HP zx6000

Overview
Internals
External Connectors
References
Operating Systems
Benchmarks
Physical dimensions/Power

Quick Facts
CPU	1-2 Itanium 2 900MHz-1.5GHz
Caches	32KB L1 256KB L2 1.5-6.0MB L3
RAM	24GB
Drives	3 SCSI 1 IDE
Expansion	3 PCI-X 64/133 1 AGP 4x
Bandwidth	CPU 6.4GB/s Mem 8.5GB/s I/O 3.5GB/s
I/O	GigE 10/100E VGA SCSI 4 USB 2 serial MGMT

Overview

Time of introduction: 2002
Discontinued: September 2004

The Itanium-based zx6000s are the dual-processor brothers of the zx2000 workstations. Their chassis is slightly larger and can be rack-mounted with the appropriate rails (the zx6000 is 2U in height in a rack). The internal architecture is based on HP’s zx1 Itanium chipset, as used in the zx2000 and various PA-RISC servers. In contrast to the zx2000, the zx6000 has slightly higher I/O (3.5GB/s vs. 3.0GB/s) and double the memory bandwidth (8.5GB/s vs. 4.25GB/s) and supports three times the amount of memory (24GB).

The zx6000 with fast CPUs was probably the fastest HP-UX workstation.

Prices at time of introduction: US $7,000 (entry configuration), $13,000 (average) and $27,000 (large).

Internals

CPU

No.	CPU Type	Clock	L1 (I/D)	L2 (I/D)	L3
1-2	Itanium 2 McKinley	900MHz	16/16KB	256KB	1.5MB
1-2	Itanium 2 McKinley	1.0GHz	16/16KB	256KB	3.0MB
1-2	Itanium 2 Madison	1.3GHz	16/16KB	256KB	3.0MB
1-2	Itanium 2 Madison	1.5GHz	16/16KB	256KB	6.0MB

All caches are on-die (L1, L2 and L3).

Chipset

HP zx1 chipset
- zx1 MIO (memory and I/O controller) connects to the processor bus (6.4GB/s), two memory buses (each 4.25GB/s) and seven I/O channels (aggregate 3.5GB/s) and contains both memory and cache controllers
- Six zx1 IOAs (I/O adapters) connect the PCI-X slots and I/O devices to the zx1 MIO with an aggregate bandwidth of 3.5GB/s on seven 0.5GB/s channels
  1. AGP 4x graphics bus on two channels — 1.0GB/s
  2. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel — 0.5GB/s
  3. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel — 0.5GB/s
  4. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel — 0.5GB/s
  5. Gigabit Ethernet and Ultra320 SCSI on PCI 64/66 on one channel — 0.5GB/s
  6. IDE, USB, management LAN on PCI 32/33 on one channel — 0.5GB/s
Gigabit Ethernet (Broadcom 5701)
Two-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller (LSI 1030)
Ultra ATA-100 IDE controller (PCI649)
PDH controller
Serial controller, DUART (16550A-compatible)
FPGA controller for ACPI (2.0) and LPC
Baseboard management controller (BMC — IPMI interface)
10/100 Ethernet for management (Intel 82550)

Buses

Itanium 2/zx1 processor bus 6.4GB/s
Two independent zx1 memory buses, 266MHz, each 4.25GB/s — aggregate 8.5GB/s memory bandwidth
Seven zx1 I/O channels/buses, aggregate 3.5GB/s
Three PCI-X 64/133 I/O buses
PCI-X 64/66 I/O bus (for SCSI/Gigabit Ethernet onboard)
PCI 32/33 I/O bus (for IDE/USB/management onboard devices)
Two SCSI-3 Ultra320 (LVD) storage I/O buses
AGP 4x graphics bus
UltraATA-100 IDE storage I/O bus

Memory

PC2100 registered ECC DDR266 SDRAM DIMMs
Takes up to 2GB modules
Twelve slots
512MB minimum (2×256MB)
24GB maximum (12×2GB)
8.5GB/s memory bandwidth

Expansion

Three PCI-X 64-bit/133MHz slots, full-length
All PCI slots are 3.3V
One AGP Pro 4x 32-bit slot, 1.5V

Drives

Three internal 3.5″ bays for Ultra160 SCSI SCA 80-pin hard drives, hot-plug
Slimline bay for optional IDE CD or DVD drive

Drive 1 and 2 are on one SCSI channel, drive 3 and the external connector are on the second SCSI channel.

External Connectors

Gigabit Ethernet, TP/RJ45
10/100 Ethernet, TP/RJ45 BT management network
Ultra320 SCSI 68-pin
25-pin serial for management processor card, needs break-out cable for three serial ports
Four USB 2.0 ports
Two DB9 male RS232C serial

References

Operation and Maintenance Guide HP Integrity rx2600 server and HP workstation zx6000 (PDF) Hewlett-Packard Development Company (September 2003, second edition)

Operating Systems

HP-UX 11i v1.6 and v2 (v2 May 2005 is the last officially supported version — however it could be later v2 version still work without official support)
Linux for Itanium
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003
OpenVMS (however this is officially unsupported on this platform)

Benchmarks

Model	SPEC2000, int	SPEC2000, fp	SPEC2000 rate, int	SPEC2000 rate, fp
zx6000 900MHz	669	1139	7.8 2-CPU: 15.4	13.2 2-CPU: 23.9
zx6000 1.0GHz	807	1422		16.5 2-CPU: 30
zx6000 1.5GHz	1315	2106	15.2 2-CPU: 30.4	24.4 2-CPU: 42.4

Compare these with other results on the Benchmarks page.

Physical dimensions

Tower: 494×295×675 mm height/width/depth
Tower: 22kg net weight, 25kg fully loaded
Rack-mounted: 2U height, 483×679 mm width/depth
Rack-mounted: 17kg net weight, 22kg fully loaded

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