HP announces powerful upgrades to PA-RISC and AlphaServer lines

The 875 megahertz PA-8700+ processor, introduced in the high-end HP Superdome server in June, is now available in the 16-way HP Server rp8400, the 8-way HP Server rp7410 and the 4-way HP Server rp5400 series. These enhanced systems, running HP-UX 11i, the industry-leading UNIX operating environment, deliver more value than ever by running enterprise applications better than comparable systems in the market.

This capability was demonstrated by new world-record results for entry-level and mid-range server performance achieved on the SPECjbb2000 benchmark for Java applications. The 16-way rp8400 performance of 183,694 op/s (operations per second) was 13 percent better than IBM's 16-way Power4-based p670 at 161,904 op/s.

The rp8400 also outperformed the Sun Fire 6800 with 24 processors at 174,658 op/s, resulting in a 58 percent advantage in per-processor performance over the UltraSPARC 3-based SF6800. The 8-way rp7410, at 98,809 op/s, more than doubled the Sun Fire 6800 number of 43,353op/s, which was also achieved with eight processors, and outpaced the 8-way IBM p660 6M1 as well.

These benchmarks demonstrate the superiority of HP's high-performance PA-RISC processor to both the IBM Power4 and the Sun UltraSPARC3. These new results also add to HP's broad and growing portfolio of no. 1 benchmark achievements, including mid-range OLTP, SPECweb99, and single server ECPerf benchmarks on the HP rp8400 server and the leading SPECsfs-97 benchmark for 8-way servers on the HP rp7410 server.

The entry-level rp5470 with the PA-8700+ set a world record for 4-way RISC servers for the SPECweb99-SSL benchmark, outperforming the Sun v480 by a factor of two and beating the IBM p630 by a significant margin.

HP has introduced faster Alpha processors into three new systems in its AlphaServer range:

• The 1 gigahertz AlphaServer DS25 system, a powerful, new, 2-way platform, available now;
• The 1.25 GHz AlphaServer ES45 system and the AlphaServer SC45 Supercomputer with larger cache; these systems are currently shipping, with orders for more than 2000 systems already received from HP customers; and
• The 1.224 GHz AlphaServer GS80, GS160 and GS320 systems with larger cache for customers requiring exceptional data processing power, expected to be available later this month.

Current and future versions of HP's Tru64 UNIX and OpenVMS operating systems will support these new AlphaServer systems, ensuring that customers can deploy the new systems into their existing environments without requiring any software changes or business disruptions. In addition, recent enhancements in OpenVMS provide for dramatic increases in application performance and scalability on large HP AlphaServer GS series systems.

"The new HP brings together leading technology for our customers", stated Keith Collins, chief technology officer, SAS. "The HP future, based on Intel Itanium processor family systems, is compelling. Meanwhile, the broad set of AlphaServer systems announced today demonstrates HP's commitment to both protecting and enhancing our customers' IT investments. We plan to continue support of AlphaServers, including the release of SAS Version 9.0 on these as well as on the next generation of AlphaServer systems."

Richard Rood, acting chief, Earth and Space Data Computing Division of NASA/Goddard, stated: "The new 1.25 GHz HP AlphaServer SC45 supercomputer will enable NASA to extract more information from space-based observations to make more accurate predictions of climate on seasonal and multi-decade timescales."

These new HP AlphaServer systems continue HP's technical computing leadership with performance ranging up to 11 percent over IBM and up to 62 percent over Sun in single CPU SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000 benchmarks. They also establish both performance and scalability leadership of up to three times the performance of comparable IBM and Sun systems for 2-, 4-, 8- and 32-way systems in the SPECint-rate2000 and SPECfp-rate2000 benchmarks.

In addition, an HP AlphaServer ES45 system running Sybase ASE 12.5 software established a new record for four-processor RISC systems in the industry-standard TPC-C commercial benchmark, achieving 56,375 tpm/C (transactions per minute). The AlphaServer system also posted a breakthrough RISC-system price/performance figure of $9.39/tpmC, more than 39 percent lower than the previous price/performance record. This result furthers HP's dominance in the 4-way RISC computing space, in which HP's ES45 and rp5470 servers are the two fastest servers as measured by the TPC-C Benchmark.

HP maintains its record for delivering the industry's best investment protection and lowest total cost of ownership by offering in-box upgrades, a transition path to future Itanium platforms, consolidation capabilities that include dynamic partitioning, and resource and workload management.

Exemplifying HP's beyond-the-box approach is its rich portfolio of computing on demand solutions, including its new Temporary instant Capacity On Demand (TiCOD) offering, the industry's first capacity-on-demand solution for customers needing additional CPU resources for short-term business demands.

HP's TiCOD enables customers to meet service level agreements and temporary capacity spikes through the activation and de-activation of iCOD processors that draw upon a 30-day right-to-use license. The license can be used for more than one iCOD CPU in a server and can span usage periods of months or even years as the processing demand dictates.

Smart Communications, the Philippines' no. 1 cellular operator with a rapidly growing subscriber base that accounts for over half of the country's total cellular market, used TiCOD to help the company keep pace with its rapid growth. "With TiCOD, we were able to temporarily use the iCOD CPUs in our HP server to provide the extra capacity required during the migration period. TiCOD is a cost-effective solution for these types of situations", stated Wilma Cox, chief information officer, Smart Communications.

HP's Computing on Demand is a set of innovative solutions that present alternatives to traditional IT ownership and service contracting. Computing on Demand brings together HP's technology and services strengths to offer customers a broad range of computing solutions when they need them, where they need them and at a predictable price and performance level.