Re: New POWER9 machines for the Guix build farm?

[dftxbs3e <dftxbs3e@free.fr>]

Hello,

There is libre firmware being worked on, latest news say that it does 
work but some features are not implemented. I have not tested that 
firmware however.

There is a contest organized by RaptorCS to liberate the firmware: 
https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/nic_fw_contest.php

And here's the ongoing work:

https://github.com/meklort/bcm5719-fw

https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/BCM5719

An interesting thing to note is that 10Gbit network cards from the same 
vendor (Broadcom) are implemented fully with hardware ASICs and do not 
require firmware at all. So that's a work around to the problem. source: 
developer of the libre firmware.

dftxbs3e


On 11/29/19 1:50 PM, Marco van Hulten wrote:
> Hello—
>
> On 29 Nov 09:25 dftxbs3e wrote:
>> I'm really happy to hear this! I also do own a POWER9 machine.
>>
>> I have a Talos II with 2x 8 SMT4 cores POWER9 DD2.2 CPUs (64 threads),
>> 64GB of RAM and an AMD WX7100 GPU (amdgpu libre driver).
>>
>> I run Fedora on it since more than a year now, it's been my main
>> workstation without any major issue.
> It's great to hear of such an experience!  I have an amd64 server at
> home that makes quite a bit of noise and, standing next to the server,
> an amd64 workstation that makes even more noise, both of which are over
> 10 years old.  I am considering replacing both systems for a single
> Talos II.
>
> According to the mainboard specifications [1], Ethernet is driven by a
> proprietary chip (Broadcom BCM5719).  Is there libre firmware that is
> shown to work reliably?
>
> I guess it should be because it is FSF-certified to Respect Your
> Freedom, but could someone confirm this specifically for the network
> interface?
>
> [1]: https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Talos_II
>
>> I'm happy to provide assistance, I encourage GNU Guix developers to join
>> #talos-workstation on Freenode's IRC, we have a friendly active
>> community that is always happy to help on POWER9 matters.
> Fantastic to see this work out!
>
>
> The other free modern architecture, RISC-V, is that like a sort of
> competitor of POWER9?  Or is it more like Talos II being the obvious
> choice for a server (and workstation) because it is available now/more
> established?
>
> —Marco