.

Some details revealed:
https://twitter.com/RaptorCompSys/status/1048373354695208960
https://twitter.com/RaptorCompSys/status/1048546874746130433

Phoronix news article:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Blackbird-Details

Blackbird article on the Raptor wiki:
https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Blackbird

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 07.10.2018 - 22:17 ]

A very interesting side effect from the Talos II development is the quite big effort of porting Chromium to ppc64 klick. Albeith it seems most of this is LE stuff.

> porting Chromium to ppc64 [...] is LE stuff.

Yes, and it's way less effort because the Chromium sources are LE-specific in many places. However, there's also an effort to port to big-endian PPC64:

https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Porting/Chromium/BE

Thanks Andeas_Wolf! It was only one klick away and I did not realize it. Hmm, this might come from the TenFourFox or Adelie Linux corner? The still have the focus on ppc BE.

> this might come from the TenFourFox or Adelie Linux corner?

MarcusC is Marcus Comstedt, who is an old Amiga acquaintance.

> The still have the focus on ppc BE.

Adelie Linux does, yes. Cameron Kaiser on the other hand, while still doing big-endian work for TenFourFox on OSX/PPC for obvious reasons, is focussing on little-endian for his Linux/POWER9 work.

Phoronix did some benchmarking with the Talos 2 and IBM Power 9:


Raptor Talos II POWER9 Benchmarks Against AMD Threadripper & Intel Core i9

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-threadripper-core9&num=1

Ubuntu, hm. I had Ubuntu 18.10 on my T2 and it was not ready for prime time on this machine.
Fedora and Debian seem to have spent more time on the system and not the fluff. Work continues I'm sure.

> Blackbird article on the Raptor wiki:
> https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Blackbird

Projected price for the board (without CPU, RAM etc.) seems to be 875 USD:

https://twitter.com/RaptorCompSys/status/1062551451220787200
https://www.strawpoll.me/16840668

Phoronix news article:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Blackbird-Possible-Price

Quote:

875USD seems a fair price for a Power9 systemboard.

We are looking into 1800 Euro for a complete system? That's nearly X5000 territory.

> That's nearly X5000 territory.

Yes, but coming with:
- CPU: 5 to 10 times faster per core (estimated and depending on task)
- PCIe: two generations ahead
- RAM: one generation ahead
- SATA: one generation ahead, two ports more
- USB: one generation ahead
- GbE: two ports more

Quote:
Hardware being sold at around the 2000 EUR mark is not unusual per se, though. The entry level Apple iMac Pro with an 8-core Xeon CPU starts at 5000 EUR, for instance.

The question is whether you are content with the offered performance level and available software options.

"The question is whether you are content with the offered performance level and available software options."

That is exactly the point. Despite I would love to use both for everyday tasks neither MorphOS nor AmigaOS have the necessary software. I appreciate that these are hobbyist operating systems, but €2000+/- is too much for most people. Case in point, despite having a low-spec CPU and the wrong FPU many people are still looking forward for the A1222 just because of the affordable price point.

Quote:

Very true. But which current software available on MorphOS would make full use of these specs? Same thing with the Amiga OS running on the X5000.

>> - CPU: 5 to 10 times faster per core (estimated and depending on task)
>> - PCIe: two generations ahead
>> - RAM: one generation ahead
>> - SATA: one generation ahead, two ports more
>> - USB: one generation ahead
>> - GbE: two ports more

> which current software available on MorphOS would make
> full use of these specs?

These use cases come to my mind right away:

CPU: web browsing, HD video decoding, emulation
SATA: connection of more than 2 devices

Quote:


Every browser.

Sooo your sales pitch is we should all buy a $2000 machine for browsing?

Sorry folks, but this is purely hobbyist land here, so the prices can't be that exorbitant if you wish to survive. As stated earlier, the whole reason everyone is excited about the Tabor is the fact that it is finally a piece of OS4 hardware with a somewhat reasonable price.

I might be interested if all of the abovementioned features were fully utilized with MorphOS but they aren't. And even if they were and this machine would be awesome, there still needs to be more software available before people would start looking at it as a replacement for Windows, MAC or Linux..

A reasonably priced machine that can be used for OS4 and MorphOS is really the way to go, as it would open a market of new users to the fold. Then maybe developers would start developing apps and then more powerful machines could be built and sold.

Trying to sell the pinnacle machine first is a recipe for failure..
Small steps and coordination is what is needed.. (And asinine litgation to stop for Gods sake)

Quote:

Come on, I need a 2000 euro machine to use a browser?

> I need a 2000 euro machine to use a browser?

No, but the result of using a demanding website or web app on a POWER9-based system vs. using it on an X5000 or even slower system (without JavaScript JIT in both cases) may surprise you. Price of Blackbird and the X5000 will be similar, but performance will be worlds apart.

Yes I understand that there is big difference but the price is still exorbitant. Hopefully these will be popular enough for the price to come down or MorphOS x86 to happen.

> there still needs to be more software available before people would
> start looking at it as a replacement for Windows, MAC or Linux..

I don't see a possible MorphOS port to Blackbird as a means to make people switch from Windows, macOS or Linux to MorphOS, but simply as a nice opportunity for people who want to run MorphOS anyway and who are ready to pay such price for a MorphOS system (with the possibility to also run Linux) but want a better price-performance ratio than offered by the X5000. I'm fully aware that this is a very small group of people :-)

> Trying to sell the pinnacle machine first is a recipe for failure..

You mean Raptor should have made/sold Blackbird first and Talos II after this?

> asinine litgation to stop for Gods sake

Fortunately this doesn't really harm MorphOS :-)

> Hopefully these will be popular enough for [...] MorphOS x86 to happen.

;-)