HP 9000 in the RISC Market

The HP 9000 series has a long history of PA-RISC computers in the business and technical computing market. Originally devised in the era of servers for business and transactions, PA-RISC computers grew into a variety of market roles and niches during the 1990s. This article lists some notable ones — based on contemporary news and press releases.

Users of PA-RISC computers over the years
Phase Time Usages Users
Infancy
Phase I		 Late 1980s
1986—1990		 Unix servers
Decision support
Engineering		 Business
Military
Business
Growth
Phase II		 32-bit 1990s
1991—1993		 Unix servers
2D design (MCAD)
Tactical support
Unix research		 Business
Business
Military
Universities
Maturity
Phase III		 1990s heydays
1993—1999		 Unix servers
3D design (MCAD)
Tactical support
Unix research		 Business
Business
Military
Open Source
Decline
Phase IV		 64-bit 2000s
2000—2008		 Mainframes (64-bit)
Secondary servers
Cheap Unix
Unix ports		 Business
Business
Hobbyists
Open Source

During its Infancy, HP 9000 and PA-RISC competed with established minicomputer and mainframe vendors, such as IBM, Digital (VAX) and various other household names of the 1970s and 80s.

In its Growth phase, PA-RISC was extended for engineering and graphical use cases and HP 9000 branched out to include a dedicated workstation line – the HP 9000 700 series, with a market of technical engineering on the desktop (replacing host-type computing) plus departmental and workgroup servers.

During Maturity, PA-RISC computers gained widespread popularity in the RISC era of the 1990s. Complete HP 9000 ecosystems existed for scientific, business and engineering and organizations often bought HP 9000 servers and workstations as an integrated RISC platform. PA-RISC was also used intensively in the military and for academic Unix research.

HP 90000 Unix Computers
HP 9000 Apollo © HP 1991

In its Decline in the 2000s, PA-RISC lost its engineering market share to PCs with Windows, followed by servers with Windows and Linux – and only kept a niche in high-end computing. PA-RISC computers started to tickle down more broadly to open souce developers and hobbyists seeking cheap second-hand Unix computers.

This article describes examplary use cases of HP 9000 PA-RISC systems used throughout these phases of the technical computing market – based on HP and vendor press releases mostly from the 1990s era of RISC workstations and Unix. This will be an occasional series.

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Infancy (I) – Late 1980s

The infancy of PA-RISC took place between 1986 and the late 1980s with first PA-RISC products in the HP 9000 800 series. Started as servers, HP 9000 800 soon moved to include workstations for technical end-users.

Notably, there was a HP 9000 series before PA-RISC – HP 9000 was started by HP 9000 500, the HP FOCUS computer in 1982. HP FOCUS computers were used intensively during the 1980s by the US military in the Navy DTC and JOTS programs — HP 9000 500s were ubiquitous in US Navy fleet commands and surface and subsurface combatants.

— to be extended

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Growth (II) – 32-bit 1990s

Strong growth of HP 9000 and PA-RISC happened between 1990 and 1992. HP differentiated its PA-RISC product offering from large main-frame servers to small desktop workstations on Unix. Many PA-RISC success stories of the early-1990s are clouded in mystery today, since the gleeful press releases predated the internet.

PRO

HP founded a consortium to promoted its PA-RISC architecture in the early 1990s – the Precision RISC Organisation (PRO), in which it organized partners, OEM and larger clients with an interested in PA-RISC.

PRO was an association of industry-leading companies that is broadening the use of PA-RISC technology and delivering its benefits to more customers worldwide. PA-RISC chips and designs were usually not sold on the market to third-parties as distribution was tightly controlled by HP to its partners in PRO.

PRO was an association of HP’s partners in which all members benefit from the sharing of PA-RISC technology advancements. PA-RISC processors and designs were shared with PRO members, which in turn often resold HP 9000 computers and designed their own PA-RISC chips, mostly for the Japanese and East-Asian market.

In the mid-1990s, PRO included Allegro Consulting, CS Defense, Convex, HP, Hitachi, Ltd., Hughes Aircraft Co., Information Builders, Inc., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Oki Electric Industry Co., Oracle Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., Stratus Computer, Inc., Winbond Electronics Corp. and Yokogawa Electric Corp.

