At this point the only real advantage I could see to Power 9 would be as a platform to expand the OS to 64bits with SMP, because if we are just using it to run emulation via Qemu that can be done just as effectively on X64 hardware.

While I'd love to stick with PPC, since it's different, I'd have to agree with Andre' s post about following the lead of the developers.

They've decided on X64, so even if I have the funds to buy a TalosII, I'd just have to dedicate it to running Linux (with of course the potential to run virtual machines that might run some of our legacy software).

If the future is X64, so be it.
I wouldn't mind a multi-core high frequency Ryzen based monster.

The SAM460 had apparently been emulated, the X5000 may not be far behind.

We might as well switch to commodity hardware.

$1700 or so would buy a pretty powerful AMD64 system (you don't even really need to spend that much).