> Raptor torched their own roadmap

I don't think that's a fair summary; Raptor has a very specific product, more or less the selling point of which is 100% open and auditable systems, so when IBM came out with POWER10 that bakes blobs into the system they're stuck with completely switching course. That's not torching anything, it's them being forced to correct for external factors.

But they're free to design and build their own chips without such blobs, right?

Right?

<insert Padme meme>

I'm not sure I follow your point. They're a vendor using POWER chips to provide blob-free computers. I'm fairly confident that they could make their own chips, but given that they'd need a fab and call it a billion dollars that's an impractical step up from building machines around existing chips. None of this constitutes them having "torched their own roadmap", just being stuck between a rock (their product being decent performance blob-free computers) and a hard place (needing to source CPUs).

When someone says "build their own chip" they do not in general mean to extract their own silicon ingots from sand, or to build their own fab. They mean to "tape out" their own SoC design and send it to a fab owner such as TSMC, Samsung, Intel for the physical manufacturing step.

Apple does not own a fab. Arm does not own a fab. Qualcomm does not own a fab. I believe IBM does not own any modern fab (some built in early 2000s, yes).

Yes? When I said "they'd need a fab and call it a billion dollars" I meant they'd need the use of a fab, not that they'd have to own the factory themselves. I don't see how it matters anyways

I'm not sure where that billion dollars is going to go then.

SiFive has raised a total funding of $366M over 6 rounds and 9 years, which has been enough to give them leadership in the RISC-V ecosystem and a product range spanning virtually the entire range ARM's does -- from equivalents for Cortex-M0 (in fact lower) up to Cortex-X3 (and POWER9) for their latest core announced in October (P870, 18 SPECInt2l6/GHz).

Part of the problem was that IBM (for reasons that have not been made entirely clear to me ) made Power10 require not only a non-redistributable firmware blob on the chip, but also on the off-board memory controller, making unsellable by anyone not named IBM.

If you're not used to buying server-grade hardware, I know it seems expensive. I think the founder initially priced it too low in an effort to make it as affordable as possible, found himself giving tons of expensive support, and decided to raise prices to the market average.

But Raptor machines aren't server-grade. They're desktop motherboards with crippled Power9s at higher-than-x86-server prices.

I don't follow: how are they not server grade? How are they crippled Power9s? What x86 server are you comparing them to?

For example, the Talos II system has dual (server) CPU sockets with up to 24 cores/96 threads per processor; 16 ECC memory slots with 2TB capacity; SAS controller; out of band management and service processor (separate serial and ethernet ports for the BMC); a server form factor; better capacitors; no onboard audio and only rudimentary graphics; and a thick/quality PCB. It's also made in America. What else were you looking for?