— to be extended

HP-UX and Domain for Better Engineering Education

The University of Iowa and its College of Engineering started in the mid-1980s to provide their engineering students with powerful computer systems to teach engineering concepts, based on commercial systems and software. The college added a $100-per-semester student fee to keep up with the advancing computer technology.

HP 90000 Unix at Iowa
HP 9000 at UofI © HP 1993

Having used Apollo computers with Domain operating system and networking since 1985, because the Domain approach to networking [was] decades ahead of its time, the engineering school underwent change in the late-1980s when HP acquired Apollo.

For the engineering staff, it was a traumatic time. The university had to migrate from Domain/OS to HP-UX, rewire the building, and retrain personnel.

Other Iowa departments also used HP 9000 PA-RISC workstations on HP-UX to provide all engineering students [with] access to high-performance HP workstations and industrial strength software packages. Solutions used for student education and research were Unigraphics, Mentor Graphics, Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, HP SoftBench, HP Allbase/SQL, Minitab and S-Plus.

The Iowa Computer-Aided Engineering Network (ICAEN) consisted in the early-1990s of 120 HP 9000 700 workstations and 150 Apollo Domain computers to connect to local HP-UX servers or the global Internet.

HP and the US Government

HP 90000 TAC-3
TAC-3 © HP 1994

After DTC and JOTS in the 1980s, HP was part of TAC-3 program in the early-1990s to supply HP 9000 workstations for tactical decision support to the US Navy. The TAC contracts were some of the largest commercial contracts won by HP at the time for PA-RISC computers.

TAC-3 included HP Apollo and HP 9000 400 workstations (68000-based) and HP 9000 720, 730 and 750 and later 755 workstations. HP 9000 workstations were widely used by the US Navy through TAC-3 for a variety of military applications, including electronic intelligence gathering (ELINT).

Between 1992 and 1995, HP was also part of the Common Hardware & Software Program (CHS-1) of the US Army, under which it supplied HP 9000 735 workstations, sold for around $38,000. Prime contractor was Miltope.

HP became later part of TAC-4 between 1995 and 2001 and TAC-JW, both described later.

HP Workstations At Work In Insurance

Time Insurance, a medical insurance provider in the US with over 300,000 individuals insured in 1993, wanted to move its new Time Member Service call-handling application from host-based systems to a client/server solution. Agents at Time had to struggle for years with multiple 3270 screens, a separate messaging service, manual logging and slow communications links.

Time chose HP as its first client/server provider when moving Member Service to RISC/UNIX client/server for performance reasons. HP eventually installed a larger HP 9000 700 and 800 installation at Time, with Member Service operating on a HP 9000 827 database server with over 100 HP 9000 705 pizzabox and 715 workstation computers with an OpenConnect to talk to legacy mainframes.

The HP 9000 setup at Time was planned to handle 30,000 weekly calls by its 1,500 agents accross the US. Member Service was based on Aurum SupportTrak, a customer service solution, written in Unify Access 4GL.

HP Opens a Window

Andersen Windows, a US manufacturer of wood windows, used Computervision Calma for product design until the early-1990s, based on a Digital VAX 6310 server with 38 workstations. When Calma was phased out, Andersen opted for a Sun setup for Computervision CADDS, CAMU and EDM. In 1993, Andersen benchmarked Sun and HP workstations to compare price and performance of Unix platforms.

After the study, Andersen opted for an HP 9000 environment for electronic data danagement (EDM) and computer-aided design (CAD) of its Computervision suite. HP implemented the hardware with HP 9000 H50 server (EDM) and 80 HP 715/80 workstations (CAD). This improved documentation management and time-to-market, as internal designers could share information of design via the EDM tool.

Modem Transmission Products

Motorola was a leading vendor of modems in the 1990s in its Transmission Products Division. In 1991, Motorola Information Systems Group (ISG) overhauled their software development processes and computer technology, migrating from VAX and VT100 terminals with compilers, assesmblers and EMACS. Building a modem required a four-hour compile cycle plus 45 minutes to download object code into the emulator.

