HP 9000/735 and 755

Quick Facts
Introduced	1992
Period	Growth (II)
Series	700 Series
CPU	1 PA-7100 99 MHz/ 1 PA-7150 125 MHz
Caches	512 KB L1
RAM	400 MB (735) 768 MB (755)
Design	ASP2
Drives	2 SCSI (735) 4 SCSI (755)
Expansion	1 SGC, 1 EISA, 1 spec (735) 2 SGC, 4 EISA (755)
Bandwidth	?
I/O	10E (or FDDI on 735) 2 SCSI 2 serial parallel HIL audio

The HP 9000 735 and 755 were powerful technical and graphical PA-RISC workstations from the early 1990s. They use 32-bit PA-RISC 1.1 PA-7100 or PA-7150 processors — the latter in the fast (and expensive) 735/125 and 755/125 versions with 125 MHz.

HP 9000 735 workstation — © Hewlett Packard

Both 735 (desktop) and 755 (tower) have a solid and heavy desk-side case built with separate modules for I/O and CPU. These boards, along with EISA cages and the storage subsystem are built into so-called sliders that can be removed separately from the system.

The 735 and 755 have similar cases and architecture as their predecessors HP 9000/730 and 750. They support a large set of I/O buses, expansion options and drives with updated design.

The 735 was widely used as a FDDI node in Convex clusters and the 735/125 was a rather fast 1990s RISC workstations plus one of the fastest ever running NeXTSTEP.

Model	Introduced	Price
735/99	1992	$37,395
735/125	1992
755/99	1992	$58,995
755/125	1992

The HP 9000 735 were apparently used by the US Navy as part of the TAC-3 (Tactical Advanced Computer) framework, possibly as AN/TSQ-142 mission planning system (TEAMS) for the EA-6B, with the 755 used in ATWCS for cruise missiles (Tomahawk).

System architecture

Processors

Model	CPU	Speed	L1 Cache
735/99	PA-7100	99 MHz	256/256 KB off-chip Instruction/Data
755/99	PA-7100	99 MHz	256/256 KB off-chip Instruction/Data
735/125	PA-7150	125 MHz	256/256 KB off-chip Instruction/Data
755/125	PA-7150	125 MHz	256/256 KB off-chip Instruction/Data

Chipset

ASP2 chipset
Viper memory and I/O controller
Cutoff ASIC, interfacing with memory (Viper) and I/O buses, provides address decoding, bus arbitration and interrupts
Shortstop ASIC, coordinates data communication between the I/O buses and the mainbus
NCR 53C700 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
NCS 53C720 16-bit Fast-Wide high-voltage differential (HVD) SCSI-2
Intel 82596DX 10 Mbit Ethernet controller
AMD Formac Plus Am79C830 FDDI controller
Other I/O (serial, parallel, i8042)
Intel 82350 EISA bus adapter chipset (EISA to GSC)
Audio 16-bit CS4215 CODEC
Graphics through separate boards:
- Optional CRX on SGC

System buses

PBus processor/memory bus, 66 MHz on 735/99 and 755/99 (264 MB/s)
VSC main system bus
GSC system-level I/O bus
EISA additional I/O expansion bus
SGC expansion of the mainbus to the SGC expansion cards
SCSI-2 narrow single-ended bus
SCSI-2 Fast-Wide high-voltage differential (HVD) main storage I/O bus

Memory

HP proprietary memory modules, same as 720, 730 and 750, and the Nova servers
8-32 MB modules
755 supports 64 MB modules
12 sockets
735 16 MB onboard, 400 MB maximum
755 768 MB maximum

Memory has to be installed in pairs, from bank 0 to the outside

.______________.  to backplane	
|              |________________.
| 				|
| | | | | | | ##### | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | #CPU# | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | ##### | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |       | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |       | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |       | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |       | | | | | | |
| | | |	| | |       | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |	    | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |       | | | | | | |
|				|
| 5 4 3 2 1 0       0 1 2 3 4 5 |
|_______________________________|
\				/

Expansion slots

735:
- One SGC in DIO-II formfactor
- One EISA slot
- One special daughter card slot for:
  - A2665A - FDDI SAS daughter card with MIC connector
  - A2658A - AUI Ethernet daughter card
  - A2831A - ThinLAN Ethernet daughter card
755:
- Two SGC slots in DIO-II formfactor
- Four EISA slots

Storage

735: one tray for either two 3.5″ SCSI 68-pin Fast-Wide HVD or 50-pin narrow SE hard drives.
755: one tray for two half-height 5.25″ SCSI drives and two trays for one full-height 5.25″ SCSI drive each

External ports

SCSI-2 50-pin single-ended external
SCSI-3 68-pin Fast-Wide high-voltage differential HVD external
Two standard RS232C serial
DB25 parallel
735 15-pin AUI or 10Base2 BNC Ethernet or FDDI SAS MIC connector
755 15-pin AUI & 10Base2 BNC Ethernet connectors
RGB BNC, depends on installed framebuffer, if at all
HP-HIL connector for input devices
Five phone jacks (microphone, headphones, line-in, line-out and speaker)

Operating systems

HP-UX 9.05, 10.20, 11.00 and 11i v1 (both unsupported)
NeXTSTEP
Linux
OpenBSD
NetBSD
Research: HPBSD
Research: Mach 4/Lites
Research: MkLinux
Research: OSF MK-PA

Benchmarks

Model	SPEC95 int	SPEC95 fp	SPEC95 rate int	SPEC95 rate fp
/99	3.22	4.06	29.4	35.8
/125	3.97	4.61	36.3	40.9

Comparison to SPEC benchmark data from other contemporary Unix workstations:

Based on old SPEC92 and SPEC95 archives
Model	CPU	SPEC92 int	SPEC92 fp	SPEC95 int	SPEC95 fp
Intel Alder	Intel Pentium Pro 150MHz	276.3	220.0	6.08	5.42
IBM RS/6000 43P	PowerPC 604 100 MHz	128.0	120.2	6.19	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
SGI Indy	MIPS R4400SC 75MHz	88.1	96.6
SGI Indigo2	MIPS R4400SC 75MHz	85.9	93.6
DEC AlphaStation 200	DEC Alpha 21064 100MHz	74.6	95.2	1.48	2.79
Sun SPARCstation 10	Sun SuperSPARC 40MHz	50.2	60.2	1.13	1.38
Digital DECstation 5000	MIPS R4000 50MHz	43.2	42.1

References

Manuals

HP Apollo 9000 Series 700 Model 735 Workstations (PDF, 7.6 MB, Hewlett Packard 1992)

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