Author Topic: Support for POWER9 22core?  (Read 10822 times)

tle

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Support for POWER9 22core?
« on: February 15, 2020, 09:05:04 pm »
The official product page of blackbird stated that the motherboard support up to 8-core POWER9. Wondering if it is possible to use the POWER9 22core?
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MPC7500

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #1 on: February 16, 2020, 05:56:04 am »
It's possible, but not at full speed. It's linked through the power consumption -> Mainboard VRMs

ClassicHasClass

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2020, 07:04:33 pm »
I wouldn't. At best you'll have an expensive chip that won't achieve full throughput; at worst the power draw might blow something. You really need the T2 Lite or full T2 for that.

tle

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2020, 06:01:22 am »
Thanks for the response.
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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2020, 08:58:12 am »
Also on Böackbird you have dual-channel memory, on TalosII quad-channel.

surf

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2020, 11:58:37 am »
It seems the limitation is power draw.  The supported 8-core part is listed at 160w in the IBM datasheet, and there are a variety of core configurations that are 160w or less:



So it looks like a 22-core CPU (at a lower speed) should work, if you can find one.  I think there are a variety of other CPU configurations floating around with part numbers that are not documented publicly.  For example, I can't find what a 02AA878 is, but you can buy one:

https://www.newegg.com/p/1B4-002U-00CR1


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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2020, 04:59:10 pm »
Do not forget that datasheet is from 2018, referring to order numbers. And a 02CY644 should work at full speed in a Blackbird, according to this chart.

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #7 on: February 27, 2020, 10:02:25 am »
Another aspect of getting non-supported CPUs to work with Blackbird is:


Or asked in another way: Is the SBE code generic?

> The SBE firmware is open source.

If this is fully true it should be generic code...

MPC7500

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #8 on: February 27, 2020, 12:54:19 pm »

MPC7500

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #9 on: April 22, 2020, 11:12:31 am »
FYI, on the talos IRC is someone who is running a 18-core (190W) POWER9 on a Blackbird. And another one has overclocked a 8-core to 4.3GHz

deepblue

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #10 on: April 25, 2020, 09:10:59 am »
I made a post of my experiences using the 18c Power9 CPU on a Blackbird.

https://forums.raptorcs.com/index.php/topic,99.0.html

tle

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Re: Support for POWER9 22core?
« Reply #11 on: May 09, 2020, 01:13:34 am »
The wiki page is continuing to get better :D, if you are interested in learning more about Sforza IBM POWER9, check out the wikipage https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Sforza
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