(A) at the very least my every attempt to buy a POWER9 system has been thwarted, mainly by the manufacturer themselves constraining availability or otherwise being unable to supply, and
(B) POWER10 has IP issues that have made it unattractive to Raptor CS, and
(C) they have in the past made noises about it not being worth the effort to continue to sell POWER9 systems to the public because of the support overhead
...I have to ask if this is effort well-spent, or if the sweat would be better poured into something with a more certain future.
Not that RISC-V boards currently are anywhere near fast enough for daily driver use, but I'm leaning in that direction.
Author here. For me it's well spent, since this is my daily desktop driver. I can't comment on (C) or (A), though I agree (B) is a problem. But while RISC-V has a "future" (or at least a more distributed one) I see no system currently or in the near future that's anywhere in the same performance ballpark. The architecture has a lot of potential but it feels to me like it remains unrealized. OpenPOWER exists today in competitive specifications and notwithstanding supply chain issues, you can get one (I have three).
(A) at the very least my every attempt to buy a POWER9 system has been thwarted, mainly by the manufacturer themselves constraining availability or otherwise being unable to supply, and
(B) POWER10 has IP issues that have made it unattractive to Raptor CS, and
(C) they have in the past made noises about it not being worth the effort to continue to sell POWER9 systems to the public because of the support overhead
...I have to ask if this is effort well-spent, or if the sweat would be better poured into something with a more certain future.
Not that RISC-V boards currently are anywhere near fast enough for daily driver use, but I'm leaning in that direction.