I really badly want to get myself a Talon POWER9 system, but I’m scared of being stuck with another “exotic” overpriced machine (in my time I’ve owned BeBoxes and NeXTStations). Do you have one? Do you use it as a daily workstation? Can I ask you some questions about it?
>Do you have one? Do you use it as a daily workstation?
Nobody does, they are still in the pre-order stage.
Debian is available for POWER9.
This means you'll have at least KVM so you can run nearly anything on top of that including Windows VMs with PCI-passthrough for gaming,etc.
The cost is non-trivial but I've been working up my nerve to pull the trigger and go this route.
KVM + Windows requires x86(-64) hardware. POWER9 and windows means QEMU, which is emulation and slow.
They did experiment with that in fact:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-s...
> in my time I’ve owned BeBoxes and NeXTStations
Now I search eBay for one. I have a couple Suns ;-)
> Do you have one? Do you use it as a daily workstation?
I wish. Can't justify the price tag for a novelty item.
Me either. I mean... it’s comparable in price to my mainline alternative (a ”New 2018” MacPro, whatever form it may take and whenever it may be released) but the mainline alternative is sure to be a well-integrated system and fully supported by the producer and software houses alike, whereas the fascinating novelty... <shrug>
Are you both talking about the Talos POWER9 or is a Talon I can't Google for?
Talos II
Sorry. Spell checker.
While I trust POWER9 to be very fast, I have had odd performance differences (both positive - meaning I overspent in hardware and had some explaining to do - and negative - meaning I was too optimistic and had some explaining to do) when moving from x86 to SPARC, Itanium and POWER (and MIPS - I'm that old).
The Talon are good entry level POWER9 systems for reasonable prices, but I'd love to see parts trickling down to Xeon E5 prices.
If the barrier of entry is too high, only what already runs on POWER8 will move to POWER9. Xeons have good cost/performance and are a safer bet.