Homelab on debene.dev https://debene.dev/categories/homelab/ Recent content in Homelab on debene.dev debene.dev https://debene.dev/images/og-default.png https://debene.dev/images/og-default.png Hugo -- 0.152.2 en-us Thu, 14 May 2026 14:00:00 -0500 Running Modern LLMs on a 2016 IBM POWER8 in 2026 https://debene.dev/posts/power8-llm-2026/ Thu, 14 May 2026 14:00:00 -0500 https://debene.dev/posts/power8-llm-2026/ <h2 id="what-are-we-even-doing-here">What Are We Even Doing Here?</h2> <p>It&rsquo;s 2026. Most people run LLMs on NVIDIA H100s, AMD MI300X, or at least a decent gaming GPU. I&rsquo;m running them on a 2016 IBM POWER8 server with 160 hardware threads and zero CUDA cores.</p> <p>Why? Because I can. And because nobody else has published POWER8 LLM benchmarks in 2026. And because alternative architectures deserve love too.</p> <p>This post covers:</p> <ul> <li>Building llama.cpp on ppc64le with GCC 16</li> <li>Running Qwen 2.5 7B (text + vision) on POWER8</li> <li>NUMA tuning discoveries (spoiler: conventional wisdom is wrong)</li> <li>Multimodal inference (yes, vision models work too)</li> <li>Full reproduceability (Gentoo USE flags, build commands, everything)</li> </ul> <p><strong>TL;DR:</strong> Got 6.81 tokens/s on text generation and fully functional vision inference. POWER8 reads license plates better than some humans.</p> 🌹 ULTRA2: O Amor Que Não Compilava https://debene.dev/posts/ultra2-telenovela-pt/ Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://debene.dev/posts/ultra2-telenovela-pt/ Uma telenovela brasileira em 8 capítulos sobre como construir um node K8s com NPU, RDMA, e muita treta com Ubuntu 26.04 🌹 ULTRA2: The Love That Wouldn't Compile https://debene.dev/posts/ultra2-telenovela-en/ Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://debene.dev/posts/ultra2-telenovela-en/ A Brazilian-style soap opera in 8 chapters about building a Kubernetes node with NPU, RDMA, and a lot of drama with Ubuntu 26.04 The 285H That Cried Meh: A Six-Hour Geekbench Saga Through Talos, UKI, and BIOS Power Limits https://debene.dev/posts/ultra2-diagnostic-saga/ Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://debene.dev/posts/ultra2-diagnostic-saga/ How a brand-new Intel Core Ultra 9 285H benched at half its potential, and the rabbit hole that fixed it. Cross-Flashing a Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love InfiniBand https://debene.dev/posts/mellanox-connectx3-crossflash/ Wed, 06 May 2026 13:18:00 -0500 https://debene.dev/posts/mellanox-connectx3-crossflash/ OEM firmware locked your ConnectX card to Ethernet-only? Here&#39;s how to cross-flash it to VPI mode, survive the GUID apocalypse, and get 40 Gbps InfiniBand running in your homelab. The $400 Sovereignty Stack: Why I'm Rebuilding My Homelab Around a Laptop CPU Soldered to a Board from Shenzhen https://debene.dev/posts/400-dollar-sovereignty-stack/ Wed, 06 May 2026 11:45:00 -0500 https://debene.dev/posts/400-dollar-sovereignty-stack/ Why I bought a laptop CPU soldered to a motherboard from Shenzhen, what I&#39;m actually paying for when I build infrastructure, and why the homelab renaissance isn&#39;t about saving money.