The "AmigaOne A1222" should be considerably cheaper, once/if released.
Mind it's only a "QorIQ P1022 32-bit e500v2" though, so a little bit different than the Power9 (server?) CPU.
Yeah, that’s a decent embedded CPU. I actually have quite a bit of experience with it (as well as the T2080, P1023, etc.).
I think it’s probably a little too weak to serve as a general desktop replacement though.
It’s somewhere in Raspberry Pi 3 territory in terms of actual CPU performance, but it’s a much more powerful SoC in general. It has GigE MACs, PCIe, SATA, etc.
It would make for a great router or NAS.
Also, even though they classify it as “QorIQ”, it’s really not like the other QorIQ chips. It doesn’t have the whole DPAA thing that chips like the T2080 do, which is honestly a good thing for the majority of use cases. The DPAA is overkill if you just need some Ethernet interfaces.
Still, it's progress, so I'm not going to complain too much. And hopefully one day this catches on and as volumes scale up, the prices will start to drop.