HP 9000 725 Workstations

Quick Facts
Introduced 1992 and 1994
Period Growth (II)
Series 700 Series
CPU PA-7100 (50, 75)
PA-7100LC (100)
50-100 MHz 32-bit
Caches 128-512 KB
RAM 256 MB
Design ASP (50, 75)
LASI (100)
Drives 3 SCSI
1 FD
Expansion 3 EISA (50, 75)
1 SGC/EISA (50, 75)
1 EISA (100)
3 GSC/EISA (100)
I/O Ethernet
SCSI
2 serial
parallel
VGA
HIL (50, 75)
SMD-10 (100)
audio

HP 9000 725 PA-RISC workstations are desktop-sized Unix computers released in 1992. They were a smaller option to the large and expensive HP 9000 750 computers while still offering the same amount of I/O options. System design is based on 715 workstations in a slighty smaller desktop case with dimensions very popular in the early 1990s.

HP 725
725, Thomas Schanz CC BY-SA 4.0

725 were built in two different designs: one based on PA-7100 processors and HP ASP chipset. This original 725/50 was billed by HP as low-cost workstation for applications that require fast X Window System performance and 2D/3D wireframe graphics such as CAD, MCAD, CASE and publishing at price points comparable to PCs.

The second, newer 725 design was based on HP LASI chipset and PA-RISC LC processors, technically close to the pizzabox HP 9000 712 workstations. The 725/100 was a high-performance, cost-effective expandable desktop system. 725 workstations were never popular, in spite of good I/O options and similar case and size to contemporary PCs (like HP Vectra).

System

Processors

System CPU Speed L1 Cache
HP 9000 725/50 PA-7100 PA-RISC 32-bit 50 MHz 128 KB off-chip
HP 9000 725/75 PA-7100 PA-RISC 32-bit 75 MHz 512 KB off-chip
HP 9000 725/100 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip

Chipset

725/50 and 725/75

725/100

HP 9000 725 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.

System buses

Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Storage

Ports

Operating systems

Unix was the main operating system for HP 9000 715 with good support for HP-UX between HP-UX 9.05 and HP-UX 11.00 or 11i as well as native NeXTSTEP support.

HP 9000 725 have good support in open source systems due to compatible hardware.

Many research and development operating systems were available on 725 workstations during the 1990s:

Pictures

HP 9000 725/100 HP 9000 725/100 HP 9000 725/100 HP 9000 725/100
HP 9000 725/100 HP 9000 725/100 HP 9000 725/100 HP 9000 725/100
HP 9000 725/100, Thomas Schanz 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0

Performance

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System CPU SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
HP 9000 725/50 PA-7100 50 MHz 1.53 2.46
HP 9000 725/75 PA-7100 75 MHz 2.51 3.85
HP 9000 725/100 PA-7100LC 100 MHz 3.76 4.06

HP 9000 725 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. Intel Pentium (P54C) was close in integer speed.

Based on old SPEC92 and SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
HP 9000 C110 PA-7200 120 MHz 6.00 8.14
DEC Alphastation 250 DEC Alpha 21064A 266MHz 4.18 6.27
Siemens PCE-5S Intel Pentium 100MHz 4.04 2.35
SGI Indy MIPS R5000 150MHz 3.97 4.20
DEC AlphaStation 200 DEC Alpha 21064 100MHz 1.48 2.79
Sun SPARCstation 10 Sun SuperSPARC 40MHz 1.13 1.38

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Documentation

Most HP documentation is only available at HP Museum and other archives, with most official sources, articles and journals having disappeared in the 2010s.

Product sheets

ROM update

There is a firmware update available for the 725/64, 725/80 and 725/100.