For the improved software development process, Motorola ISG chose HP and its SoftBench product. HP provided 80 new PA-RISC workstations with HP-UX – HP 9000 715/33 (horror) workstations, three 735 compute servers and various other components, including HP SoftBench, HP 64700 emulators, FrameMaker.

The transition was completed between 1993 and 1994, reducing modem build time from four hours to 30 minutes.

Telephone Operations Group

GTE, the largest independent telephone company in the US until the late 1990s, needed a new approach for information management and distribution in its customer service operations in the early 1990s. GTE developed a suite of client/server applications, middleware and development process.

HP supported the GTE Customer Marketing and Service System (CMSS), Telops Common Middleware (TCM) and Advanced Technology Group (ATG) to move from 1970s mainframes to a predictable development process and open client/server architecture. HP supplied hard- and software for GTE in a three-tier model:

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Maturity (III) – 1990s heydays

PA-RISC reached maturity between 1994 to 2000 with many new HP 9000 products, from the last 32-bit workstations to new 64-bit PA-RISC 2.0. At the time, engineering and scientific companies contracted Unix vendors for complete Unix and RISC computing environments, with dozens to hundreds of RISC workstations and servers.

HP was one player for Unix platforms in the corporate and government worlds of the RISC era, along Sun, Digital, SGI and others. Many large contracts and computing environments went to HP 9000 and PA-RISC in the mid-1990s, before the large-scale advent of Wintel PC workstations at the turn of the century.

For most of the 1990s heydays, PA-RISC was still a complete platform offering for client/server computing in three tiers – powerful computing workstations (HP 9000 and Visualize) now with 64-bit, solid business and enterprise servers for storage and heavier computing plus HP ecosystem products for the storage and networking tier.

Engineering Productivity Improvement Program

HP was named exclusive supplier of workstations and servers for Martin Marietta engineering in 1994, as part of the Engineering Productivity Improvement Program. The two-year contract at Martin Marietta, an US aerospace and missile manufacturer, ranged between $30-40m and included approximately 1,000 HP 9000 computers per year.

Martin Marietta looked for computing support that included 300 design and engineering applications on the hardware platform, for which it conducted benchmarks and comparisons of different Unix platforms in its 1993 RFP. HP won the contract against the mid-1990s RISC competition and offered a set of HP 9000 workstations and servers:

Included were migration services from HP’s Open Migration Program in its Professional Services Organization (PSO) to move from Apollo Domain (CISC) and competing RISC vendors to PA-RISC and HP-UX

Engineering Speed and Grand Prix Performance

The Benetton Formula 1 Racing Team, active between 1986 and 2001 in F1 motor racing, was a HP 9000 customer in the 1990s. Since at least the mid-1990s, the Benetton F1 team used HP 9000 PA-RISC workstations and servers for design, manufacturing and administration in its UK Technology Center.

HP 90000 in Benetton F1
HP 9000 Benetton F1 © HP 1994

Benetton F1 used more than 30 HP [9000] workstations with Unigraphics for CAD and NASTRAN for stress analysis and aerodynamic modeling. Oracle databases on HP-9000 HP-UX servers provided tracking for parts replacements of over 3000 parts in the F1 cars.

In 1995, Benetton wanted to improve information flow within their organization by using advanced (1990s!) IT tools for closer linkage among geographically dispersed teams involved in engineering, manufacturing, performance testing and racing.

HP implemented several solutions based on its HP-UX workstations (possibly HP 9000 712) – multimedia mail, shared X11 (GUI) and video conferencing when information exchange at Benetton F1 previously relied on phone and fax. Multimedia communication between the sites was implemented on ISDN with up to four ISDN links per HP 9000 workstation.

With HP Shared X, collaborative work such as shared whiteboards could be implemented using X11 applications, which was displayed on multiple linked workstations. Multimedia mail and communication was facilitated through HP MPower 2.0.

Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement

NASA SEWP-II
SEWP-II © NASA 1995

NASA, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, tendered the Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement (SEWP-II) contracts in the mid-1990s to procure IT solutions in multiple classes. The seventeen contracts were listed for a four-year period from 1996.

