HP 9000 and PA-RISC Story

HP Unix Servers
Unix servers © HP 1980s

HP 9000 was a family of technical servers and workstations produced by HP between the 1980s and 2000s, which included several ranges of Unix computers: the HP 9000 700, 800 and others, based on HP PA-RISC, Itanium and other platform.

Both RISC and Unix were developed into products during the 1980s, moving from academia via industrial R&D to productization — at a time when much computing was still done on mainframes, minicomputers and time-sharing machines such as DEC PDP, VAX, IBM AS/400 and System/360. HP 9000 and PA-RISC were HP’s new line of products in that fledging Unix market in the early 1980s that grew into the RISC era of the 1990s.

This article divides the PA-RISC story into four periods: Infancy with first PA-RISC computers in the late-1980s, Growth with first 32-bit PA-RISC workstations in the early-1990s, Maturity with a broad PA-RISC platform of Visualize workstations and Lettered servers up to 64-bit in the mid-1990s and Decline with the failed transition of 64-bit PA-RISC to VLIW Itanium. 

PA-RISC      Infancy     Growth       Maturity               Decline         
Year      86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
500  ∆ ∆
600             ∆  ∆
700                      ∆  ∆  ∆  ∆  ∆
740                         ∏     ∏     ∏  
800       █  █  █  █  █  █  
DN              ∆
A-Class                                       ∏     ∏
B-Class                                 ∆  ∆     ∆  ∆
C-Class                              ∆  ∆  ∆     ∆  ∆  ∆       ∆
D-Class                                 █  █
E-Class                           █  █
FGHI-Class               █  █  █
J-Class                              ∆  ∆  ∆     ∆  ∆  ∆
K-Class                              █  █  █  █
L-Class                                          ∏  ∏
N-Class                                          ∏
R-Class                                       ∏
rp                                               ∏  ∏  ∏  ∏  ∏  ∏  ∏     ∏
rx                                                           ∏  ∏        ∏             ∏   ∏
SuperDome                                           ∏        ∏        ∏     ∏     ∏  
T-Class                        ∏     ∏     ∏
V-Class                                    ∏  ∏  ∏
zx                                                     ∆  ∆
Year      86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
∆  workstation; █  server; ∏   rack

Separate articles describe the history of PA-RISC operating systems, the era of PA-RISC processors as well as the age of PA-RISC information and OpenPA itself.

Prelude to PA-RISC – Early 1980s

Early HP 9000 Computers
Early HP 9000 © HP 1980s

In the early 1980s, HP worked on both Unix and RISC development and products. Before PA-RISC, the original HP 9000 series was released with the FOCUS-based 500 series (9020). In parallel, Motorola 68000 based computers were designed as HP 9000 Unix workstations.

HP offered a few other computer series under the HP 9000 label before releasing PA-RISC, which became the HP 9000 mainstay in the 1990s. Early HP 9000 products include Unix computers on Motorola 68000 CISC and HP FOCUS platforms that preceeded PA-RISC.

HP 9000 500

HP 520 computers were early-1980s predecessors of PA-RISC that started the HP 9000 series. HP 9000 500 were based on the proprietary HP 32-bit processor the HP FOCUS. First released in 1982, HP 9000/520, originally 9020, were quickly followed by HP 9000 530, 540 and 550 computers. Operating system support was limited to HP-UX on HP FOCUS, apparently the first commercial Unix supporting a multi-processor, multi-user system.

HP 9000 200 and 300

HP 9000 200 were early incarnations of HP Unix platforms, based on Motorola 68000. They started life as HP 9826 in 1981 and were soon followed by other high-end technical desktops, such as the HP 9836, 9816, 9920, 9817 and 9837H. HP renamed the series in the early 1980s to HP 9000 200 and the individual computers to HP 9000/220 and so on. HP 9000 200 ran versions of HP-UX Unix.

Early HP 9000 Computers
HP 9000 UNIX series © HP 1986

The other series based on Motorola M68k processors was HP 9000 300, sold from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s as HP Unix platform. HP 9000 300 had a new, functional multi-box design for each computer, later used in first HP 9000 700 workstations. HP 9000 300 series used Motorola CISC processors from 68010 to 68040. Besides HP-UX, 300 series were supported by various BSD operating systems from the 1980s well into the 2010s, including 4.4BSD and OpenBSD plus NetBSD/hp300.

