
Basic Blackbird Bundle with 4-core IBM Power9 CPU - pentestercrab
https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html
======
kev009
We have FreeBSD running with radeon driver and will have a ~linux4.20 amdgpu
driver up by the time blackbird ships. Most the performance work is usable,
our goal is to have a usable daily driver around Q1
[https://github.com/POWER9BSD/freebsd](https://github.com/POWER9BSD/freebsd)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
That's great, I've been hoping to see amdgpu support on FreeBSD. Thanks for
your hard work!

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dragontamer
Hmmmm... the $1,129.99 for the "Lite" motherboard seems like a better value,
especially because the "Lite" motherboard supports 22-core (88-thread) CPUs...
or more importantly... the 18-core (72-thread) CPU, which seems like a good
value.

However, at $799 + 4-cores or 8-cores, the main purpose of this board is for
"toy" uses. There's no way that the 4-core IBM is going to be anywhere as fast
as a 16c/32t Threadripper 1950x (going for ~$450 these days btw), but it would
be the cheapest machine to build for the Power9 system.

So that alone is important. The "Basic" box would be for developer machines,
while the "production" machine would be 22-core, or maybe 12-core SMT8 (the
"thicker" IBM design where 8-SMT is possible).

Consider this: what if you were developing for Summit? Do you want to rent
supercomputer time when you're writing your code? Or do you test it out on a
cheaper 4-core, $799 motherboard machine?
[https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summit/](https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summit/)

~~~
classichasclass
I think the other advantage is the size. The EATX size of the T2 and T2 Lite
is a bit bulky for some applications. We're actually thinking of sticking the
4-core Blackbird we ordered in the home theatre and using it for media as well
as general computing. The mATX form factor just gives you much more
flexibility.

~~~
mwcampbell
Can you please share details about your HTPC build? What case will you be
using? Did you choose Raptor's 2U heatsink assembly, their 3U HSF assembly, or
something else?

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profquail
This is great! I’ve been hoping someone — IBM or one of it’s partners like
Raptor or Gigabyte — would make a lower-end POWER8/9 system available. The
price of this board ($1K) is much more affordable for a hobbyist developer who
wants to tinker with POWER, try porting some open-source projects, etc.

~~~
mrweasel
The price is a little high, sadly. I don't blame them, it can't be that cheap
to design and produce, and it really is what I would like to see as a desktop
option.

I mean it really sucks that we cry for non-X86 desktops, and when someone
finally delivers, we complain about price. It's just little hard to justify
for something I'd basically buy as a "toy".

~~~
bradfa
The price isn't _THAT_ high!

Compare to an Intel 16 thread CPU + motherboard with ECC RAM and the ability
to address more than 64GB of RAM. You're well into Xeon parts probably in the
$300-400 range just for the CPU, then to get a decent motherboard is probably
another $200. So you're paying a 2x premium for this Raptor Computing
offering, that's really not _THAT_ bad of pricing!

This pricing is an order of magnitude better than some of the previous Raptor
Computing POWER systems which will hopefully open up their market to a wider
audience and help drive down prices in the future.

~~~
wpietri
Could you say more about what you see yourself as getting for that 2x premium?
Skimming articles it sounds like the POWER9 line's main attraction is the
potential for higher performance?

~~~
nickpsecurity
There's two, main attractions for Raptor:

1\. All Intel and AMD CPU's are backdoored with management processors running
black box software that's already had vulnerabilities. They refuse to remove
the backdoors for consumer segment for probably shady reasons. These POWER
CPU's have open-source firmware, OpenBMC, which is a little better on trust
side. Personally, I think they're still backdoored somehow since IBM is one of
NSA's longest-running partners. Still a risk reduction if we go from anyone
might hit this closed software to open software anyone can analyze and
improve.

[https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/what-you-need-to-know-
about-...](https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-
intel-management-engine/)

2\. People that want POWER ISA or just a RISC ISA at x86's performance. The
x86 ISA is pretty horrible to some of us. It also locks you into specific
patterns of execution, like its stack architecture, that can make it harder to
efficiently implement alternative schemes. POWER could be more flexible for
alternative designs.