NASA awarded HP two options: Mechanical Computer-Aided Design (MCAD), Class 2, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Class 8, for $100m. With SEWP-II, HP is now able to provide complete turnkey MCAD and GIS solutions for NASA and all other government agencies. HP integrated HP 9000, PA-RISC and HP-UX solutions for NASA, which were between 26 and 40% below list-price.

HP SEWP-II
HP SEWP-II © 1997

SEWP-II Class 2 consisted of high-performance HP 9000 workstations on HP-UX in conjunction with several MCAD software and hardware solutions (CADSI DADS, OpenGL, Parametric PRO), as well as other software technologies to support geographic analysis, data integration and image processing. In Class 8, HP provided high-end HP 9000 dual-CPU workstations for complex geographic planning, research, analysis, data integration and image-processing applications on Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) software.

SEWP-II was extended to include other US federal agencies than NASA during the 1990s, and was labelled the best-managed contract out there, with low overhead cost and a leader in the use of the World Wide Web.

Dynamic Needs of an Utility Enterprise

Entergy, one of the largest utilities in the US in the 1990s, needed at new geographic information system (GIS) in the mid-90s to keep pace with a dynamic regulatory and business environment, with the primary goal to automate the electric distribution engineering process.

The eventual implementation as integrated by HP consisted of HP 9000 computers with HP-UX and the Smallworld GIS solution, that both interfaced with the legacy WAN of Entergy, mainframe and Oracle and Sybase databases on Unix.

HP deployed eight HP 9000 G70 servers for a distributed Smallword setup. Engineering and mapping functions were implemented on around 200 HP workstations – 715/80 (for more typical operations) and powerful 735 workstations for Entergy engineers.

Supercomputing, Rendering Technology for Motion-Pictures

The High Tech Center (HTC) Babelsberg, Germany, was a digital-media studio and service provider for motion-picture production companies, opened in 1995, to provide advanced computers for special effects and multimedia tooling. For rendering and compute-intensive applications, HTC selected HP and its Convex SPP scalable PA-RISC computers.

HP provided a Convex Exemplar SPP1000 computer with 64 PA-7100 PA-RISC processors for advanced rendering and extremely complex film-production tasks. This Convex system was part of the $140m start-up costs of the HTC in Germany, the most aggressively financed film-production studio in the 1990s.

Machines Paving the Information Superhighway

In Summer 1994, Kulicke & Soffa Industries (K&S), an IC and MCM assembly equipment producer, looked for increased performance and capabilities for its design teams that manufacture information superhighway ’paving machines’ for such clients as Motorola.

For design and engineering with SDRC Master Series (I-DEAS) software, K&S selected HP 9000 workstations on HP-UX with advanced HP graphics adapters.

This included HP 9000 715/75 workstations with CRX-24Z graphics and 715/80 workstations with HCRX-8Z, selected due to their high-performance floating point processing and powerful graphics. In all, over 57 HP 9000 workstations were supplied with HP-UX.

A Straight Line to Success

Federal Express (FedEx), an express transport company in the US, looked for a new Unix platform in the mid-1990s for managing its courier routes in more than 700 ground operations centers accross the US. With a new GIS (Courier Route Planner) for route planning, the new platform was to determine best routes and improve decision support.

HP 715/75
HP 9000 715 © 1997

FedEx chose HP as the hardware platform for the new, three-tier GIS, developed in-house, based on GenaMap GIS data for 2.5m miles per day. HP integrated hundreds of HP 9000 715/75 PA-RISC workstations on HP-UX as the primary hardware platform for the new GIS.

FedEx planned to transfer the new GIS environment to include X terminals and PCs later. HP supported the development environment for GenaMap, an open systems-based spatial data management engine.

Mapping the New Millennium

Oakland County in Michigan needed a new GIS platform in the mid-1990s for geodetic control, lot and parcel records and layers in mainframes and transfer of GIS data to external agencies. During the early-1990s, the county’s IT department had began moving from mainframes to client/server models, and in 1995 evaluated Unix and RISC platforms from IBM, Sun and HP for its next-generation geographic information system (GIS).

HP 9000 GIS
HP 9000 for GIS, © HP 1996

After the evaluation, HP was selected as strategic platform for Oracle client/server and GIS applications with its HP 9000 PA-RISC computers, selected as the County IT personnel were impressed by the high-performance graphics capabilities.

