POWER8 mining code

[yuhong]

POWER8 has AES instructions similar to Intel's. It is probably worth putting each architecture including ARM into a separate file.

[hyc]

Who's still buying IBM POWER machines? I can't imagine their H/s/W efficiency is very good, they tend to be pretty monstrous servers.

[ghost]

POWER9 is apparently due to be released soon according to Mr. Wikipedia. Actually sounds quite good.

[peronero]

I believe there is a push to use POWER in lieu of high-end products from US-based chipmakers in China and other states targeted by export restrictions and sanctions.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/10/us_intel_china_ban/ http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chips-china/ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/technology/us-tech-giants-may-blur-national-security-boundaries-in-china-deals.html

This is probably a worthwhile issue to tackle but a little tricky I suppose.

[astraleureka-zz]

@hyc the new POWER9 stuff has 128MB L3 cache per socket, so it would actually be a great target here ;)

[hyc]

IBM won't have POWER9 systems available until late next year. https://www.itjungle.com/2017/07/24/power-neine-conundrum/

I'd say POWER's days of relevance are over. It's targeted at servers only, and the number of deployed servers in the world is tiny compared to the number of workstations/PCs/laptops/phones. 128MB cache sounds good, but only up to 24 cores per chip. For CryptoNight that means most of that on-chip cache isn't even going to be touched. This is a chip designed for multiuser server workloads. Not single-user tasks.

[astraleureka-zz]

It's 24 physical cores with 4-way SMT. There's the second iteration of the Talos workstation with POWER9 that claims to be fulfilling in Q4 2017, but the previous rendition was vapourware - we'll see what happens there.

There's also POWER8 gear available now, and from vendors outside of IBM - check Tyan's single & dual socket offerings for example. It's not as great, but still 96MB L3 and 4-way SMT and multiple AES units per core.

Unfortunately I don't have anything newer than POWER7 at my disposal, otherwise I would take a whack at this one.

[nioroso-x3]

Hi, I made an initial port for POWER8 of the xmr-stak-cpu miner: https://github.com/nioroso-x3/xmr-stak-power I hope it's useful!

[dEBRUYNE-1]

+enhancement