2.1. PowerPC, like sold by NXP/Freescale, is still used in a lot of safety-
critical fields along with sections of the embedded sector. While invisible to
desktop programmers, it kept getting better and better for niches like with
QorIQ CPU's for telecoms. I speculated developing on a POWER architecture for
POWER-like targets might be easier somehow (idk though).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ)

2.2. The separation kernels like INTEGRITY-178B were all originally designed
for PowerPC boards like Curtis-Wright makes for aerospace and military. They
might be easier to port in evaluated configuration to a Raptor than to x86.
There are also a lot of hardware/software architectures for improving security
that work better when you know what the hardware is doing in the first place
and/or can modify the firmware. OpenPOWER has more potential for these designs
with the main drawback being CompSci folks usually not able to afford
expensive, new computers. Somebody might port an existing idea, though, that
they were doing on MIPS, Leon3, ARM, etc.

2.3. The Amiga people also use PowerPC-based machines. They're willing to pay
a premium to maintain their nostalgia. Wouldn't surprise me if someone ports
MorphOS or something like that to these machines.

So, there's a few ideas.

~~~
classichasclass
Some of the MorphOS people are dreaming about it and a few are purchasers.
However, the MorphOS devs themselves haven't really said.

[https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id...](https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11815&forum=11&start=225)

Might be fun to see AmigaOS on one of these too.

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tareqak
What is the space to the immediate right of the right RAM slot for?
([https://static.rptorcs.com/BK1B01/images/boardlarge.png](https://static.rptorcs.com/BK1B01/images/boardlarge.png))
The white connector almost looks like an M.2 connector.

~~~
hlandau
It's a connector for the optional FlexVer module they intend to release in the
future. It's not OCuLink.

~~~
LeonM
Thanks!

More information on FlexVer:
[https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/documentation/flexve...](https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/documentation/flexver_intro.pdf)

> FlexVer™ is a new, owner-controlled security technology designed to
> safeguard critical data and applications in the event of software or
> hardware tampering. FlexVer™ allows a system to be provisioned in a trusted
> physical environment, then deployed to an untrustworthy physical location
> while retaining system integrity.

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freekh
For dev workflows the high-end 22 core with dual sockets seems to perform
pretty well already:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-t...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-threadripper-
core9&num=1)

Having such a powerful (or at least performant), free and risc-y machine has
been a dream of mine for quite some time now... If I can only find a good
argument to my wife as why we need one :P

~~~
rdtsc
> high-end 22 core with dual sockets seems to perform pretty well already

Oh nice! Almost 2x the speed of i9 for 7-Zip compression and ahead of everyone
on LLVM compilation speed and Rust prime benchmarks.

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LeonM
From the specs:

> 2 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports > 1 Isolated BMC Gigabit Ethernet port

What does 'isolated' mean in the context? AFAIK ethernet connections are
always isolated using transformers, so I don't suppose they are talking about
galvanic isolation here.

Can anyone elaborate?

~~~
pabs3
Some BMCs have the ability to listen on both the normal ports and the BMC-
dedicated port (or just the sole normal port). Some do that all the time and
some do that when the BMC-dedicated port isn't plugged in.

I think this research was where I heard about this:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/630778/](https://lwn.net/Articles/630778/)

~~~
LeonM
Makes sense, thanks!

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sliken
So basically a quad CPU + motherboard for $1000. IBM doesn't seem confident
enough in the performance of the power 9 to publish standard benchmarks like
CPU2017.

So if you want something with published scores on a wide variety of benchmarks
that are included in CPU2017 get an Epyc or a Xeon.

~~~
tpearson-raptor
Have you seen
[https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/results/res2018q3/cpu2017-20180...](https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/results/res2018q3/cpu2017-20180805-08109.html)
from back in July? There are more submissions as well if you want to browse
around a bit.

~~~
sliken
Ah, looks like someone formatted the IBM entries incorrectly, at least unlike
all the AMD and Intel entries I could find.

Usually the description has a CPU entry something like "Intel Xeon Gold 6148".
The IBM entries have things like "3.4 - 3.8 GHz, 40 core, SLES". So if you
search any of the lists for "power9" you don't find anything.

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ncmncm
It doesn't seem to say anywhere what drives the HDMI output, just "2D". Is
that just for connection to a PCI card? Or is there some rudimentary VESA
frame-buffer chip on it, just to watch it boot?

~~~
MrRadar
It has a server-style BMC which drives the HDMI port. It's only a basic 2D
framebuffer device (with basic 3D "support" through the LLVMpipe OpenGL/Mesa
software rasterizer), though Raptor Computer claims it's good enough for daily
use. Obviously if you need high-performance 3D or more than 1 display you need
would an add-in card.