The County GIS and HP 9000 systems were connected to the Advanced County of Oakland Regional Network (ACORN), a high-speed fiber-optic network in Michigan.

Aerospace Re-platforming Engineering Program

In 1993, HP helped AlliedSignal in a migration and re-platforming program of its engineering and manufacturing environments for airplanes and space vehicles. AlliedSignal, a technology and manufacturing company in California, wanted to move from mainframes and other desktop systems to a Unix client/server environment.

In a 1995 contract with AlliedSignal's Aerospace unit for $30m, HP provided HP 9000 workstations for mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) and electronic design automation (EDA) using Pro/ENGINEER, Mentor Graphics and many other solutions.

AlliedSignal wanted to move from the increasingly outdated 2D applications they had been struggling with to new RISC computers with third-generation computer graphics technology on HP platforms. HP installed over 900 PA-RISC workstations of its HP 9000 700 line and more then two dozen 800 series servers, utilizing

The main goal of AlliedSignal’s Integrated Product Development and Support (IPDS) in 1995 was to move its CAD software from mainframes to a Unix client/server model. This allowed engineers in its Engine Systems and Accessories Business Unit to generate 3-D solid models, store more information and productivity improvements.

Grand Challenge Research

CalTech
CalTech 1995

In a 1996 multiyear contract, HP and CalTech, the California Institute of Technology, developed scalable computers and technology for the Grand Challenge applications – fundamental science and engineering problems with broad economic and scientific impact. With the Convex SPP technology, CalTech and HP looked to providing more power than the Intel Paragon, Cray T3D, and IBM SP2 systems.

In the first phase in 1997, HP installed a Exemplar X-Class with 64 processors and fourth-generation CC-NUMA architecture with 64-bit PA-8000 processors, later extended to 256 processors with 184 GFLOPS (SPP2000). The HP X-Class SPP2000 system was used by staff at Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for astronomy, biology, chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, computer science, earth and space science, and physics and oceanic research and processing SAR data from satellites.

Exemplar at CalTech
Exemplars at CalTech 1995

As part of the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) of a National Science Foundation program, the HP-Convex setup was extended in 1999 by a succession of HP/Convex computers, including a SPP 3000 with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) support. An even later extension foresaw a move to HP-Intel Itanium processors with 1 Teraflop peak and 1 TB main memory.

HP 9000 and Satellite Maneuvering Software

Telesat Canada, the satellite subsidiary of Bell Canada, was responsible for all of Canada’s and a few foreign satellites in the 1990s with operations, station-keeping and maneuvring. Telesat developed its own satellite maneuvering in the early-1990s, based on Motif and Unix, using HP’s SoftBench development framework.

Telesat developed the satellite maneuvering software, used in its own satellite control center (SCC), based on 13 HP 9000 715/75 and two 750 workstations using HP SoftBench, to ease our way along the development path. The GUI code was written in FACE, translated to C, linked with the restructured scientific code in FORTRAN by SoftBench.

The Telesat satellite maneuvering software was sold in the 1990s to UK Ministry of Defense, US companies and Deutsche Bundespost, the German postal and telecommunications agency, which in turn procured HP 9000 700 workstations to have a compatible Unix environment.

HP and the US Government

HP 90000 FOSE
FOSE © 1997

HP had many contracts with the US federal government, that included HP 9000 computers as well as specially protected HP-UX Unix versions for security agencies (B1 and higher). It was part of several systems expositions for the federal government and intelligence agencies, including the Federal Office Systems Exposition 1997.

HP 90000 TAC-4
TAC-4

With TAC-4, HP was again part of a US Navy contract after DTC/JOTS in the 1980s and TAC-3 in the early-1990s. TAC-3 and TAC-4 supplied industrial computers and workstations for military uses and tactical decision support to the Navy. These were some of the largest commercial contracts won by HP at the time for PA-RISC computers and included: HP 9000 712, HP Visualize C-Class and J-Class workstations.

Also part of TAC-4 were HP 9000 D350 and K220 and K420 servers, Telos ACE VME Portable Workstation with HP 9000 743i VME (mobile command) and SAIC Galaxy portables for the Marine Corps.

