What's missing in this picture
Since the whole idea is a POWER9 system for the more price-sensitive, the trimmings cost about $500 on Amazon (minus tax and shipping) and could probably be found elsewhere for less. I also got in on the 4-core $999 Blackbird bundle special price, so with the 2U HSF and tooling that was $1090 before tax and shipping (now it would be roughly $1380) for a base outlay of about $1600. This is a nice attempt at a barebones 8-core for $1950, also apparently minus tax/shipping. Yes, I know you can get an Intel system for less, so don't even bother posting that. If price is your highest priority, you already know you're in the wrong place, but at least now price can still be a priority for what is a decent libre system regardless.
Obviously the aim for us here in the Floodgap household is to use it as an HTPC and that's how I'll be reviewing it. If you just want it as a workstation or to jam in a closet as a low-end server, you can almost certainly cut this parts list further.
With ZombieLoad bringing down Intel performance up to 40%, even price is not exactly that different for Intel. ;)
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, it must be exciting to be waiting to receive that Blackbird. I'm hoping to do business with Raptor within 5 to 10 years (when I become more financially stable), and hopefully by then we will have a Talos IV with POWER11. :)
One question I have always had about Talos II in the back of my mind, though, is whether or not it would be feasible and reasonable to install some form of liquid cooling system so that the loud fans are taken care of, much like the ever-beloved and ever-trusty Quad G5. Thoughts?
The only time the fans roar on this Talos is on bootup. After IPL even under load the machine is almost inaudible, especially compared to the Quad G5. The G5 has been building a debug build of TenFourFox while the Talos has been doing the weekly smoke test on Firefox, and you still can barely hear it. The G5 isn't roaring either but it's throttled down into Reduced performance; the Talos is running at -j24.
DeleteWater cooling and POWER9 should be no big deal. On POWER8 it works:
Deletehttps://twitter.com/octaforge/status/1101683774356705280
Any news about firefox JIT and other required components to have the same experience on ppc as we have on x86?
ReplyDeleteI'm currently trying to do a systems update for TenFourFox at the same time, but you can see the repo here (and contribute!): https://github.com/classilla/jitpower
DeleteI wonder how will it work as HTPC. As far as I know ffmpeg has decoding assembly for 8bit H.264 from old times, but that is gonna be big endian I guess, but anyway fast enough, probably.
ReplyDeleteIt's going to be interesting to see how well will software decoding work with heavier and newer formats like HEVC, which is already underoptimised for x86, in ffmpeg. The brute power could actually suffice, but I wonder at what sorts of cpu usage/load will that go.
I've been using a Talos II with WX7100 for MythTV for a while now, that seems to work well even at 60 FPS / 1080p. It's only seen OTA TV and YouTube though, so primarily MPEG and some 1080p H.264 from a higher end video camera.
Delete