HP 9000 D-Class and R-Class Servers

Quick Facts
Introduced 1996-1998
Period Maturity (III)
Series Lettered
CPU PA-7100LC 32-bit
PA-7300LC 32-bit
1-2 PA-7200 32-bit
1-2 PA-8000 64-bit
1-2 PA-8200 64-bit
75-240 MHz
Caches 256 KB-4 MB L1
0-1 MB L2
RAM 512 MB to 3 GB
Design LASI, U2 or UTurn
Drives 5-8 SCSI
Expansion D2x0: 2-5 EISA, 1-4 GSC
D3x0: 3-7 EISA, 1-5 GSC
R3x0: 4-7 EISA, 1-4 GSC
I/O Ethernet
SCSI
2 serial
parallel

HP 9000 D-Class servers were flexible and scalable PA-RISC enterprise servers for Unix applications of the late-1990s. They were designed to bring mid-range performance for an entry-level price, with processors from 32-bit PA-7100LC to 64-bit PA-8200 and some multi-processing SMP support, released in 1996-1998.

HP 9000 D-Class
D-Class © Hewlett Packard

All D-Class servers were HP 9000 800 server series and used two different architectures: LASI for PA-7100LC and PA-7300LC models and U2/UTurn for PA-7200/PA-8000 models. They were built into a mid-tower case for use as a departmental server. Still rather big and loud machines for the late-1990s.

HP 9000 R-Class
R-Class © Hewlett Packard

R-Class Ultralight servers R380 and R390 are rack-mountable versions of their D-Class counterparts D380/D390. They are technically almost identical, except some differences in the I/O and storage configuration.

D-Class were technically close to the larger K-Class servers.

In the 1990s, D-Class servers were part of the US Navy TAC-4 program, in which HP was a vendor supplying RISC Unix computers for uses throughout the Navy. The D-Class were part of a technology refreshment of TAC-4 in 1996.

Different models were available which could be upgraded within the series to another model with various options for each system. The servers used the following naming convention and were part of the HP 9000 800 series:

System Model number Introduced Price
D200, D300 HP 9000 801 January 1996
D210, D310 HP 9000 811 January 1996 $6,900
D220, D320 HP 9000 803, HP 9000 813 January 1997 $8,900
D230, D330 HP 9000 823, HP 9000 833 January 1997 $16,700
D250, D350 HP 9000 821, HP 9000 831 January 1996
D260, D360 HP 9000 841, HP 9000 851 May 1996
D270, D370 HP 9000 861, HP 9000 871 November 1996 $22,260, $25,250
D280, D380 HP 9000 810, HP 9000 820 September 1997
D390 HP 9000 800 July 1998 $30,000
R380, R390 HP 9000 800 September 1998

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System

Processors

HP 9000 D-Class shipped with a variety of PA-RISC processors – three types of 32-bit CPUs and two 64-bit.

System CPU Speed L1 cache
D200, D300 1 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 75 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
D210, D310 1 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
D220, D320 1 PA-7300LC PA-RISC 32-bit 132 MHz 64/64 KB on-chip plus 1 MB L2 off-chip optional
D230, D330 1 PA-7300LC PA-RISC 32-bit 160 MHz 64/64 KB on-chip plus 1 MB L2 off-chip optional
D250, D350 1-2 PA-7200 PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 256/256 KB off-chip, 2 KB on-chip assist
D260, D360 1-2 PA-7200 PA-RISC 32-bit 120 MHz 1/1 MB off-chip, 2 KB on-chip assist
D270, D370 1-2 PA-8000 PA-RISC 64-bit 160 MHz 512/512 KB off-chip
D280, D380
R380		 1-2 PA-8000 PA-RISC 64-bit 180 MHz 1/1 MB off-chip
D390, R390 1-2 PA-8200 PA-RISC 64-bit 240 MHz 2/2 MB off-chip

Chipset

HP 9000 D-Class servers use different chipsets and systems designs, depending on the specific processor architecture and server model.

HP 9000 D2x0
HP 9000 D3x0
D2x0 and D3x0 © Hewlett Packard

There are four different HP PA-RISC system architectures used in D-Class: U2, Phantom with LASI, MMC/SMC and UTurn, based on processor choice.

System buses

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Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Storage

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Ports

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Operating systems

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Performance

HP 9000 D-Class servers were offered with very different performance points – from entry-level D200 that were only as fast as SPARCstation 20 to 64-bit D390 that were quicker than 500MHz Alpha 21164 computers. D-Class were the natural upgrade to earlier HP 9000 800 servers like E-Class and older Nova servers and significantly faster.

Compared to other RISC and Unix platforms of the 1990s, PA-RISC was a fast architecture with PA-7200 high-performance and PA-8000 strong 64-bit mid-1990s processors.

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System CPU SPEC92
int/fp		 SPEC95
int/fp		 SPEC95
rate int/fp
Dx00 PA-7100LC 75 MHz 115 146 2.18 2.90 19.2 25.8
Dx10 PA-7100LC 100 MHz 152 194 3.74 4.08 33.6 36.7
Dx20 PA-7300LC 132 MHz 6.57 6.72 59.2 60.5
Dx30 PA-7300LC 160 MHz 7.87 7.58 70.8 68.3
Dx50 PA-7200 100 MHz 144 218 5.01 6.77 45.1 61.0
Dx60 PA-7200 120 MHz 114 143
Dx70 1 PA-8000 160 MHz
2 PA-8000 160 MHz		 10.4 15.0 93.9
184		 135
190
Dx80 1 PA-8000 180 MHz
2 PA-8000 180 MHz		 12.3 17.4 111
219		 157
D390 PA-8200 240 MHz 15.5 25.5
Based on old SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC95
int/fp		 SPEC95
rate int/fp
HP Visualize C3000 PA-8500 400MHz 31.8 52.4 287 471
DEC Alphastation 500 DEC Alpha 21164 500MHz 15.0 20.4
SGI Origin 2000 2 MIPS R10000 250MHz 4MB 14.7 24.5 265 390
Sun Ultra 5 333 Sun UltraSPARC IIi 333MHz 14.1 18.3 126 161
IBM RS/6000 43P 260 POWER3 200MHz 12.5 27.0 112 243
Siemens Primergy 460 2 Intel Pentium II 300MHz 11.8 208
SGI O2 MIPS R10000 196MHz 10.1 8.77
Intel Alder Intel Pentium Pro 200MHz 8.09 6.75 72.9 60.7
Sun Ultra 2 1200 Sun UltraSPARC II 200MHz 7.72 11.4 77.2 110
IBM RS/6000 F40 PowerPC 604e 166MHz 5.73 4.75 51.5 42.7
Sun Ultra Enterprise 3000 Sun UltraSPARC 167MHz 6.60 59.0 83.3
DEC Alphastation 255 Alpha 21064A 233MHz 4.27 5.09 38.4 45.8
Siemens PCE-5S Intel Pentium 100MHz 4.04 2.35 36.4 21.2
Sun SPARCstation 20 Sun SuperSPARC II 75MHz 3.11 3.10
HP 9000 712/60 PA-7100LC 60 MHz 2.08 2.66 18.7 23.9
DEC Alphastation 200 Alpha 21064 100MHz 1.88 2.79 17.0 21.9

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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.

Manuals

Articles

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