Under the US government Super-Mini Contract, Super-Minicomputer Program (SMP), DoD and civilian agencies could procure HP 9000 multi-processing server products since 1993. In 1996, a technology refreshment added HP 9000 K210/K410 and D350 servers and T520 enterprise servers.

HP was part of the US Army Sustaining Base Information Services Program (SBIS), which was planning to improve and standardize the Army’s automation of day-to-day business functions during the 1990s. HP supplied several HP 9000 PA-RISC workstations to the US Army: 712/60, 715/100, 725/100, 735/99 and 755/125 for $5,498 to $42,228.

In 1996, HP was one of two companies selected by the US Army with the Workstation-1 contract for COTS solutions for the US military and civilian agencies, after NASA closed its SEWP-II contract for outside agencies. HP expected over 25,000 orders in Workstation-1 for HP 9000 and Visualize computers until 1999 but the contract was cancelled later in 1996 due to a protest by Sun.

In the Identification Networking and Tasking (ITN) contract of the FBI, HP supplied PRC, a federal systems integrator, with over 1,300 HP 9000 700 workstations and 800 servers, used for electronic transmissal and receival of fingerprint information through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS).

The main ITN solution depended on commercial and proprietary software, including HP OpenView, Xerox In-Concert workflow and others. An ITN development lab was supplied by HP with one HP 9000 I40 servers and 25 725/50 workstations.

HP 9000 BLS
HP 9000 BLS © 1996

There were special HP-UX Unix version for the security and access requirement of US Government agencies, the HP-UX BLS versions. Starting in 1993, at least HP-UX 9 and HP-UX 10 had NSA B1-level security versions: HP-UX BLS 9.08 and 9.09+ and HP-UX 10.16 and 10.09 CMW.

HP-UX B-level Security releases (BLS) had very strict security controls, implemented for the NSA B1 Rating Maintenance Program (RAMP). HP-UX BLS (B1) versions were separate products parallel to other HP-UX releases, tested by the National Computer Security Center (NCSC) Orange Book for B1.

The core for HP-UX BLS was the Trusted Computing Base (TCB), the set of mechanisms responsible for enforcing the system’s security policies. Additionally, BLS supported Sensitivity Labeling (classification), Mandatory Access Control (MAC), Discretionary Access Control (DAC), Password Management, Least Privilege, Trusted Path, Auditing, Trusted Networking

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Decline (IV) – 64-bit in the 2000s

HP slowly transitioned to a post-RISC phase in the 2000s, with a long-planned move to VLIW Itanium IA64 for its technical and Unix offerings. The decline of PA-RISC was set in stone much earlier than that, with the mid-1990s joint development of Itanium together with Intel, and decided in the mid-2000s.

Official success stories became much scarcer around the turn of the millenium, when HP was still selling advanced PA-RISC Visualize workstations whilst in the throes of the Itanium transitions.

Achieving Prosperity Through Productivity

HP had long been part of the technical engineering for US missile systems in Tucson, first for Hughes and later for Raytheon. This started in the early 1990s, when HP helped Hughes to move from mainframes to a three-tier client/server model with Unix and RISC workstations. At the turn of the century, HP supported Raytheon to maximize their technology investment and bring about even faster cycle times and simulation runs.

Raytheon Missile Systems used a three tier architecture:

  1. Desktop services for data display and low-level computation
  2. Computation tier for analysis and calculations
  3. Storage tier for databases in excess of 30 GB

For the desktop tier, HP supplied 700 HP Visualize C-Class workstations for MCAD, modeling and simulation on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00 using Pro/ENGINEER. In the computation tier, HP provided over 25 D-Class, A-Class, R-Class and K-Class servers for applications and data services, and deployed a V2250 Exemplar server for large memory set.

Apache Helicopter Software Department

Boeing had been using HP 9000 workstations and servers since 1987 in its CAD/CAM/CAE technology group in Arizone to design components for the Apache Longbow helicopter, using NASTRAN and PATRAN and Unigraphics. Over the years, Boeing had up to 280 Unigraphics-HP seats at its Mesa site.

