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Cameron Kaiser
Personal blog · talospace.comhardwaresystems
Cameron Kaiser writes Talospace, a personal blog at talospace.com about hardware and systems. Since 2018, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 90 times, most often “The next Raptor OpenPOWER systems are coming, but they won't be Power10”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-30, and you can follow it by feed.
The free computing frontier
Most-linked posts?
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-08-03
- The next Raptor OpenPOWER systems are coming, but they won't be Power104 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-21
- A Semi-Review of the Raptor Blackbird: POWER9 on the Cheap(er)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-06-10
- Mini-review: The Clockwork Pi DevTerm R-01, or RISC-V on the go3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-29
- POWER10 Sounds Great, But3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-08-17
- /2021/09/its-not-just-omi-thats-trouble-with.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-22
- It's Talos all the way down2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-23
- Sometimes It's Necessary: Running X86_64 Binaries on the Talos II2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-11-19
- Cache splash in Telum means seventh heaven for POWER11?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-05
- Radation-hardened RISC-V in space2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-07
What Hacker News says?
Thank you for documenting exactly how some of the more absurd bugs we encounter in the wild might actually happen. :) E.g. https://www.talospace.com/2019/04/broadcom-bcm5719-libre-fir...
Comment linking /2019/04/broadcom-bcm5719-libre-firmware-coming.html
on “We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage”Submitted The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead as a story · 274 points
HN discussionVoid Linux as well: https://www.talospace.com/2019/01/void-linux-goes-power9.htm... Although it's not official at this point I don't think.
Comment linking /2019/01/void-linux-goes-power9.html
on “IBM Open-Sources Power Chip Instruction Set”Submitted First stage POWER9 Firefox JIT passes tests as a story · 208 points
HN discussionThere are some issues with Power10, although Raptor hasn’t revealed them yet until they clarify things with IBM: https://www.talospace.com/2020/07/condor-cancelled.html?show...
Comment linking /2020/07/condor-cancelled.html?showComment=1596237086993
on “Next-Generation IBM POWER10 Processor”Submitted Intel gets worse, but Power11 might get better as a story · 164 points
HN discussion“Much lower” is still quite expensive compared to a mainstream platform: the absolute minimum if you already had all the other pieces would be the motherboard and CPU bundle for $2,133.77: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html That’s 8 cores, which since Power9 has SMT4 means 32 threads. The 4 core CPU bundle is a bit cheaper but when you add the 2u CPU cooler its price gets very close, so it’s not w…
Comment linking /2020/08/vikings-upcoming-openpower-retail.html
on “Next-Generation IBM POWER10 Processor”Submitted Mini-review: The Clockwork Pi DevTerm R-01, or RISC-V on the go as a story · 74 points
HN discussionRegarding Raptor... https://www.talospace.com/2020/08/power10-sounds-really-grea... https://www.talospace.com/2020/07/condor-cancelled.html?m=1#... Were there ever any updates to that rather pessimistic blog post?
Comment linking /2020/07/condor-cancelled.html?m=1
on “AMD PSB Vendor Locks EPYC CPUs for Enhanced Security at a Cost”Submitted First Flight of Kestrel, the FPGA OpenPOWER-Based BMC, and Arctic Tern as a story · 66 points
HN discussionIt does, actually: the POWER9 Raptor Talos II I'm typing this on uses the C++ interpreter entirely right now. (We're working on a JIT: https://www.talospace.com/2021/07/firefox-90-on-power-and-ji... ) I don't see any reason you couldn't build Firefox on a RISC-V system. EDIT: Actually, there is a reason, but it's not JavaScript. Firefox needs stubs written for XPCOM to map the ABI for XPConnect calls. Once this is d…
Comment linking /2021/07/firefox-90-on-power-and-jit-progress.html
on “HaikuOS running on RISC-V hardware (HiFive Unmatched)”Submitted It's Talos all the way down as a story · 64 points
HN discussionI would have killed for the handcrank during the G1G1 days, but it turns out it wasn't _completely_ vapourware. I finally saw a working one at Linux SCaLE 17x years after the fact, so I'm assuming some small number must actually have been produced. It wasn't practical, but I still love the concept. https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/a-close-look-at-raptor-bla...