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Infancy (I) – Late 1980s

The infancy of PA-RISC were the years between 1986 and the late 1980s with first PA-RISC processor and products, using an RISC architecture still in flux.

HP moved into the fledging microcomputer market in the late 80s with several differently positioned platforms. PA-RISC computers in the HP 9000 Series 800 were HP’s RISC entry into that market. HP 9000 offerings with CISC processors were sold by HP in parallel for almost a decade. PA-RISC 9000 800 were initially offered as servers for business applications but quickly adapted by HP and customers for technical and engineering – as early workstations.

Early RISC – HP 9000 800

Early HP 9000 RISC
HP 9000 RISC computers © HP 1980s

HP 9000 800 servers were the original PA-RISC computers developed by HP in the 1980s and released in mid-1980s. They consisted of several computers based on 32-bit PA-RISC 1.0 and 1.1 processors and different designs. System architecture was much different, compared to later HP 9000 700 workstations that used other chipsets, buses and I/O devices.

The workstation-centric HP 9000 700 series was introduced much later than the 800 series, in the early 1990s with a different, more engineering and technical computer focus – compared to the business and transaction use cases of 800s.

Early TTL and NMOS

First PA-RISC systems to market were early HP 9000 800 servers released between 1986 and 1990 with PA-RISC 1.0 processors. HP tried different concepts and designs for computers and processors in that phase, beginning with TTL-based HP 9000 840 servers in 1986 (when HP FOCUS computers had been fabricated in NMOS for years).

Next were NMOS-based HP 9000 825, 835 and 850 servers, released a year later in 1987 and HP 9000 845, 855 and 860 servers in the late-1980s. HP experimented with workstation and technical use cases already in the 800 series – with 3D engineering superworkstations like the 825SRX and 835TurboSRX, using HP’s first SRX graphics accelerators.

First CMOS

After NMOS, HP moved to CMOS-based processors in the very early-90s, with HP 9000 842, 852, 865, 870 servers and first attempts of lower-cost systems. These were the last to use PA-RISC 1.0 processors, before HP switched to the more modern PA-RISC 1.1 (and more workstations) in the early-1990s.

The large HP 9000 870 server was the first HP PA-RISC to use SMP multiprocessing, with HP-UX 8.06 the first HP Unix to support SMP.

HP 9000 600

There was a short-lived PA-RISC-based HP 9000 600 series in the late 1980s. The HP 90000/635SV and 645SV were supposedly server-only versions of the 800 series PA-RISC 1.0 HP 9000 835 and 845. Both were deskside server systems and ran HP-UX. The 600 series moniker was discontinued shortly after with servers taking the 800 and workstations the 700 series.

The future of 800s

Due to their separate system design, HP 9000 700 and 800 series used different HP-UX Unix versions for a long time, until release 10.20. Support for 800 series in open source systems was always limited due to sparse documentation on their architecture.

Series 800 PA-RISC servers carried over into the Lettered servers of the A/D/K/N classes that kept a divergent architecture to 700 and Visualize workstations, focused on multi-user business applications.

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HP 9000 400 and Apollo

Just before releasing HP 9000 700 workstations, HP bought Apollo, a technical computing market leader of the 1980s with their PRISM-based Domain 10000 workstations. Apollo Domain workstations were carried on for a few years as HP integrated Apollo into their workstation business unit and used Apollo co-branding on HP 9000 RISC workstations. Soon Apollo products and technology were phased so HP could concentrate on PA-RISC.

HP 9000 400 Apollo
HP Apollo 9000 400, © 1990 HP

HP 9000 400 were related to HP 9000 300 series from the early 1980s but incorporated technology from Apollo Computers. They were based on Motorola 68030 and 68040 processors and ran HP-UX and Domain/OS, Apollo Unix. HP 9000 400 were sold in parallel to Series 700 and 800 PA-RISC computers in the early 1990s and were widely supported by BSD and open source operating systems of that era. Designs, devices and peripherals were shared between Motorola-based 400s and PA-RISC 700 and 800, including SGC and EISA buses, SCSI controllers, HP-HIL and HP-IB peripherals and graphics.

