News?

[SiteAdmin]

A formal update on Blackbird has been released (https://twitter.com/RaptorCompSys/status/1548061751396028421)

Offical update on #Blackbird : Our commit date is August 31, 2022 for order fulfillment & restock.  It's been a challenging year with supply issues, fab closures, massive inflation, and COVID delays everywhere, but owner controlled desktop computing will be available again soon!

First, we'd like to thank everyone here for their patience.  Rest assured we've been burning the midnight oil and applying significant resources over a long period of time to ensure that the Blackbird would be available again as soon as possible, while also trying to mitigate price increases.  This was all being done while we were still providing a workable hardware and software stack for desktop use -- as an example, we continue to maintain Chromium for ppc64le, and Chromium is a complex piece of software with a fast major and security release cadence.  Without your financial support in ordering these owner controlled platforms, none of this would be possible.

Second, we'd definitely like to hear back from you all when you do receive your units -- public tweets, reviews, etc. are much appreciated, and will help drive further adoption of the platform and of owner controller computing in general.  We note that the FSF is slowly attempting to transition to blob-free systems (https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/closing-in-on-fully-free-bioses-with-the-fsf-tech-team) and especially given the shift to everything-as-a-service this goal is more important than ever.

Thank you all for your patience during these extremely challenging times, and we hope that the platform is worth the wait!

[ClassicHasClass]

Excellent! I'll take two Arctic Terns now, Alex.

[MPC7500]

Great. Does this also mean faster boot times?

[Borley]

Thank you all for your patience during these extremely challenging times, and we hope that the platform is worth the wait!

Level heads and long term perspectives prevail in tumultuous times. I hope you at Raptor know just how important the work that you're doing is.

Second, we'd definitely like to hear back from you all when you do receive your units -- public tweets, reviews, etc. are much appreciated, and will help drive further adoption of the platform and of owner controller computing in general.

I will be able run and review more elaborate testing once I have a duplicate staging system available to try the crazier things on. My one and only Blackbird being a critical primary system has been a source of caution.

[Hasturtium]

Deleted - don’t want to clutter the thread with off-topic stuff, but if anybody can lend insight on why I can’t get date and hwclock to agree, I’d be grateful. Thread here: https://forums.raptorcs.com/index.php/topic,7.msg3065.html#msg3065

[ejfluhr]

>>This all solely due to IBM's poor decision to close parts of the POWER10 platform, it's quite sad.

Re: those blobs, based on GITHUB links from Twitter post (listed below), seem to be related to non-IBM components;  very possible IBM is not allowed to make the source code available.   

PCIe I/O provided by Synopsis:  "ricmata and op-jenkins Synopsys firmware 2.04p fixes DFE slicer calibration"
   https://github.com/open-power/hcode/blob/master-p10/import/chips/p10/procedures/ppe/iop/
   https://www.synopsys.com/designware-ip/interface-ip/pci-express/pci-express-5.html
   https://www.synopsys.com/dw/ipdir.php?ds=dwc_pcie5_phy

DDIMM memory buffer "Explorer" firmware provided by Microsemi:
   https://github.com/open-power/ocmb-explorer-fw/
   https://www.microsemi.com/document-portal/doc_download/1244316-smc-1000-8x25g-smart-memory-controller
   https://www.anandtech.com/show/14706/microchip-announces-dram-controller-for-opencapi-memory-interface

Disappointing for sure, and may not be able to change going forward.

[AdamJoseph]

>>This all solely due to IBM's poor decision to close parts of the POWER10 platform, it's quite sad.

seem to be related to non-IBM components very possible IBM is not allowed to make the source code available.

And you think they didn't know that when they made the decision to use those components?

[ClassicHasClass]

In (some) fairness to IBM, Raptor systems -- despite their cost and their visibility -- are considered the "low end" of the OpenPOWER ecosystem. IBM makes their money on their big institutional partners who don't care much about the things we do (openness, auditability), and it's more important to IBM to give them a new performance shiny to keep them in the sales-and-service fold lest they jump ship for x86. If this was what got them to market quicker, then we lose out. That's just the way the business is.

That said, IBM has also taken a bit of a black eye over Power10 as a result and because Raptor systems *are* so visible, it's harmed their secondary goal to make the architecture more generally relevant again. I think this will be factored into Power11 but there's never any guarantee.