Now, for work I sometimes have to do some quite data-intensive calculations. Having a desktop computer running POWER8 would make this a hell of a lot faster, considering you can actually max out most intel chips just doing a regular dvd rip.
$3100 for the "CPU+motherboard+heatsink/fan" combo is very steep. I would seriously consider it at a third of the price.
All of this is very confusing. There are a ton of chips on a motherboard, each one with its own firmware. For instance, I doubt you'll find an SSD or HDD that's production worthy and has open source firmware.
That being the case, I doubt there's much to this effort, if the focus truly is security.
It's generally accepted in the Free Software community that right now we've still got a long way to go before we get free firmware for every embedded microcontroller. FSF will still certify a device as "Respects Your Freedom" if the only proprietary code on there is firmware for secondary processors that isn't intended to be updated regularly by the user.