HP 3000

HP 3000 were HP business minicomputers, first released in 1972, with MPE operating system and application stack and distinct customer base. From the late 1980s on, the 3000s moved to the PA-RISC platform to systems closely related to HP 9000 800 servers. The first MPE for PA-RISC release was MPE/XL, the last was MPE/iX with limited Unix support and POSIX compliance. HP 3000 and MPE have been discontinued since.

More information: 3000-MPE (hpmuseum.net) and History of the HP 3000 from Bob Green.

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Growth (II) – 32-bit 1990s

Much of the growth phase of HP 9000 and PA-RISC happened between 1990 and 1992. PA-RISC computers became very successful in the industry, and HP started differentiating its PA-RISC product ecosystem from large main-frame servers to small desktop workstations on Unix.

HP 9000 700 and Apollo
HP 9000 700, © 1992 HP Professional

HP introduced a dedicated PA-RISC workstation line, the HP 9000 700 series, to segment PA-RISC computers from the 800 servers. Based on new PA-RISC 1.1 processors, the original HP 9000 workstation line-up consisted of HP 9000 Snakes, smaller systems (705/710) and technical desktops (715/725)

These first HP 9000 workstations were often used for Unix-based CAD, graphics, engineering and R&D. Some opening up of the tightly-controlled PA-RISC happened through HP PRO, an PA-RISC organization, and third-party OEM so PA-RISC was not limited to HP anymore.

HP 9000 700 workstations

HP 9000 700 Apollo
HP 9000 700 Apollo, © 1991 HP Professional

HP marketed PA-RISC workstations from the 1990s on as HP 9000 700 series, in contrast to the 800 series PA-RISC servers. Co-branded as Apollo, the 700 series became popular 32-bit Unix RISC workstations of the 1990s to compete with Sun, Digital and IBM. HP 9000 700 used HP’s newer PA-RISC 1.1 processors, the 32-bit PA-7000, PA-7100 and later PA-7100LC.

At that time, much technical computing centered on Unix and RISC workstations, obsoleting older CISC computers. The new workstations were often used for CAD, CAM and specialized software for HP-UX and Unix. HP acquired Apollo Computers the the early 90s, so Apollo technology and name became part of some workstations as HP Apollo 9000.

Snakes Workstations

HP 9000 720, 730 and 750, called Snakes by HP, were the original, first PA-RISC workstations with PA-RISC 1.1 PA-7000 processors, released in 1991. They used large and heavy deskside and desktop cases with interlocking backplane and I/O modules. 730 and 750 were improved on a year later by the powerful PA-7100/PA-7150-based HP 9000 735 and 755, among the fastest PA-RISC workstations of the time.

First Pizzaboxes

HP built first small, pizza-box workstations with the HP 9000 705 and 710, based on the design of the original Snake workstations with similar architecture but limited expandability. 705 and 710 were an early PA-RISC foray into pared-down budget workstations with full functionality but compromises on performance and I/O, a concept revised in HP 9000 712 workstations.

Desktop Workstations

Soon after the original Snake workstations, a range of technical workstations was released in 1992 with PA-7100 processors in ASP design, the HP 9000 715 and HP 9000 725 workstations, in /33 (horrible) to /75 variants. They featured more standardized hardware, expandability and I/O options for technical users, packaged into a desktop housing not dissimilar to contemporary PCs and proved rather popular HP workstations products.

PA-RISC HP 9000 700 workstations gained popularity in engineering, industrial and research fields during the 1990s. PA-RISC workstations were developed by the HP Workstation Systems Division in Ft. Collins, Colorado, USA. HP developed almost all PA-RISC CPUs since 1986 inhouse, in its VLSI Technology Center (VTC) and Systems & VLSI Technology Operation (SVTO), also in Fort Collins.

