Power9

Notes about IBM/OpenPower's Power9 CPUs.

Contents

  1. Power9
    1. CPUs
      1. SKUs
    2. Mainboards
      1. Blackbird
        1. RAM
        2. Cases
    3. Community
    4. Archival
  2. Cooling
  3. Parts
  4. Reading
  5. Notes

CPUs

SKUs

Interesting ones:

Mainboards

Blackbird

See Raptor Computing Systems BKMB1. There is a Blackbird II, but differences appear to be cooling-related only, and only sold as a component of the Blackbird Secure Desktop.

RAM

See this memory compatibility list.

Samsung M393A4K40BB1-CRC 32 GiB 2Rx4 modules supported (same as X10SDV).

Samsung M393A8K40B22-CWD appears to be the only 64 GiB modules supported.

Cases

Fractal Design Meshify C Mini (for µATX)

Community

Articles:

Archival

Cooling

Parts

BMC serial: Supermicro CBL-0010L is also compatible and only$1.60 at their Website, but costs $10+ to ship from them or costs more everywhere else online. Used DB9M to IDC10 Serial DTK PORT, $6 total.

Reading

Improving performance of Phoronix benchmarks on POWER9

From Hacker News:

Review: Blackbird Secure Desktop – a fully open source modern POWER9 workstation without any proprietary code from OSnews

A semi-review of the Raptor Blackbird POWER9 from Talospace.

TALOS II Secure Workstation, from Raptor Engineering [reddit]. 15 Aug 2017.

An excellent machine. 2 Oct 2018.

I own a Talos II: HN thread

RaptorCS Power9 Blackbird PC: An expensive mistake. 23 Sept 2019. HN thread.

Notes

Every computer in the EU storing protected data is in breach of the GDPR if running on an Intel or AMD CPU.