PA-RISC information - since 1999

HP 9000 712

Quick Facts
Introduced 1994-1995
Period Maturity (III)
Series 700 Series
CPU PA-7100LC 32-bit
60-100 MHz
Caches 64-256 KB L1
RAM 128 MB(60, 80)
192 MB (100)
Design LASI
Drives 1 SCSI
1 FD
Expansion 1 GIO
1 TSIO
I/O Ethernet
SCSI
serial
parallel
VGA
2 PS/2
audio

HP 9000 712 were a low-cost Unix and PA-RISC workstation design from HP in 1994 and the second PA-RISC pizza-box system after the 705 and 710 workstations for HP-UX.

HP 9000 712
© Hewlett Packard 1997

The design goal from HP for the 32-bit 712 workstation was to reach the performance of 1992-era workstations such as the HP 9000 735 at a fraction of their fabrication costs.

For this, 712 workstations used a highly simplified and integrated VLSI design from HP with many integrated components. Its pizza-box was one of the smallest Unix workstations of the 90s, similar to Sun SPARCstations.

Geared towards graphical user interfaces and X11, 712 had hardware accelerators for 2D graphics. The beautiful NeXTSTEP PA-RISC operating system, based on Mach and Unix, was designed for and on HP 9000 712.

HP 9000 712
© Hewlett Packard 1995

712 were very popular in the 1990s in technical disciplines and graphics, software and early (90s!) multi-media development. Especially the 712/60 was competitively priced at the time as an entry-level RISC Unix system, compared to HP and competing Unix RISC products. HP 712 offered outstanding performance at new low prices with integrated graphics, standard I/O, stereo audio, solid integer performance for Unix applications.

Together with other HP 9000 computers, 712 workstations were part of the mid-1990s US Navy TAC-4 program for tactical computers. This led to HP 9000 712s being used widely as TAC-4 Desktop Computer throughout US Navy and military vessels. HP 9000 712 and its architecture was the basis for other systems like the newer, LASI-based 715 workstations and the SAIC Galaxy 1100, the first PA-RISC portable.

HP reduced pricing of 712 and 715 workstations quite aggressively in 1997, by up to 50 percent (to $7,060 for 712/100) when newer HP B-Class became available.

Architecture

Processors

System CPU Speed L1 cache
HP 9000 712/60 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 60 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 64 KB off-chip
HP 9000 712/80 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 80 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
HP 9000 712/100 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip

Chipset

HP 9000 712 workstations with PA-7100LC 32-bit processors use HP LASI, a custom and highly integrated HP chipset, which combines many functions and I/O on a single chip. Together with the on-CPU memory controller (MIOC), this resulted in a very integrated system design.

HP LASI was primarily designed for cost-reduction while still providing all required I/O functions in a single chip. It was used as the main system controller in most PA-7100LC and PA-7300LC systems.

HP 9000 712 and LASI System Architecture:

 _________       ______
|PA-7100LC|_____|Artist|______________[VGA]
|_________| ||  |______|
  __|__  |  ||
 |Cache| |  ||     _ _ LASI ASIC _ _
 |_____| |  ||            ______
 ______  |  ||    |  ____|i82596|___|_[10Mb Ethernet]
|Memory|_|  ||       ||  |______|
|______|    ||    |  ||   ______    |
 ___        ||       ||__|53C710|_____[8-bit SCSI-2]
|ROM|_______||    |  ||  |______|   |
|___|       ||_______||   ____
 ________   ||    |  ||__|PS/2|_____|_[Keyboard/Mouse]
|GIO-slot|__||       ||  |____|
|________| GSC    |  ||   ______    |
 _________           ||__|16550A|_____[Serial]
|TSIO-slot|__     |  ||  |______|   |
|_________| |        ||   ______
            |     |  ||__|37C65C|___|_[Floppy]
            |        ||  |______|
            |     |  ||   ______    |
            |        ||__|16C522|_____[Parallel]
            |     |  ||  |______|   |
            |        ||   _______
            |_____|__||__|Harmony|__|_[Audio]
                     ||  |_______|
                  |  ||   ___       |
                     ||__|RTC|
                  | GSC  |___|      |
                   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

System buses

Expansion

Memory

I/O slots

Storage

I/O ports

Operating systems

HP 9000 712 played a key role in the open source scene of the 2000s, when HP supported projects (like Linux) with 712 workstations for kernel development.

Pictures

712/60

HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712
HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712
HP 9000 712/60, Thomas Schanz 2010-2013, CC BY-SA 4.0

712/100

HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712 HP 9000 712
HP 9000 712/100, Thomas Schanz CC BY-SA 4.0

Dimensions

Height Width Depth Weight
70mm 432mm 400mm 8kg

Benchmarks

System CPU SPEC92
int
SPEC92
fp
SPEC95
int
SPEC95
fp
HP 9000 712/60 PA-7100LC 60 MHz 67.0 85.3 2.08 2.66
HP 9000 712/80 PA-7100LC 80 MHz 97.1 123.3 3.12 3.55
HP 9000 712/100 PA-7100LC 100 MHz 117.2 144.2 3.76 4.06

HP 9000 712 with PA-7100LC processors were slightly faster than MIPS, Alpha, SPARC and Intel computers from the same time, but usually significantly faster in floating point, in SPEC benchmarks.

Based on old SPEC92 and SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC92
int
SPEC92
fp
SPEC95
int
SPEC95
fp
Intel Alder Intel Pentium Pro 150MHz 276.3 220.0 6.08 5.42
HP 9000 C110 PA-7200 120 MHz 167.0 269.0 6.00 8.14
HP 9000 735/125 PA-7150 125 MHz 136.0 201.0 3.97 4.61
DEC Alphastation 250 DEC Alpha 21064A 266MHz 198.6 262.5 4.18 6.27
IBM RS/6000 43P PowerPC 604 100 MHz 128.0 120.2 3.59 3.20
Sun SPARCstation 20 Sun SuperSPARC II 75MHz 125.8 121.2 3.11 3.10
Siemens PCE-5S Intel Pentium 100MHz 96.2 81.2 4.04 2.35
Intel Xpress Intel Pentium 75MHz 89.1 68.5 2.31 2.02
SGI Indigo2 MIPS R4400SC 75MHz 85.9 93.6
IBM RS/6000 250 PowerPC 601 80MHz 77.6 89.4 1.82 2.03
DEC AlphaStation 200 DEC Alpha 21064 100MHz 74.6 95.2 1.48 2.79
SGI IRIS Indigo IP20 MIPS R4000 100MHz 57.6 60.3
Micronics M4P Intel 486DX4 100MHz 51.4 26.6
Sun SPARCstation 10 Sun SuperSPARC 40MHz 50.2 60.2 1.13 1.38
Digital DECstation 5000 MIPS R4000 50MHz 43.2 42.1

Documentation

Manuals

LED messages

Product sheets

Articles

ROM update

There is a firmware update available for HP 9000 712 to the latest version 2.3.

Other

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