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HP 9000 800 servers

HP 9000 8000
HP 9000 800, © 1991 HP Professional

F/G/H/I-Class: These were the second generation HP 9000 800 servers from the early-1990s. The HP 9000 Nova servers share a similar, distinct 32-bit PA-RISC design. They had diverse configurations for server applications from the small F10 to the large I70 and were used as multifunction or dedicated network servers for applications, databases and communications.

Costs were high for these early-1990s Unix servers, between $12,895 to more than $140,000 for multi-user systems mainly used as transaction servers. These shared many technical similarities with HP 3000 MPE servers or were outright identical.

HP 9000 890: 890 servers were an early iteration of the T-Class mainframe architecture, with later T500/T600 being updated sucessors. Even later, the 890/T-Class system design was discontinued in favor of more flexible Superdome systems.

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VME and Industrial

HP sold PA-RISC VME computers as HP 9000 740 series from the early to late 1990s. They were used for industrial, scientific and military data measurement and real time control applications, as single-board computers utilized the industrial-grade VME bus. Processors used were 32-bit PA-RISC PA-7100, PA-7100LC and PA-7300LC with HP LASI and ASP chipsets and custom HP VME design.

HP 9000 743 and 748 VME
HP 743 © 1997 Hewlett Packard

Operating systems for HP 9000 740 were HP-UX for Unix and HP-RT for real-time applications, with some support in open Source operating systems. They were used in a very wide variety of applications for industrial and scientific control and measurement, including by the US military.

HP 74O VME products were discontinued in 2002 as customers ha[d] migrated to new solutions and platforms more rapidly than anticipated, with end of support in 2007.

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Third party

Precision RISC Organisation (PRO) was a consortium formed by HP and Convex in 1992 to promote PA-RISC architecture. PA-RISC chips and designs were usually not sold on the market to third-parties, licensing and distribution was tightly controlled by HP to its partners in the PRO.

Some PRO members sold third party PA-RISC computers as OEM or relabeled HP 9000 systems from HP in their markets:

These computers were mostly sold in Japan and Korea, with very limited worldwide distribution. Their vendors soon lost interest in PA-RISC as part of the 2000s general RISC decline and HP’s Itanium transition plans.

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HP and the US Navy

During the 1980s and 1990s, HP was part of framework contracts with the US Navy to supply industrial computers and workstations for military uses and tactical decision support. These were some of the largest commercial contracts won by HP at the time for PA-RISC computers.

HP was part of at least three programs with the US Navy: DTC-1, TAC-3 and TAC-4.

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Maturity (III) – 1990s heydays

The maturity of PA-RISC took place in the long-phase between 1994 to 2000 until the dot-com boom and the transition to Intel and Windows-based PCs. HP designed many competitive PA-RISC workstation and server products during this time and transitioned from 32-bit to 64-bit computing. The height of PA-RISC maturity were the last 32-bit and first 64-bit workstations, during the HP 9000—HP Visualize rebranding.

HP 9000 712 HP 9000 715 HP 9000 B-Class HP 9000 J-Class
HP 9000 712, 715, B-Class and J-Class, © Copyright HP 1999

HP’s Unix and RISC line-up had matured significantly after the hectic RISC growth of the early 1990s, with computers including small PA-RISC desktops to large servers and mainframe-types. HP used an increasingly complex, modern branding and product groups in that period — HP 9000 700, HP Visualize, HP rp and various lettered workstations and server series like A-Class, B-Class, J-Class, and harbinger of the later Decline.

PA-RISC moved from 32-bit to 64-bit computing in the 1990s with new PA-8000 CPUs, a path pursued until PA-8900 in the mid-2000s in parallel to Itanium. PA-RISC 64-bit workstations were fairly high-powered Unix systems for the premier HP-UX technical engineering and business market. However, commodity and mainstream alternatives to RISC and Unix slowly started to appear at the end of that era with Window NT, Linux and faster x86 computers making inroads.

As HP Professional put it in 1997, A UNIX workstation using a RISC CPU is King of the Hill when it comes to desktop computers. Although they tried, PCs couldn’t do the hard math, the complex calculations or the 3D modeling necessary for scientific and technical computing. But in 1997, Windows NT running on Intel Pentium-based PCs pose a serious threat to the once highly respected, untouchable workstation.

