POWER8 Talos Workstation Drops Price Slightly, Long Way From Being Funded

[phoronix]

Phoronix: POWER8 Talos Workstation Drops Price Slightly, Long Way From Being Funded

Last month the Talos Secure Workstation launched on crowd-funding as a fully-open libre, modern system powered by a POWER8 processor priced at $4k for the motherboard or $18k for the complete system. They have only raised less than 10% of their funding goal so far but have now cut costs a bit...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-Price-Drop-POWER8

[Min1123]

So, this is not a referendum on free software. When people buy a Raspberry Pi, most consider that to be libre, and it will be eventually. They're slowly changing out the proprietary blobs with libre software, and it'll hit libre over time.

TLDR: I want one, I'm not paying a 1850% markup over a decent $200 motherboard to get one. Please make something cheaper than this.

Talos is an amazing system, and an amazing idea, but it's aiming too high. iBooks and Powerbooks had single core PPC chips and they were pretty great for their time. It was when Freescale stopped dumping money into research that Apple started falling apart. They couldn't get new portable chips, so they had to keep using the older ones and clocking them higher.

IBM made the PPC970 that was used in the Power Macintoshes as a cut-down POWER4 processor. Take out one core and shove it on one die, and then if the customer is willing to pay for it, two dies on two sockets in one case.

That was a cut-back system. Two problems with Talos are both directly related to its price. The motherboard is too expensive, which either means it's too complicated and/or too small scale of a production to bring the costs down. It's using full POWER8 chips that would go into an IBM server, which are amazing chips, but they themselves cost thousands. The machine will blow away multi-threaded workloads, and that's great, but for all its glory, $18k is not $400-$1800 that you'd spend for a modern PC that would be used as a workstation. There needs to be a smaller entry point that's more similar to the prices of modern PC hardware. Something where the motherboard can be under $500 and the CPU can be under $600. And that's still a high entry point for most people.

A little AMD AM1 isn't going to do much work, but I can run libre software (with proprietary firmware that is out of sight and out of mind) for under $200. And EOMA68 isn't going to fly (performance-wise) by any stretch of the imagination, but that's a true referendum on libre software+firmware+hardware. $65 for the CPU/MB/RAM, and $55 for a case/powersupply to hold it, and you have a fully certified libre computer.

[joni200]

I invested about 1500 Euro into Librem 13 and Neo900. And it's end for me as an investor in free hardware/software in a disaster. So I'm not willing to pay just one cent into crowdfunding campains who praise the hell but deliver nothing

[Min1123]

I invested about 1500 Euro into Librem 13 and Neo900. And it's end for me as an investor in free hardware/software in a disaster.

Yeah, I understand that too. I spent $600 on a Pegasos PPC model 1 board. The PPC chip was a "G3" (on a card that went into a slot) so no vector instructions. It was great, but it was limited on RAM because the northbridge had a bug in it. So this machine could've been great, but it needed some pretty specific RAM and some pretty specific AGP graphics cards, and could never have more than 256MB of RAM due to that hardware glitch. So I think I'm burned as well.

[starshipeleven]

So, this is not a referendum on free software. When people buy a Raspberry Pi, most consider that to be libre,

Wrong, most people don't give a fuck and just want a development board that has a large community. Being Open or Libre is a prerequisite usually but most people don't search for them.

and it will be eventually. They're slowly changing out the proprietary blobs with libre software, and it'll hit libre over time.

Raspi is a piece of shit hardware with ridicolous limitations, it should burn and die, not become the Jeezus of libreness while most other devices you might actually want to use are full of blobs.

TLDR: I want one, I'm not paying a 1850% markup over a decent $200 motherboard to get one. Please make something cheaper than this.

Mass production is a bitch, the "decent 200$ motherboard" would cost like that too if it wasn't produced in fabs that make millions of each.

It was when Freescale stopped dumping money into research that Apple started falling apart.

I wouldn't call "starting to use x86 stuff" as "falling apart".

That was a cut-back system. Two problems with Talos are both directly related to its price. The motherboard is too expensive, which either means it's too complicated and/or too small scale of a production to bring the costs down.

The latter. You can cut down everything on that board and it would still cost A LOT for what it offers.

