Author Topic: [NEWS] Linux kernel 5.8 is out!  (Read 2368 times)

tle

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Faithful Linux enthusiast

My Raptor Blackbird

SiteAdmin

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Re: [NEWS] Linux kernel 5.8 is out!
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2020, 07:08:38 pm »
We just wanted to re-post this from a comment we added to Talospace:

Quote
There will probably be some exciting announcements for POWER hardware late this year / early next. Not POWER10 yet (IBM made some very poor choices regarding POWER10 that currently block our products and that we continue to work to resolve) but POWER overall is looking quite healthy for the future. For now, POWER9 is definitely the best way to go to get an open, owner-controlled, powerful system with long term support and tons of distro choices!

Basically, POWER10 is an academic curiosity at the moment due to some really bad management-level decisions at IBM.  It's not unrecoverable, but we do want to set expectations of POWER9 remaining the highest performing POWER product for the 2021 / early 2022 timeframe.  If, and this is a fairly large "if", anyone else besides IBM ships a POWER10 system in that timeframe, the reasoning behind our decision should become quite clear.

The best way to help owner controlled computing at the moment is to keep buying and using POWER9.  The other announcements we have (which are not IBM dependent) should be very exciting, but POWER9 will remain king in terms of raw performance for now.

TLDR: POWER10 is not off the table by any means; we have every intention of creating a POWER10 product line, but there are complex negotiations in play to reach the point where those POWER10 products will be up to our high open firmware / open systems standards.  Such negotiations always take time, hence the delays, though COVID19 has stretched them out several times longer than normal such that public product announcements are now being affected.  Buying from another vendor in the interim, even if one exists, will not help and you definitely won't like what you actually get in the end from another vendor in comparison to the normal Raptor standards.

shawnanastasio

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Re: [NEWS] Linux kernel 5.8 is out!
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2020, 08:04:24 pm »
TLDR: POWER10 is not off the table by any means; we have every intention of creating a POWER10 product line, but there are complex negotiations in play to reach the point where those POWER10 products will be up to our high open firmware / open systems standards.

Can you elaborate on this? Has IBM introduced proprietary/vendor-signed components to POWER10 firmware?

ClassicHasClass

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Re: [NEWS] Linux kernel 5.8 is out!
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2020, 08:37:30 pm »
Does that mean an Axone system in the works, potentially?

SiteAdmin

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Re: [NEWS] Linux kernel 5.8 is out!
« Reply #4 on: August 03, 2020, 11:22:12 pm »
Can you elaborate on this? Has IBM introduced proprietary/vendor-signed components to POWER10 firmware?

Nothing is signed, but IBM has failed to release required firmware components as open source software.  We can't go much further into details other than to say we're working the problem, but until it is resolved we will not be able to manufacture a POWER10 system, nor would we recommend usage of the POWER10 processor.

There's another area where IBM made a very poor choice, but that will become more obvious once IBM releases more data on their own systems using the POWER10 device.  That issue is also being worked by Raptor.

MauryG5

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Re: [NEWS] Linux kernel 5.8 is out!
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2020, 07:05:16 am »
I too would like to understand, how Axon AIO will be implemented, because it is known that at the end of the year he will come out and not Power 10. I would like to understand if being always of the Power 9 line, we will be able to do the direct upgrade without a new motherboard, or else it will be anyway a new motherboard with a new Soc. From what I understood in the few articles published on Axon AIO, IBM wants to update all its servers with this processor and therefore inevitably it must have the same soc and consequently we should also be able to benefit . I know that only RAM needs to be changed because Axon AIO needs a different type of memory than the current one ... Can you tell us something more specific about this? Thank you