~~~
jandrese
You might run into problems with compositing window managers on that
interface. Gnome supposedly has a pure-software fallback now, but it may be
less than ideal.

Most systems assume a minimal level of 3D acceleration support for desktop
use. Watching video, browsing the web, etc... could suck down a lot more CPU
than you're used to.

NBD if you're using it as a server, but problematic as a daily driver desktop.

~~~
tpearson-raptor
For what it's worth, LLVMPipe normally picks up the basic 3D requirements
without much trouble. When using Xorg though you definitely want to enable the
2D acceleration and disable Glamor; the chip is a fairly decent 2D
framebuffer.

On a slightly different topic, I'm not sure this push to force libre software
into requiring a 3D GPU is a good idea while every 3D capable card / chip
currently being made relies on proprietary firmware enforcing various forms of
DRM. If at some point the already existing DRM starts being extended to
protect modern 3D support (e.g consider no 4k /8k 3D allowed without DRM
handshake), there is no reasonable fallback for the desktop (leaving games
etc. aside); this is not a good place to be IMO.

------
KaiserPro
How many threads per corse does it support? or is that a concept that doesn't
apply to power9 procs?

~~~
tpearson-raptor
All POWER products offer SMT. The POWER9 OpenPOWER chips are all 4 threads per
core (SMT4), so a 4 core device presents 16 logical cores to the OS. POWER's
hardware threading system is also unique and has high performance compared to
offerings from other vendors (mainly x86) -- check out the processor user
manual [1] for all the details.

[1]
[https://wiki.raptorcs.com/w/images/8/89/POWER9_um_OpenPOWER_...](https://wiki.raptorcs.com/w/images/8/89/POWER9_um_OpenPOWER_v20GA_09APR2018_pub.pdf)

~~~
dragontamer
> The POWER9 OpenPOWER chips are all 4 threads per core (SMT4)

Some are SMT8. The ones that are supported by this motherboard are "only" SMT4
however.

I think its "OpenPOWER" chips are at least 4-threads per core.

~~~
classichasclass
Cumulus are the SMT-8s. I think you're thinking of the PowerNV vs PowerVM
distinction.

------
mwcampbell
Can anyone recommend a 2U case that's known to work with this bundle and the
2U heatsink assembly? I'd prefer a short-depth case if possible.

~~~
justinjlynn
I think that, when Raptor were demoing the blackbird at OpenPOWER Summit EU
2018, they were using a Lian-Li PC-05 case w/ the 2U HSF. You'd want to check
with their sales/support for recommendations though.

Edit: It was a Lian-Li PC-06SX and not an 05!

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na85
Anyone know when these are supposed to ship?

~~~
detaro
from the page:

> _Expected to ship late Q1 2019_

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dis-sys
a little bit disappointed that the motherboard only support up to 8 cores and
actually comes with a 4 cores processor.

such low core count is making the product not that attractive - I can go with
µATX MB + Xeon if I want computing power or a decent 6/8-core ARM board for
smaller form factor. to just try a different ISA, I'd probably choose RISC-V
to maximize my potential investment return.

~~~
newnewpdro
Considering you don't even mention the openness of the raptor products vs. the
xeon alternative, you're not the target market.

~~~
dis-sys
I'd be heading to RISC-V for openness.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
You can buy riscv in a year or 2 (for desktop), or wait 5 years for it to
become performance competitive. Or you can buy power9 _today_ (or end of 2019
for a cheaper model) and get a system that already exists, has silicon in
production, and already appears to be performance competitive with Intel.

Mind, I'm probably waiting for whichever gets <$500 first because I'm not
necessarily in a place where I can justify the money even for an open
platform, but let's not pretend that there are massive benefits to both.

~~~
newnewpdro
> Mind, I'm probably waiting for whichever gets <$500 first

This is pretty much my threshold as well, but when I actually think about
these numbers and put them in perspective with regards to how much I used to
spend on 486/pentium desktop computers when they were modern, and adjust those
numbers for inflation, it's downright absurd that I'm not willing to spend
what raptorcs is asking for a modern, open platform, in 2018 dollars.

