>> Not to an average HPC shop like ours...
And there lies the problem. HPC used to be a tiny market with huge budgets where expensive hardware was the norm. It's just not that big a deal any more. It's commodity hardware now with lots of cores and GPUs running OSS. They won't make it trying to charge a premium just because it's Power9.
I wouldn't call Cray computers with x86 Xeon Phis commodity hardware though.
Me: Oh look this is fascinating! We have a worthy competitor to intel processors and we can do our work way faster. Let's get this!
Boss: Ok, tell me why one of this costs more than all of our other servers put together?
Me: But, it is so much better, it does blah, blah and more blah.
Boss: Do we really need it? What would we save by getting this instead of the commodity servers we normally buy. May be we should look into making our code work better with GPUs instead?
Me: ..........
Don't get me wrong. I think this really is fascinating. Just for the HFT traders and the top 1% buyers of exotic hardware. Not to an average HPC shop like ours, until the economy of scale and premium catches up to value.