On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 3:11 PM, Steven Schear <schear.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why not switch to much more open CPUs (e.g. POWER8/9) which are already
> comparable to much of Intel's higher end server chips.

Power8 is an intermediate generation now on phaseout, where
Power9 seems more part of a fuller openpower initiative that might
stand up to Intel / AMD. The entire early 9 production output was
being vacuumed up by military / big data / compute, and retail is
taking a while to evolve. It's good stuff however power is still an
expensive platform for non enterprise end users to just buy
casually, and to pay electric on, but the openness might win.
Power9 scaleout SO is rather less than scaleup SU versions.

If you want me to switch and get in the game early, perhaps
with review coinmining and shell ftw, you know what to do... ;)
BTC:1CQYSaF8Cqx5ZSgaKG9LE8UrEJAkWqFpLa

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12351319
https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/06/inside-future-google-rackspace-power9-system/
https://blog.rackspace.com/the-latest-zaius-barreleye-g2-open-compute-openpower-server
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/09/19/power9-rollout-begins-summit-sierra/
https://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/07/15/open-sourced-bios-helps-power8-compete-x86/
http://www.theplatform.net/2015/03/23/inside-the-rackspace-openpower-megaserver/
https://www.servethehome.com/?s=openpower
https://www.anandtech.com/SearchResults?q=openpower
http://www.storagereview.com/search/node/openpower
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=power9&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story

https://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/
https://raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956257
http://tyan.com/campaign/OpenPOWER/

https://github.com/open-power
https://github.com/openbmc

https://wiki.freebsd.org/POWER8
https://www.freebsdnews.com/2015/03/04/freebsd-power8-its-alive-2/
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=279189
https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2015-01-2015-03.html#FreeBSD-on-POWER8
https://reviews.freebsd.org/search/query/oIdoWWKTe71p/

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.8-More-POWER9
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Power-Changes-Linux-4.12
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Talos-2-Teaser
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2-POWER9-Pre-Order
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2-FSF-RYF-Possible

http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/only-a-short-time-left-to-pre-order-the-talos-ii-pre-orders-end-september-15th

Minimum to boot and scale cost users roughly $3300 incl 2x cpu, ps, 32gb.