HP 9000 700 workstations

HP released the most popular PA-RISC workstations in the HP 9000 700 range in 1994 and 1995, right before the move to HP Visualize branding and marketing. These HP 9000 700 workstations with 32-bit PA-RISC processors proved to be commercially successful for HP and were a hit later with hobbyists in the 2000s too.

HP Graphics
© Hewlett Packard 1996

Pizzabox 712 and newer 715: PA-RISC computer design was updated in 1994 with HP 9000 712 and modernized 715 workstations. Both were based on modern PA-7100LC processors and integrated HP LASI chipset.

HP 9000 712 were a revolutionary (for HP) pizza-box design that offered the advantages of a commercial Unix system on a RISC platform in a very small case, something Apple did a decade later again.

HP 9000 715 were also updated based on the new 712 design, enabling a significant performance boost for the venerable 32-bit 715 workhorses. Both 712 and 715 were used a lot for CAD and graphics of the mid-199s, and were later on popular choices for Unix and open source development.

Visualize workstations

HP Visualize
HP Visualize © HP 1999

In the mid-1990s, HP renamed PA-RISC workstations to HP Visualize with lettered names: B-Class, C-Class and J-Class. Formally they were still part of the 9000 700 workstation series but marketed with different branding to focus on their preferred applications and use cases.

Visualize workstations were geared towards graphics and engineering applications such as CAD or CAM and often used with HP’s powerful Visualize and Visualize-FX graphics adapters. Processors were the whole range of PA-RISC CPUs from 32-bit PA-7200 up to 64-bit PA-8900.

HP transitioned its PA-RISC workstations from traditional beige technical desktop and tower computers to more modern, dark-grey mini-towers, used throughout the HP Visualize branding.

HP Visualize Workstations
Visualize workstations © Hewlett Packard 2001

Around 1997, due to competition and a changing market place, HP started aggressively repricing its HP 9000 and Visualize workstations with price drops of more than a third, to compete with Sun Ultra 1 and SGI Indigo2 workstations.

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Laptops and Portables

Very few portable PA-RISC workstations were produced during the 1990s — all by third-party vendors utilizing existing HP 9000 workstation designs from that era. First, there were the military-focused SAIC Galaxy 1100 and Talon portables from 1994, based on HP 9000 712 workstations and available through the Navy TAC-4 program. Very rare computers almost completely used in the military.

At the end of the 1990s, there were the RDI PrecisionBooks, real laptops based on HP Visualize C132L workstations designed into a military-focused portable system by RDI, later acquired by Tadpole. They did not enjoy widespread success.

In the mid-1990s, Hitachi of Japan designed another PA-RISC portable, the 3050RX/100C for the Japanese market, based on the Hitachi PA/50L processor.

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Lettered servers

In the mid-1990s, HP renamed its HP 9000 800 servers to lettered designators with a spectrum of different 32- and 64-bit PA-RISC computers. Instead of HP 9000 827, servers were now called HP 9000 E-Class to mirror the Visualize B/C/J-Class workstations.

HP 9000 Family
HP 9000 family © Hewlett Packard

PA-RISC servers were quite powerful at the time of the 1990s with a multitude of configurations and designs, from small A-Class to mid-size D-Class and cabinet-sized K-Class for various technical and business computing needs.

Early in this phase, HP still sold Unix servers under traditional HP 9000 800 branding:

During that time, system architecture between HP 9000 700 workstations and 800 servers began to converge, only to start diverging again in the late-1990s with the Cell and Stretch architectures, when HP moved to hardware virtualization.

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Mainframes

HP Exemplar
HP Exemplar © Hewlett Packard 1997

Beginning in the mid-1990s, HP started selling larger technical PA-RISC servers (mainframes) with scalar multi-processors or clusters. Some were HP’s own development, like the T-Class, an outgrow of the original 800 series servers, and some were based on acquired SPP Exemplar technology from Convex, with whom HP partnered as VAR in 1994 before buying them in 1995.

In 1996 and 1997, was the worldwide leader in technical Unix server shipments and revenue, according to IDC. In the first half of 1998, HP defended that position, with more than 1,000 V-Class and 5,000 T-Class servers shipped.

