Messages

226

Operating Systems and Porting / testing different operating systems next week, any ideas/requests?

« on: September 03, 2020, 02:46:16 pm »

Before putting my Talos II into proper use, I might spend a week or so testing different operating systems on it.

Can anybody make any suggestions about things that might be worthwhile to explore?

227

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Talos II arrived

« on: September 03, 2020, 02:12:14 pm »

My Talos II arrived yesterday, I'll be building it gradually over the next few days.

I already shared some observations about success with the Fractal 7 XL case, it would be really helpful to get some feedback about their fan hub connections

I'll use a legacy SATA HBA as a stop-gap measure until I get some U.2 disks in a few weeks.  Long term, can anybody comment on what will be a good choice of HBA to combine at least two U.2 disks and a handful of legacy SATA disks?

Can anybody make any other tips about getting started?

228

General Discussion / Re: Fractal Design cases

« on: September 03, 2020, 12:52:13 pm »

With the Fractal Design Define 7 XL, all the studs can be moved into positions compatible with the Talos II and the board fits nicely in the case.

By default, the case includes three 3-pin fans and a fan hub for powering them.

The fan hub has connections for
- each case fan
- the CPU1 fan
- connection to the motherboard
- connection directly to the PSU via a SATA power socket

Can anybody comment on whether

a) the case fans should be replaced with 4-pin fans or the default 3-pin fans will be OK?

b) the case fans should be connected to the Fractal fan hub or directly to the case fan jumpers on the Talos II motherboard?

c) the cable from the fan hub to motherboard would go to which port on the motherboard?

229

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: September 02, 2020, 05:14:05 pm »

A Polaris GPU causes far fewer problems. The performance between RX 580 and RX 5500 is almost identical. Performance/price ratio between RX 580 and RX 5700 is also better.

On power consumption/heat output, they are both similar too, 30-35W idle

Are all RX 580 variants considered reliable or is there one particular OEM model that people have tested more than others?

Do you consider all Navi to be bad right now, or once again, does it depend on the specific OEM model chosen?

One strategy in my mind right now: Scavange any spare Radeon GPU for 12 months as a stop-gap measure, skip over the new Navi in November and wait for them to release a card supporting AV1

230

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Radeon Pro vs regular Radeon cards - worth the price premium for POWER users?

« on: August 16, 2020, 02:18:44 pm »

As there are multiple threads about this, I felt it would be useful to create a wiki page about GPU selection criteria

Feel free to improve it.  A shortlist of products tested by Raptor and other experienced users might be useful too.

231

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: August 16, 2020, 02:18:19 pm »

As there are multiple threads about this, I felt it would be useful to create a wiki page about GPU selection criteria

Feel free to improve it.  A shortlist of products tested by Raptor and other experienced users might be useful too.

232

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: August 12, 2020, 12:40:00 pm »

I put some of my own observations and preferences in the thread about Radeon Pro vs regular Radeon

Part of the answer depends on what everybody else is using: for example, if a lot of people use a particular card and actively contribute bug fixes to the driver then that makes it compelling.

233

General CPU Discussion / Re: POWER9 water cooling kit

« on: August 10, 2020, 05:49:34 pm »

Instead of using radiator fans on the water cooling circuit, are there any external chiller or heat pump options that could reduce overall heat emission, even if they don't reduce net noise emissions a lot?  This type of option requires a way to dump the heat, much the same way a split-system air conditioner moves heat to the outdoor component.

234

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: News?

« on: August 07, 2020, 09:46:00 am »

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.

235

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian

« on: August 02, 2020, 04:16:40 am »

The announcement page doesn't really tell us much about the impact for ppc64* users.  This is where it would be really useful to have tags for ppc64* issues, we could then run a report in the BTS and see exactly which issues were fixed by each new release and which issues are fixed in unstable and ready for backporting.

236

Condor / Re: Condor cancelled

« on: August 01, 2020, 01:52:34 am »

As suggested in another thread, the most useful thing to do right now may be making the best use of the Talos II Lite

Even if the existing Condor design is being mothballed, maybe the name Condor can be reserved for some future product.  POWER10 will reach us in 2021 or 2022, look out for return of the Condor (and keep your children and pets out of the way)

237

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: hosting requirements and strategies

« on: July 31, 2020, 04:12:05 pm »

2.) We can do custom (paid) support contracts for things like overnight replacement parts.   We just don't get that many organizations that feel they require it, so it's normally negotiated on a one-off basis.  Our suspicion is that many organizations try to keep spare parts on hand so as to avoid ending up in an emergency call out / parts acquisition scenario, but we don't have hard data to validate that.

That is why I suggested including some community servers in a local rack here.  They could be cannibalized at short notice to provide spare parts for more critical systems.  A spare server running Jenkins (a.k.a travis-ci on ppc64le) may be better than a spare server in a box.

The next-day swap out is OK in the US but in most other regions, it is hard to get delivery under 2 working days and even then it can be incredibly expensive.

238

General CPU Discussion / max memory speeds

« on: July 31, 2020, 03:46:40 pm »

AbstractConcept made this edit in the wiki

I read somewhere that RAM operates at different speeds:

1 channel filled: 2666MHz

2 channels filled: 2400MHz

4 channels filled: 2133MHz

but the edit by AbstractConcept implies that RAM is always clocked at 2666MHz

Can anybody clarify?

239

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: hosting requirements and strategies

« on: July 31, 2020, 11:43:21 am »

There are a number of Swiss data centers within walking distance from my home.  If I don't feel like walking, I can reach any of them in less than 5 minutes on my motorbike.  If anybody wanted to collaborate on setting up a rack of Talos II servers in one of these, I'd be happy to collaborate on that and try to come up with a support agreement that is proportional to the experimental nature of the platform.  For example, call-out fees for reboots and such things could be minimized or waived if these fit within my visits to the sites.

240

General CPU Discussion / Re: v2 CPU availability?

« on: July 31, 2020, 11:06:08 am »

What is the idle power consumption of the 22 core chips?  Do they generate heat constantly or only when you throw work at them?

For a multi-seat configuration, one Talos II system running a little hot is probably putting out less heat than three separate Intel Xeon workstations.