> Puts me off completely. Why would I spend that kind of money to have
> half the cores I have on my cheap X64 system?

Two times four SMT4 cores means as much as 32 hardware threads.

> OR, is this really the case? Power9 supports two threading options. SMT4
> which features four threads per core, and SMT8 which features eight threads
> per core. SO, is the processor quoted really a four core?

I'm (positively) surprised myself that a 4-core POWER9 seems to exist, but I find it unlikely that the Raptor people are confusing cores and threads (per core).

> In which case it would likely support either 16 or 32 threads simultaneously.
> Hey! Sounds good so far.

Weren't you put off by this just moments ago? ;-)

> OR, is this 'four core' processor actually a single core supporting SMT4?
> Not so good.

Considering I'm surprised by the quad-core variant, I find it extremely unlikely that IBM produces something like a single-core POWER9.