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Decline (IV) – 64-bit in the 2000s

HP slowly transitioned to the post-RISC phase in the 2000s with the long-planned move to the revolutionary Itanium Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architecture for its technical and Unix offerings to supersede RISC and CISC platforms. This was the eventual Decline of PA-RISC, after two decades of technical and business computing at HP.

The demise of PA-RISC had been in stone already in the 1990s with HP’s R&D history in Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) and the mid-1990s joint VLIW development of Itanium (EPIC) with Intel. HP had planned to move its Unix technical and business platforms to EPIC by the late-1990s with a roadmap to new Merced processors after 64-bit PA-8500.

HP Merced Plan
PA-RISC to Merced © Hewlett Packard 1997

HP assumed RISC architectures had run their course and a new approach to processor and instruction architecture was needed to improve performance. This turned out to be true eventually, but the solution was not the envisaged mainstream VLIW implementations like Itanium, but something much different (and much simpler).

PA-RISC was slowly relegated to a niche market in the 2000s with the rp PA-RISC servers, after losing most technical workstation business. Soon after, as a result of a changing market environment and challenging business decisions after the dot-com bust, PA-RISC slowly was phased out of the technical HP line-up. Itanium products took over for a few years and after that turned out to be infeasible too, HP switched most technical computing to mainstream x86 computers.

Last Unix Workstations

At the end of the PA-RISC heydays, HP released the final 64-bit PA-RISC workstations: in 2000 with Visualize B2000 and B2600 and J5000 and J7000 workstations, based on PA-8500 and PA-8600 processors, followed in 2001 by C3600 to C3750 and J6000 to J6750 workstations with PA-8700 processors in an HP Astro design.

HP Visualize workstations
HP Visualizes © Hewlett Packard 2001

The end of PA-RISC was already near, however. HP had been working on VLIW as a RISC successor since the late 1980s. Later joined by Intel, this led to a VLIW processor design called EPIC by HP and Itanium by Intel. HP planned to use Itanium widely for its Unix business in the mid-1990s, but CPUs and computers were shipped only in 2001.

HP i2000
i2000 © Hewlett Packard 2001

The first, almost unknown today Itanium workstation was the HP i2000, based on the first Merced IA64 processor and an Intel 82460GX reference design. The i2000 was slower than contemporary PA-RISC workstations and generally not very popular with clients (and HP), but it ran HP-UX, OpenVMS, Windows XP and 2000 and Linux plus FreeBSD.

HP zx6000
zx6000 © Thomas Schanz 2013

The prototype i2000 (MVP) was followed by the second line of HP Itanium workstations, zx2000 and zx6000 with newer HP Itanium 2 processors and closely based on HP Integrity rx server architecture with HP zx1 Itanium chipsets. HP discontinued Itanium workstations soon after releasing the zx workstations, with Unix mostly confined to servers.

HP C8000
C8000 © HP

The last PA-RISC workstation followed two years after their zx-Class Itanium VLIW replacements were brought to market: HP C8000 were the pinnacle of PA-RISC and the ultimate HP-UX Unix workstation, released in 2004. Geared towards customers that needed specific PA-RISC and HP-UX applications for a few more years, they never had real benchmark figures published, but C8000 with dual-core PA-8900 Mako processors were rather fast.

All of these workstations were designed for the latest version of HP Unix, HP-UX 11i v1 for PA-RISC and 11i v2 for Itanium, to be used to technical computing such as CAD, CAM and 3D. There was initial Linux support for the PA-RISC workstations, and Windows and Linux options for Itanium workstations, helped by HP.

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PA-RISC rp servers

HP RP Servers
rp servers © Hewlett Packard 2002

HP renamed its PA-RISC server line in the early 2000s to rp and shifted the focus of its PA-RISC platform towards servers. HP rp servers were based on 64-bit PA-RISC processors from the PA-8500 to the PA-8800, all multi-processor.

Only the first rp branded PA-RISC servers still shared design features with prior workstations and older servers, while the rest were new, server-only designs.