Boeing moved from CISC to RISC in the late-1980s and chose early HP 9000 700 workstations since they ran Unigraphics and raw performance and HP was ahead of the game with its initial announcement of RISC technologies. HP servers were installed in every building with project staff to to insulate [Boeing] from inter-building network failures.

In 2000, Boeing’s setup with HP Visualize and PA-RISC computers consisted of:

The J5000, introduced in 1999, was used by Boeing due to its great depth and tons of resources in parallel to the other Visualize computers for intensive batch processing for our analysis folks overnight, without impacting our prime-shift interactive people

Unix and Open Source

HP 9000 and PA-RISC computers had a second or third life in the early 2000s as cheap Unix servers and open source development boxes. Linux on PA-RISC flourished in the 2000s and BSD was ported freely to PA-RISC with OpenBSD during the same period.

In late 1999, HP started supporting and sponsoring PA-RISC Linux in parallel to its Itanium (ia64) Linux undertakings, after PA-RISC was one of the last RISC architectures without adequate Linux support. HP supported the port with developers, code, opening up PA-RISC documentation and sponsoring actual HP 9000 computers.

Several important parts of the Linux kernel PA-RISC support were written by HP employees in the project. HP’s support activites were channeled through its new Open Source Solutions Operation unit after HP was late (or absent) to the Linux party of the 1990s. Linux on PA-RISC reached a stable state in the late 2000s with distributions like Debian.

The work on OpenBSD for PA-RISC by the late Michael Shalayeff started in the late-1990s with very little documentation and support but profited greatly from HP’s Linux support. OpenBSD/hppa progressed during the 2000s into a usable operating system for PA-RISC, along NetBSD/hp700.

In parallel to the Open Source undertakings, many HP 9000 and PA-RISC computers were used as cheap Unix servers in support roles likes print, web or file servers, when businesses needed reliable computers to handle mundane tasks. They were either not willing to hedge their bets on Linux or just used the technical Unix computers that were around.

Many HP 9000 soldiered on well into the new century, using the last bits of HP-UX support available, until they either finally broke down or engineering workflows migrated to the Windows ecosystem. A few HP 9000 800 (and lettered) servers were even longer in operations for legacy transactions and communications.

Ironically, Unix computers led they way when organizationed transitioned from host-based mainframe computing during the 1980s to client/server models. In the 2000s, Unix client/server ecosystems on RISC platforms had become the target of a new transition, first to Windows and Intel, and then to a new paradigm with much faster clients (and fewer compute servers and the like).

Disappearance of PA-RISC

After the tumultous 2000s, PA-RISC almost completely disappeared from the corporate and public world of computing in the 2010s. There was very little commercial activity left for HP 9000 and PA-RISC computers in the 2010s. Many corporate clients had migrated to IA64 in the 2000s or (later) to Windows on Intel altogether.

There were a few holdouts in manufacturing and specialized applications – PA-RISC was used in the US Navy and its components and systems for a long time as well as in specialized manufacturing processes.

PA-RISC computers have become less common on the hobbyist and second-hand Unix markets too as people were happy to move away from the cumbersome world of commercial Unix to the much more modern (and user friendly) Unix-like systems of today. Using them for something useful though became a hassle – due to the lack of proper web browsers and general lack of processing speed for the modern web.

Interestingly, as HP 9000 hardware became harder to get, the software and operating system availability for PA-RISC became much better with many old operating systems and even technical Unix applications available for testing. Commercial Unix environments in the 1990s were a fascinating world – with the whole experience available today.

HP 9000 were usually built rather solidly in the 1980s and 1990s, and stayed that way. HP 9000 are not know to suffer from widespread hardware defects other than their PSUs. However, many of the specialized bits and pieces to use and operate them became sparse, such as HP-HIL adapters, SCSI floppy drives, graphics connectors and adapters.

Linux on PA-RISC grew during PA-RISC’s disappearance — more hardware and device support. Besides Debian, Gentoo support PA-RISC, as did the T2 System Development environment. OpenBSD and NetBSD expanded – but usage became more sparse, judging from mailing list activity.

An interesting development is the addition of PA-RISC into QEMU, the workstation emulator, which allows for emulation HP 9000 PA-RISC computers to experiment with original Unix operating environments.

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Sources

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