Re: New POWER9 machines for the Guix build farm?

[Marco van Hulten]

Hello—

On 29 Nov 09:25 dftxbs3e wrote:
> I'm really happy to hear this! I also do own a POWER9 machine.
> 
> I have a Talos II with 2x 8 SMT4 cores POWER9 DD2.2 CPUs (64 threads), 
> 64GB of RAM and an AMD WX7100 GPU (amdgpu libre driver).
> 
> I run Fedora on it since more than a year now, it's been my main 
> workstation without any major issue.

It's great to hear of such an experience!  I have an amd64 server at
home that makes quite a bit of noise and, standing next to the server,
an amd64 workstation that makes even more noise, both of which are over
10 years old.  I am considering replacing both systems for a single
Talos II.

According to the mainboard specifications [1], Ethernet is driven by a
proprietary chip (Broadcom BCM5719).  Is there libre firmware that is
shown to work reliably?

I guess it should be because it is FSF-certified to Respect Your
Freedom, but could someone confirm this specifically for the network
interface?

[1]: https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Talos_II

> I'm happy to provide assistance, I encourage GNU Guix developers to join 
> #talos-workstation on Freenode's IRC, we have a friendly active 
> community that is always happy to help on POWER9 matters.

Fantastic to see this work out!


The other free modern architecture, RISC-V, is that like a sort of
competitor of POWER9?  Or is it more like Talos II being the obvious
choice for a server (and workstation) because it is available now/more
established?

—Marco