HP 9000/E-Class
Overview
Project names - uname:
- E25: Wright Brothers Orville - 9000/806
- E35: Wright Brothers Wilbur - 9000/816
- E45: Wright Brothers - 9000/826
- E55: Wright Brothers 96 - 9000/856
The E-Class Wright Brothers
were the low-cost UNIX server systems from HP in the mid-90s and the designated
replacements for the older PA-7100-based F and G-Class Nova servers.
Designed for reduced manufacturing cost, they were simultaneously developed
with the HP 9000/712 workstation. The casing was taken
over almost unchanged from the F-Class, with the CPU/memory and (part of the) I/O systems being new
designs. Only the LAN and several other functionality was used
from the integrated LASI chipset; due to time (deadline) problems, a
modified version of the F-Class HP-PB Personality
(chipset) card was used for SCSI, serial MUX and parallel.
Internals
CPU
- E25: PA-7100LC 48MHz with 1KB on-chip I L1 and 64KB off-chip unified I/D L1 cache
- E35: PA-7100LC 64MHz with 1KB on-chip I L1 and 256KB off-chip unified I/D L1 cache
- E45: PA-7100LC 80MHz with 1KB on-chip I L1 and 256KB off-chip unified I/D L1 cache
- E55: PA-7100LC 96MHz with 1KB on-chip I L1 and 1024KB off-chip unified I/D L1 cache
- The 1KB on-chip L1 cache is not really a true cache.
Chipset
- LASI ASIC
- WAX ASIC
- GSC-to-HP-PB bridge
- Several HP ASICs, controlling the HP-PB SCSI and MUX port
Buses
- GSC system level I/O bus
- HP-PB additional I/O bus
- SCSI-2 Fast-Narrow single-ended bus; main storage I/O
Memory
- 72-pin ECC SIMMs
- Takes 8-64MB modules
- Eight slots
- 16MB (2×8) minimum, 512MB (8×64) maximum
Expansion
- Two slots for HP-PB cards
Drives
- One tray for two 3.5″ Fast-Narrow SE 50-pin SCSI hard drives
- One tray for three half-height 5.25″ Fast-Narrow SE 50-pin drives, externally accessible
External connectors
- 50-pin HD SCSI-2 single-ended
- high-pin-count MUX connector
- TP/RJ45 10Mbit Ethernet1
- 15-pin AUI 10Mbit Ethernet1
- DB25 female parallel
ROM update
There is a firmware update available for the E25, E35 and E45, which contains the latest version (1.3).
- PF_CWBR0013.txt has details about the contents and installation of the patch.
- PF_CWBR0013 contains the patch.
References
- Development of a Low-Cost, High-Performance, Multiuser Business Server System (PDF, HP Journal 4/95)
Operating systems
- HP-UX: every 32-bit release from 10.20-11.00 works.
- 10.20 for 800s servers: runs nicely.
- 11.00: runs nicely.
- 11i: officially unsupported but some releases work. Faster than 11.00 on the same hardware.
- Linux: works, but the hardware support for the E-class is very limited, i.e., the SCSI-subsystem does not work.
- NetBSD: experimental support as of 5/2005, however some I/O devices are not supported (e.g., SCSI).
Benchmarks
| Model | SPEC92, int | SPEC92, fp |
|---|---|---|
| E25 | 45.0 | 66.7 |
| E35 | 65.6 | 98.5 |
| E45 | 82.1 | 122.9 |
| E55 | 108.0 | 163.4 |
Compare these with other results on the Benchmarks page.