HP 9000 E-Class
Quick Facts | |
---|---|
Introduced | 1994-1995 |
Period | Maturity (III) |
Series | 800 Series |
CPU | PA-7100LC 48-96 MHz |
Caches | 64 KB-1 MB |
RAM | 512 MB |
Design | LASI |
Drives | 5 SCSI |
Expansion | 2 HP-PB |
I/O | Ethernet SCSI MUX parallel |
HP 9000 E-Class were 32-bit PA-RISC servers from the 800 series sold in the mid-1990s as replacements for older F and G-Class Nova servers. Designed by HP‘s technical server division for reduced manufacturing cost, they were closely aligned with HP 9000/712 but still used a distinct server architecture.
HP 9000 E-Class servers and 712 workstations were complementary products – E-Class as central database and compute servers with the closely integrated 712 as client workstations.
The E-Class case was taken over almost without changes from F-Class, with CPU, memory and many I/O systems being new.
Only networking and few other functions were used from the integrated LASI chipset — due to time constraints a modified version of F-Class HP-PB Personality boards
was used for SCSI, MUX and parallel.
HP 9000 E-Class were positioned by HP in the 1994 Unix server market against IBM RS/6000 POWER-based 220, 230 and 250 and the Sun SPARCclassic and SPARCstation 10.
- HP 9000 E25, HP 9000/806, were introduced in 1994 for $6,000
- HP 9000 E35, HP 9000/816, were introduced in 1994
- HP 9000 E45, HP 9000/826, were introduced in 1994 for $11,320
- HP 9000 E55, HP 9000/856, were introduced in 1995
System architecture
Processors
System | CPU | Speed | L1 Cache |
---|---|---|---|
HP 9000 E25 | PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit | 48 MHz | 1 KB on-chip and 64 KB off-chip |
HP 9000 E35 | PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit | 64 MHz | 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip |
HP 9000 E45 | PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit | 80 MHz | 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip |
HP 9000 E55 | PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit | 96 MHz | 1 KB on-chip and 1024 KB off-chip |
Chipset
- LASI as central I/O chipset
- Wax EISA bridge
- HP-PB bus converter, 8 MHz HP-PB frequency
- HP ASICs for HP-PB, SCSI and MUX port
System buses
- Memory attaches directly to the PA-7100LC processors
- GSC as the main system bus (128 MB/s) that connects CPU, LAN, I/O and HP-PB
- HP-PB device and I/O bus (32 MB/s)
- Integrated I/O Card attaches to HP-PB with SCSI, serial and parallel
- SCSI-2 Fast-Narrow single-ended bus; main storage I/O
Memory
- 72-pin ECC SIMMs, 8-64 MB modules
- Eight slots
- 16 MB minimum, 512 MB maximum
Expansion slots
- Two slots for HP-PB cards
Storage
- One tray for two 3.5″ Fast-Narrow SE 50-pin SCSI hard drives
- One tray for three half-height 5.25″ Fast-Narrow SE 50-pin drives, externally accessible
External ports
- SCSI-2 50-pin single-ended
- Hsigh-pin-count MUX connector
- Ethernet RJ45
- Ethernet AUI 15-pin
- Parallel DB25
Operating systems
- HP-UX, the original HP Unix shipped with it
- HP-UX 11i v1 in 32-bit mode, might work but unsupported
- HP-UX 11.00 in 32-bit mode
- HP-UX 10.20 32-bit
- HP-UX 10.00 and HP-UX 10.10, pre-Y2K
- HP-UX 9 (9.04?, 9.06), pre-Y2K
- PA-RISC Linux: very limited hardware support (no SCSI and other)
- NetBSD: very limited hardware support (no SCSI, only serial and other)
E-Class used a proprietary 800 series system design like older F and G-Class Nova servers for which few architecture specifications were released by HP. There has never been much support in open source operating systems.
Pictures
Benchmarks
System | CPU | SPEC92 int | SPEC92 fp | MIPS |
---|---|---|---|---|
HP 9000 E25 | PA-7100LC 48 MHz | 45.0 | 66.7 | 45 |
HP 9000 E35 | PA-7100LC 64 MHz | 65.6 | 98.5 | 66 |
HP 9000 E45 | PA-7100LC 80 MHz | 82.1 | 122.9 | 82 |
HP 9000 E55 | PA-7100LC 96 MHz | 108.0 | 163.4 | 108 |
Comparison to SPEC benchmark data from other contemporary Unix computers:
System | CPU | SPEC92 int | SPEC92 fp |
---|---|---|---|
IBM RS/6000 43P | PowerPC 604 100 MHz | 128.0 | 120.2 |
Sun SPARCstation 20 | Sun SuperSPARC II 75MHz | 125.8 | 121.2 |
HP 9000 I50 | PA-7000 96 MHz | 100.0 | 158.5 |
Siemens PCE-5S | Intel Pentium 100MHz | 96.2 | 81.2 |
SGI Indy | MIPS R4400SC 75MHz | 88.1 | 96.6 |
DEC AlphaStation 200 | DEC Alpha 21064 100MHz | 74.6 | 95.2 |
HP 9000 G40 | PA-7000 64 MHz | 65.2 | 91.3 |
Sun SPARCstation 10 | Sun SuperSPARC 40MHz | 50.2 | 60.2 |
Digital DECstation 5000 | MIPS R4000 50MHz | 43.2 | 42.1 |
IBM RS/6000 355 | IBM POWER 41MHz | 40.7 | 83.3 |
Siemens PCE-4C | Intel 486DX2 66MHz | 35.8 | 16.1 |
HP 9000 F20 | PA-7000 48 MHz | 33.6 | 56.1 |
Motorola 8000 | Motorola 88100 33MHz | 27.7 | 18.8 |
Documentation
- Development of a Low-Cost, High-Performance, Multiuser Business Server System (PDF, HP Journal 4/95) archive.org
- HP 9000 E-Class Servers Product Brief, Hewlett-Packard Company (1993, 5091-8997E) hpmuseum
- HP 9000 New product Summary guide, technical sales document, first part is on 712, Hewlett Packard: 1993 1000bit.it
- HP 3000 and HP 9000 PA-RISC Computer Systems CE Handbook Hewlett-Packard Company (1993, A2051-90003) bitsavers