Re: New POWER9 machines for the Guix build farm?

[dftxbs3e]

Hello,

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.

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.

dftxbs3e

On 11/28/19 1:50 AM, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
> Fellow Guix,
>
> The Guix sysadmins are considering buying shiny hardware for the 
> ci.guix.gnu.org build farm, and it would be awesome if that included 
> our first POWER9 machine(s)!
>
> However, few (if any) Guixers have any hands-on experience with this 
> architecture, let alone buying and installing whole systems. Some 
> remember a bad experience with a prominent vendor, and it would appear 
> that they're not alone[0].
>
> There's also some concern that getting these machines up and running 
> will take significant effort.
>
> So please, share your expertise and experience in this area! Ideally, 
> we need someone to volunteer to (help) set up any new POWER9 boxes and 
> later take care of them when needed.  It would certainly help justify 
> the multi-thousand-euro bill.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> T G-R
>
> PS: For the shorter term, I've applied for an 8-core POWER9 LE 
> instance (with 16 GiB of RAM) for Guix at OSUOSL[1].  Assuming that 
> it's accepted, it should be available within a week.
>
> [0]: 
> https://drewdevault.com/2019/09/23/RaptorCS-Blackbird-a-horror-story.html, 
> but read https://drewdevault.com/2019/10/10/RaptorCS-redemption.html 
> as well :-)
> [1]: https://osuosl.org/services/powerdev/