HP 9000 745i, 747i VME Workstations

Quick Facts
Introduced 1992
Period Growth (II)
Series 740 VME
CPU PA-7100 32-bit
50-100 MHz
Caches 128-512 KB
RAM 128 MB (/50)
256 MB (/100)
Design ASP
Drives 2 SCSI
1 FD/SCSI
Expansion 4 EISA (745i)
747i:
2 EISA
1 SGC
6 VME
I/O Ethernet
SCSI
2 serial
parallel
VGA
HIL
HP-IB
audio

HP 9000 745i and 747i were VME PA-RISC workstations from HP, released in 1992 for industrial control and medical use. They are technically close to HP 9000 715 and 725 workstations but integrated into (19") rack-mountable cases.

HP 9000 747i © Hewlett Packard

CPU and I/O controllers in these computers are based on integrated VME single board computers such as the 742i, used in both 745i and 747i. 747i are built into a bigger case with several VME expansions slots for devices, the 745i has a much smaller case and no expansion.

Both 745i and 747i have a HP-IB interface used for controlling, measurements and instrumentation devices. These machines have two pairs of LED banks, one at the front and the other directly on the CPU board on the back.

The similarly named HP 9000 745 (without »i«) were based on a newer hardware platform and PA-7300LC processors in the same case. HP 74x VME products were discontinued in 2002 as customers have migrated to new solutions and platforms more rapidly than anticipated with end of support between 2003 and 2007.

System

Processors

System CPU Speed L1 cache
HP 9000 745i/50 PA-7100 PA-RISC 32-bit 50 MHz 128 KB off-chip
HP 9000 747i/50 PA-7100 PA-RISC 32-bit 50 MHz 128 KB off-chip
HP 9000 745i/100 PA-7100 PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 512 KB off-chip
HP 9000 747i/100 PA-7100 PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 512 KB off-chip

Chipset

System buses

Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Storage

Ports

Operating systems

Pictures

745i

HP 9000 745i HP 9000 745i HP 9000 745i
HP 9000 745i, © Hewlett Packard 1997

Dimensions

System Height Width Depth Weight Power
745i 175mm 425mm 412mm 18.6kg 350W
747i 310mm 425mm 412mm 29kg 700W

Performance

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System SPEC89
marks		 MIPS SPEC92
int		 SPEC92
fp		 SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
745i/50 69 62 36 72 1.53 2.46
745i/100 136 81 81 138 3.22 4.06

Compared to other RISC and Unix platforms of the 1990s, PA-RISC was a fast architecture with PA-7100 processors being strong early-1990s RISC processors.

Based on old SPEC92 and SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC92
int		 SPEC92
fp		 SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
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
Digital DECpc XL Intel Pentium 66MHz 51.6 47.5
Sun SPARCstation 10 Sun SuperSPARC 40MHz 50.2 60.2 1.13 1.38
HP Vectra VL2 Intel 486DX 100MHz 45.8 23.1
Digital DECstation 5000 MIPS R4000 50MHz 43.2 42.1

Documentation

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

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