What about the IBM POWER7 and POWER8 platforms, did anyone ever think about porting these to OpenBSD?

[Tinker]

Hi,

Reading through all docs and email archives for OpenBSD, I cannot find a
single mentioning of the IBM POWER processors, e.g., the POWER7 such as
IBM Power 720 Express [1], or the Tyan BP012 or IBM S812L which feature
Power8 [2].

Power8 is a BIG DEAL, or at least it should be, e.g. see
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2413565/ibm-claims-power8-systems-beat-x86-for-performance-per-dollar
- it's faster than Xeons.

And perhaps safer?


Looking at other OS:es,
* Power8 is supported by
* mainstream Linux distros (listed as the ppc64el architecture in
for instance Debian and Ubuntu) and
* FreeBSD seems to do some work with it.

* Power7 is supported by
* Mainstream Linux distros (this is far from obvious from generally
available docs, but is made clear by

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/aixpert/entry/installing_debain_7_and_fedora_18_on_power7?lang=en
,

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/fe313521-2e95-46f2-817d-44a4f27eba32/entry/september_14_2011_8_34_am25?lang=en
).
* FreeBSD support is in beta maybe
(https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ppc/2010-September/004479.html
,
http://adrianchadd.blogspot.com/2015/02/freebsd-on-power8-its-alive.html
, all this seems to be done by Nathan).

Thanks,
Tinker

[1] http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/

[2] http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/ ,
http://www.tyan.com/solutions/tyan_openpower_system.html

[Theo de Raadt]

> Reading through all docs and email archives for OpenBSD, I cannot find a
> single mentioning of the IBM POWER processors, e.g., the POWER7 such as
> IBM Power 720 Express [1], or the Tyan BP012 or IBM S812L which feature
> Power8 [2].
>
> Power8 is a BIG DEAL, or at least it should be, e.g. see
> http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2413565/ibm-claims-power8-systems-beat-x86-for-performance-per-dollar
> - it's faster than Xeons.
>
> And perhaps safer?

If you send me a private mail and I'll give you addresses to get
machines delivered to. I'd make a guess that 3-4 people need machines
to ensure progress.

Thanks for your offer.