Comment linking /2019/03/a-close-look-at-raptor-blackbird-and.html
on “OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world (2018)”Submitted Cache splash in Telum means seventh heaven for POWER11? as a story · 46 points
HN discussionThe memory controllers required by OMI and one of the on-chip I/O processors (possibly for PCIe). Both are only available as blobs: https://www.talospace.com/2021/09/its-not-just-omi-thats-tro...
Comment linking /2021/09/its-not-just-omi-thats-trouble-with.html
on “First stage POWER9 Firefox JIT passes tests”Submitted Better x86 emulation with Live CDs as a story · 34 points
HN discussionThe long version is https://www.talospace.com/2020/01/another-amiga-you-dont-wan... but the tl;dr version is that the Amiga diehards who would buy this still want to use Amiga as their daily drivers, yet these are CPUs that a 15-year-old-plus Power Mac would mop the floor with. It's just handing their detractors another stick for a fresh beating. As a strictly retrocomputing solution that wouldn't be a problem, but…
Comment linking /2020/01/another-amiga-you-dont-want.html
on “First stage POWER9 Firefox JIT passes tests”Submitted The next Raptor OpenPOWER systems are coming, but they won't be Power10 as a story · 25 points
HN discussionThis is what Microwatt is intended to address, though you have to synthesize it yourself. With luck Arctic Tern will give you the playaround board you'd like. https://www.talospace.com/2021/10/first-flight-of-kestrel-fp...
Comment linking /2021/10/first-flight-of-kestrel-fpga-openpower.html
on “First stage POWER9 Firefox JIT passes tests”Submitted First production Kestrel and Arctic Terns, and OpenPOWER compute modules? as a story · 15 points
HN discussionWhilst it is true indeed that POWER10 requires an opaque blob of firmware goo, Raptor was supposed to bring a follow-up to POWER9 that uses the Solid Silicon S1[0] instead of POWER10: Raptor yesterday officially announced that we're not getting Power10 systems. The idea is we're going to be getting something better: the Solid Silicon S1. It's Power ISA 3.1 and fully compatible, but it's also a fully blob-free OpenPO…
Comment linking /2023/10/the-next-raptor-openpower-systems-are.html
on “RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13 is now available”Submitted A Semi-Review of the Raptor Blackbird: POWER9 on the Cheap(er) as a story · 13 points
HN discussionnew web browser for PowerPC Mac: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ new OS for PowerPC Mac: https://voidlinux-ppc.org/ or, a new PowerPC computer: https://www.talospace.com/
Comment linking /
on “Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac”Submitted IBM Power11 hits the market this month as a story · 10 points
HN discussionIt seems that WebAssembly support requires the JavaScript JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler: > “ Unfortunately I have not had time to do much more work on the JIT because of the holidays, family responsibilities and $DAYJOB. I won't be offended at all if someone beats me to the punch especially as I'm starting to see WebAssembly becoming a hard dependency even for some add-ons (without the JIT there is no support for wasm…
Comment linking /2022/05/firefox-101-on-power.html
on “The State of WebAssembly 2022”Submitted Why there won't be an open POWER10 workstation for awhile as a story · 8 points
HN discussionFor those who are not familiar with the author of this blog, he is a PowerPC enthusiast and the maintainer of TenFourFox, a Firefox port to PPC OS X. He's also currently working on a new PPC JIT for (modern) Firefox on Linux (a project for which he is looking for volunteers to assist him[1]) to bring it to speed parity with Chrome on PPC (which already has a PPC JIT). [1] https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/pitch-into…
Comment linking /2019/03/pitch-into-firefox-jit.html
on “NetBSD on the last G4 Mac mini and making the kernel power failure proof”Submitted Cache splash in Telum means seventh heaven for POWER11? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionDon't forget that POWER10 is no longer ryf-certifiable. Of course the ryf certification may be questionable but it is an established bar, POWER9 was able to cross it, POWER10 probably won't: https://www.talospace.com/2020/08/power10-sounds-really-grea... https://twitter.com/RaptorCompSys/status/1435510763402244105...
Comment linking /2020/08/power10-sounds-really-great-but.html
on “Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world”Submitted Music production on POWER: an adventure in porting as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
