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> There's a group developing a POWER based laptop with a quad-core NXP processor

What I've seen from that project in the past does not fill me with confidence, and nothing I've seen since has changed that impression. Even if the project results in working hardware (which is uncertain), its performance is unlikely to be on par with expectations.

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23988511

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28578021

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I have felt the same way about it a bit, and I do think they need to change a few things if they plan to get anywhere with it. I do hope though that they're able to succeed, they aren't stuck with that design forever and what they learned could be applied to a successor model. They should really consider partnering or merging with Raptor Computing, the last thing the scarce POWER market needs is more fragmentation.

I don't think they have anything useful to contribute. The PowerPC Notebook project has had prototypes in hand since Dec 2022, and bringup progress is essentially zero. It took them until July 2023 to realize they needed a JTAG debugger, and as of their last update in December, they still didn't have U-Boot working. At the rate they're going, a lot of the parts they used are likely to be discontinued before the computer is usable.

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