PA-RISC information - since 1999

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.

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

System buses

Memory

Expansion slots

Storage

External ports

Operating systems

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

HP 9000 E35 HP 9000 E35 HP 9000 E35 HP 9000 E35
HP 9000 E35, © Copyright ESIEE; with permission
HP 9000 E55 HP 9000 E55 HP 9000 E55 HP 9000 E55
HP 9000 E55, © Copyright Ralf Folkerts; with permission
HP 9000 E55 HP 9000 E55 HP 9000 E55 HP 9000 E55
HP 9000 E55, © Copyright Ralf Folkerts; with permission

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:

Based on old SPEC92 and SPEC95 archives
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

↑ up