It's using full POWER8 chips that would go into an IBM server, which are amazing chips, but they themselves cost thousands.

Actually, they talk about $300 or so in the crowdfunding.

And they cannot really start making their own custom CPU parts, are you fucking serious?

A little AMD AM1 isn't going to do much work, but I can run libre software (with proprietary firmware that is out of sight and out of mind) for under $200.

So does any other x86 system, can run libre software but has some proprietary firmware, but has an affordable price for the performance (for private citizens anyway)

And EOMA68 isn't going to fly (performance-wise) by any stretch of the imagination, but that's a true referendum on libre software+firmware+hardware. $65 for the CPU/MB/RAM, and $55 for a case/powersupply to hold it, and you have a fully certified libre computer.

EOMA68 is a total turd design that should fucking burn and die together with his designer team. It manages to cripple a damn A20 (something that many didn't thought was possible) because the designer is stupid and could not use better mainboard-to-daughterboard interfaces, and because the 3D accelerator is a Mali so it has a closedsource blob.

But it is affordable so many people will at least try it.

[caligula]

Wrong, most people don't give a fuck and just want a development board that has a large community. Being Open or Libre is a prerequisite usually but most people don't search for them.

Raspi is a piece of shit hardware with ridicolous limitations, it should burn and die, not become the Jeezus of libreness while most other devices you might actually want to use are full of blobs.

Raspi is great, they have the fastest I/O with the mSATA SSD shield and being non-profit makes their work ethical. They can donate money to cure AIDS in Africa like most non-profits. The board is also fully 64-bit and utilizes the 64 bit capabilities fully, they have a 100% free bootloader and free, greatest GPU drivers. The RPi zero is the cheapest SBC ever with its $5 price. Imagine if there was a $7 computer with $2 shipping costs. It would be more expensive than $5 RPi zero with its $5 shipping costs. $10 < $9. So, there are so many great reasons to use and buy RPi. I probably forgot a lot of things. Like the great support. No other SBC supports I2C, I2S, SPDIF, USB, Ethernet, Wifi, Bluetooth, 5V power. No other board has noob friendly forums and the greatest gurus working on their platforms. It's the bestest support.

[torsionbar28]

being non-profit makes their work ethical.

I just threw up a little in my mouth.

[starshipeleven]

Raspi is great, they have the fastest I/O with the mSATA SSD shield

"fastest" here means still capped somewhere at 20-30 MiB/s because it's on USB. And if you are serving files over the ethernet it drops in half.

and being non-profit makes their work ethical. They can donate money to cure AIDS in Africa like most non-profits.

No offense but I don't give a damn. They are supposed to provide decent hardware, being "ethical" gets considered only AFTER they provide good hardware.

The board is also fully 64-bit and utilizes the 64 bit capabilities fully,

On what, 1GiB RAM? Yeah, used "fully", nice bullshit.

they have a 100% free bootloader

Many other boards have u-boot support, and I thought Raspi still relied on blobs at least for the startup (i.e. they need a small Fat32 partition for the blobs).

and free, greatest GPU drivers.

Which still doesn't amount to much as the hardware itself is meh.

The RPi zero is the cheapest SBC ever with its $5 price.

Yeah, but it sucks even more ass.

Imagine if there was a $7 computer with $2 shipping costs. It would be more expensive than $5 RPi zero with its $5 shipping costs. $10 < $9.

Costs are low because the zero as a desktop sucks, as a server sucks, as a mediacenter sucks. Zero is good only for semi-serious small-scale embedded usage, and in most cases learning how to use an Arduino/Atmel microcontroller is much better anyway.

No other SBC supports I2C, I2S, SPDIF, USB, Ethernet, Wifi, Bluetooth, 5V power.

Bullshit.

No other board has noob friendly forums and the greatest gurus working on their platforms. It's the bestest support.

True and as I said this is one of the main reasons newbies go with it. Not because the hardware is worth shit, nor because the software is free.

[pal666]

i am willing to pay $100 more for motherboard with open firmware. maybe another $100 for open schematics. so it just costs $3.3k too much

[pal666]

in most cases learning how to use an Arduino/Atmel microcontroller is much better anyway.

microcontrollers have different purpose, they can't run linux