HP 9000 Series 800 Nova Servers
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 1991-1993 |
| Period | Growth (II) |
| Series | 800 Series |
| CPU | 1/1-2 (x70) PA-7000/PA-7100 32-96 MHz |
| Caches | 96 KB-4 MB L1 |
| RAM | 128 MB (F10) 192 MB (F20/F30) 384 MB (H20/H30/G30/I30) 768 MB (x50/x60/x70) |
| Design | Viper |
| Drives | many |
| Expansion | 2 HP-PB (Fx0) 6 HP-PB (Gx0/Hx0) 12 HP-PB (Ix0) |
| Bandwidth | ? |
| I/O | SCSI MUX parallel |
The HP 9000 800 Nova servers of the F, G, H and I Class were second-generation HP 9000 800 PA-RISC servers from the early 1990s. They were based on 32-bit PA-7000 and PA-7100 processors, with G70/H70 and I70 servers dual-processor capable. They were often used during the 1990s as technical workplace and database servers.
The Nova servers were designed by HP‘s technical server division with a distinct architecture to the HP 9000 700 workstations sharing few devices and I/O systems – a similar system chipset was used with ASP and Viper, but I/O and expansion depended on server-specific HP-PB.
Billed as HP 9000 Midrange Business Server family, the Nova servers were targeted for business and transactions applications, being in a compact
deskside and rackmountable case.
The servers offered many expansion possibilities, depending on the system, often used for many I/O cards and storage devices.
The lower systems were often shipped with FPU, as floating-point performance was often not needed to their I/O and data-bound use cases.
The [F, G, H, I] letters in server model indicate I/O expansion options and cases, the [10, 20, … 70] denote used processors and chipsets. G, H and I class shared the same cases.
| System | Model number |
|---|---|
| F10 | HP 9000/807 |
| F20, H20 | HP 9000/817, HP 9000/827 |
| F30, G30/H30, I30 | HP 9000/837, HP 9000/847, HP 9000/857 |
| G40/H40, I40 | HP 9000/867, HP 9000/877 |
| G50/H50, I50 | HP 9000/887, HP 9000/897 |
| G60/H60, I60 | HP 9000/887, HP 9000/897 |
| G70/H70, I70 | HP 9000/887, HP 9000/897 |
They were suceeded by E Class servers with PA-7100LC, which shared the F Class case and some of the proprietary I/O design. Many F, G, H and I Class became available in second-hand market in the 2000s at bargain prices, since few follow-on use cases were possible for the cumbersome machines with limited software options but stock HP-UX.
Specific Nova servers could be upgraded to other Nova server configurations through a range of easy processor board and slot upgrades,
as they had up to 10.3 x performance 'headroom' in the same chassis.
There were performance upgrades on the vertical axis
available and I/O slot upgrades on the horizontal axis.
System architecture
Processors
| Model | CPU | FPU | Speed | L1 Cache |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F10 | PA-7000 | optional | 32 MHz | 32/64 KB off-chip |
| F20, H20 | PA-7000 | optional | 48 MHz | 64/64 KB off-chip |
| F30, G30, H30, I30 | PA-7000 | optional | 48 MHz | 256/256 KB off-chip |
| G40, H40, I40 | PA-7000 | optional | 64 MHz | 256/256 KB off-chip |
| G50, H50, I50 | PA-7100 | integrated | 96 MHz | 256/256 KB off-chip |
| G60, H60, I60 | PA-7100 | integrated | 96 MHz | 1024/1024 KB off-chip |
| G70, H70, I70 | 1-2 PA-7100 | integrated | 96 MHz | 2048/2048 KB off-chip |
Chipset
The chipset is a variant of the ASP with the Viper memory controller, interfacing the processor to memory and the HP-PB I/O bus. System I/O is implemented on so-called HP-PB Personality Boards with separate I/O devices and chips.
» View a system-level illustration (ASCII) of the 807-877 chipset.
System buses
- PBus processor/memory bus
- VSC main system bus
- HP-PB bus for the general I/O
- SCSI-2 Narrow single-ended bus for main storage I/O
Memory
- HP proprietary modules like on 720, 730 and 750, and 735/755
- F10: 16 MB minimum, 128 MB (8×16 MB) maximum
- F20 and F30: 16 MB minimum, 192 MB (12×16 MB) maximum
- H20, H30, G30, I30, x40: 16 MB minimum, 384 MB (12×32 MB) maximum
- x50, x60, x70: 16 MB minimum, 768 MB (12×64 MB) maximum
Expansion slots
- Fx0: two HP-PB single-height/one double-height slots
- Gx0: six HP-PB single-height/three double-height slots
- Hx0: six HP-PB single-height/three double-height slots
- Ix0: twelve HP-PB single-height/six double-height slots
Storage
- Many, depending on the case
External ports
- SCSI-2 50-pin single-ended
- High-pin-count MUX connector
- Parallel DB25
- Rest depends on installed HP-PB cards
Operating systems
The only operating system for these servers was HP-UX, with all of them supported in HP-UX 10.20 for 800s servers and 11.00. First supported release was HP-UX 8.02, official support was dropped in 11.11 (11i v1).
It is unlikely there will ever be a port of an open source operating system, as not much documentation exist on the I/O and system details.
Benchmarks
| Model | SPEC92 int | SPEC92 fp | MIPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| F10 | 22.0 | 36.6 | 35 |
| F20, H20 | 33.6 | 56.1 | 53 |
| F30, G30/H30, I30 | 37.8 | 62.4 | 53 |
| G40/H40, I40 | 65.2 | 91.3 | 70 |
| G50/H50, I50 | 100.0 | 158.5 | 115 |
| G60/H60, I60 | 108.8 | 195.3 | 115 |
| G70/H70, I70 | 108.8 | 195.3 | 115 |
Comparison to SPEC benchmark data from other contemporary Unix computers:
| Model | CPU | SPEC92 int | SPEC92 fp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Alder | Intel Pentium Pro 150MHz | 276.3 | 220.0 |
| IBM RS/6000 43P | PowerPC 604 100 MHz | 128.0 | 120.2 |
| Sun SPARCstation 20 | Sun SuperSPARC II 75MHz | 125.8 | 121.2 |
| Siemens PCE-5S | Intel Pentium 100MHz | 96.2 | 81.2 |
| SGI Indigo2 | MIPS R4400 150MHz | 85.9 | 93.6 |
| DEC AlphaStation 200 | DEC Alpha 21064 100MHz | 74.6 | 95.2 |
| 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 | |
| Motorola 8000 | Motorola 88100 33MHz | 27.7 | 18.8 |
References
Manuals
- Owner’s Guide to the HP 9000 8x7S Family (.pdf) Hewlett-Packard Company (1991. Accessed January 2009 at hpmuseum.net)
- CE Handbook Series 9x7 and Model 8x7S Family (.pdf) Hewlett-Packard Company (February 1992, edition E0292, part number A1707-90016. Accessed January 2009 at hpmuseum.net)
- HP 9000 Midrange Business Brief HP 9000 G, H and I Class Servers, (.pdf) Hewlett-Packard Company (February 1994, 5962-8608E. Accessed January 2009 at hpmuseum.net)
Other
- Pinout for the mini-DIN console connector at the back