With rp servers HP moved its PA-RISC offering closer to new Itanium rx server architecture. Products and their technical design was similar between rp and rx. PA-RISC rp moved strongly towards Itanium with zx1 chipsets and upgrade paths to IA64 processors. HP rp servers were the last in two decades of PA-RISC servers.

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Itanium rx Servers

HP Itanium
Itanium computers © Hewlett Packard 2002

Around the turn of the century, HP started to offer servers and workstations based on Itanium IA64 technology, a VLIW architecture jointly designed with Intel. System architecture in PA-RISC rp and IA64 rx servers converged and Itanium slowly phased out PA-RISC from HP’s technical and Unix lineup around 2002.

However, this happened at least half a decade later than HP originally planned – the transition from PA-RISC to Itanium is inevitable, as HP put it. To convince hesitant PA-RISC holdouts to make the move, HP claimed Itanium is really the evolutionary successor to PA-RISC and PA-RISC lives on in the IPF architecture with HP Unix servers reflect our smooth evolutionary philosophy admirably.

Most rx servers were multi-processor Itanium systems, based on HP’s own zx1 chipset, also used in PA-RISC, with some zx2, SX1000 and SX2000. First generation rx included the 1U rx1600 and rx1620, 2U rx2600 and rx2620, 4U rx4640 and 7U rx4610 and rx5670 servers. These were followed soon by zx2 systems that were similar but offered more speed and newer Itanium 2 processors in the rx2660 and rx6600 servers, among others.

HP Integrity
HP Integrity Itanium © Hewlett Packard 2004

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Mainframe

Large computers were the last refuge of PA-RISC architecture in the late 2000s with the Superdome mainframe computers that utilized a similar (Cell) architecture as earlier rp and N-Class servers.

Superdome: The Superdome servers were a completely new design, for up to 64 processors per cabinet. The Superdome Legacy, or white systems, used a Cell crossbar chipset with 64-bit PA-RISC processors, while the newer Superdome sx1000 and sx2000, or black systems, used SX chipsets and a mixture of Itanium 2 processors. They all ran HP-UX and Linux, while the SX models also Windows and OpenVMS.

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The end of PA-RISC

The 2000s and the long-planned but ultimately failed transition to Itanium marked the end of PA-RISC at HP, with a diminishing market share already well before the mid-2000s. The process of the long decline of RISC and commercial Unix servers was long underway then, with Unix relegated to special applications and later to high-end, mission-critical servers. RISC and commercial Unix platforms were slowly pushed out of the technical computing market beginning in the late-1990s, to be replaced by Intel and Windows NT derivates. HP started its withdrawal from technical Unix and RISC workstations well before Itanium, but pared down its offerings almost completely with IA64, which HP-UX only survived by a few years until the late 2000s really.

HP Itanium
Itanium roadmap © Hewlett Packard 2001

Originally envisaged as an industry-changing architecture, Itanium ended up as mostly slower alternative to other RISC platforms it was meant to replace, including PA-RISC. The failure of Itanium marked the end of HP Unix and RISC platforms at HP, and coincided with the rise of 64-bit Intel and AMD x86 platforms

Buried deep within the release notes of Unigraphics NX, a CAD program used tightly with HP 9000 for two decades, was this laconic statement on Itanium perspectives in 2003: Due to the advancement of x86-64 technology (first with AMD’s Opteron and more recently with Intel's EM64T), UGS has decided to immediately retire the Itanium2/WXP 64-bit platform. Unigraphics NX 2 was the only release to support this platform, and that support is now withdrawn. This is being done because the new x86-64 platforms

On a side tangent of history, HP inherited both DEC Alpha RISC and OpenVMS through its acquisition of Compaq in 2002, both having been rivals for HP platforms for decades. After discontinuing DEC Alpha, OpenVMS was to find a new home with the Itanium platform at HP, to which it was ported around 2005 to run on HP rx servers, being the first computers to run both HP-UX and OpenVMS. HP continued for a while in the 2000s to sell PA-RISC, Itanium, Alpha and even refurbished VAX machines on an eclectic combination of HP-UX, Windows, Linux, Tru64 Unix and OpenVMS.

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Sources

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

Further reading

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