News?

[surf]

I was wondering if there is any news about Raptor.  They don't seem to post any news here or on their web page.  Do they have any new products coming out?  How are they weathering the plague?  etc.?

The talospace blog seems to be the best source of power9 and/or Raptor news that I've seen...

[pocock]

Personally, I can empathize with all those small businesses operating in the free and open source technology space who may also be impacted by things out of their control, whether it is a loss of sales, loss of colleagues, loss of family or all of the above.  On the other hand, I don't want to speculate about Raptor or any other specific business.

If any small business is looking for community support at this time, I hope they will be able to reach out to the right supporters in the community and find a constructive way forward.

Looking at Raptor in particular: I had deferred buying new workstations for a number of years.  But with the increase in working from home, it became important for me to get a new workstation in 2020 and Raptor was high on my list.  Not everybody is fortunate enough to be purchasing a workstation this year but if you know people who need to maximize their productivity while working from home, suggesting they consider Raptor's products may be helpful.  That is why I tried to capture some of my own purchasing experience here.

[ClassicHasClass]

The talospace blog seems to be the best source of power9 and/or Raptor news that I've seen...

*bows slightly*

Raptor does have a Twitter. Quitting Twitter and Facebook was one of the best things I did in my life, but they do put things on @raptorcompsys.

[SiteAdmin]

Indeed, our Twitter feed is the main place we tend to post minor updates or news articles.  That said with the COVID19 situation we've been a bit less active with the global community overall; our intent is that once things return to more normal we'll be able to ramp up our social media and marketing again.

We miss you all at the face to face conferences; those were excellent venues for more niche product lines like ours and we have yet to find a viable substitute.  Here's hoping 2021 will bring back the more decentralized physical events (i.e. supplant the Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Intel/AMD-dominated online events) and we'll get you see you in person with some of the technologies we're working on for 2021 / 2022!

Side note: Condor was in fact cancelled due to COVID19.  We didn't want to have to do that, but economic concerns regarding launching a brand new product into a soft market with limited IBM support won out in the end.  We're focusing our efforts on other open, owner controlled, ppc64le technologies, so stay tuned! 

[surf]

Indeed, our Twitter feed is the main place we tend to post minor updates or news articles.

Thanks for the reply.  I wish you guys luck with your open source projects, and I will stay tuned!

FWIW when I go to the twitter web page I get a cute blue cartoon picture of a bird.  If you (or someone) could post relevant news here or on the Raptor web page I would appreciate it.

[MPC7500]

Second that. A Raptor news section would be good on this board. I only joined Twitter because of Raptor ...

[pocock]

Raptor may not want to have all these extra chores though.  A lot of organizations recently started hiring people in eastern European countries to help with things like this.

For example,

• phpList has set up a small office in Albania
• Debian had an Outreachy intern from Albania to handle contact DebConf sponsors
• Prishtina Hackerspace, in Kosovo, has received funding from other groups to hire a publicity officer on a permanent basis

The wage expectations vary, starting from about $300/month for a student in a non-technical field.  There are a small number of really good developers there but they insist on globally competitive rates of pay.  In between those two extremes there are many possibilities or opportunities to piggy back on other groups there.

[MauryG5]

We miss you all at the face to face conferences; those were excellent venues for more niche product lines like ours and we have yet to find a viable substitute.  Here's hoping 2021 will bring back the more decentralized physical events (i.e. supplant the Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Intel/AMD-dominated online events) and we'll get you see you in person with some of the technologies we're working on for 2021 / 2022!

I always hope to know more about Axon AIO, especially now that Power 10 is still far away ...! I hope you will soon give us some news of what these new Power 9s will look like and if we can use them to upgrade, obviously accompanied by the new RAM that AXON AIO requires ... We always stay connected ... :-)

[surf]

The Blackbird shows 'backordered' on the Raptor web page.  Anyone know when it will be available again?

[pocock]

I don't have an answer about the Blackbird

From my personal analysis, I feel that many people considering a Blackbird might get more advantages from a Talos II Lite, it is only about 10% more expensive but there are benefits as outlined on the comparison page here.

In particular, using more than 2 memory channels or more than 8 cores both give you significant performance benefits if that is necessary for your workload.  It can also take a GPU wider than 2 slots because there is nothing else beyond the GPU slot.

[Borley]

The Blackbird shows 'backordered' on the Raptor web page.  Anyone know when it will be available again?

I do not know anything about their manufacturing approach, but it may be the kind of thing that production is awaiting a certain number of orders to be reached before making a run of boards.

[MPC7500]

Raptor don't wait for orders. A new batch of Blackbird mainboards is on the way.

[Borley]

Raptor don't wait for orders. A new batch of Blackbird mainboards is on the way.

Thanks. I already placed an order for a 2nd board, since right now I am not in a position experiment on my flagship and all of my X86 systems are currently tied up with distributed computing projects.

[surf]

The Blackbird shows 'backordered' on the Raptor web page.

Does anyone have news about this?  I emailed raptor a month ago and never heard back...

[MPC7500]

Only this. But it's already more than six weeks old.