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PA-RISC information - since 1999

HP V2200 and V2250

Quick Facts
Introduced 1997-1998
CPU 4-16 PA-8200
200-240 MHz
Caches 4 MB L1
RAM 16 GB
Design HyperPlane
Drives 16 SCSI
Expansion 24 PCI
Bandwidth CPU 7.5 GB/s
Mem 15 GB/s
I/O 1.9 GB/s
XBAR 15.3 GB/s
I/O SCSI
Console

Overview

The V2250 and V2250 are large-scale scalable PA-RISC servers, with up to sixteen 64-bit PA-RISC processors in a single cabinet.

The V-Class servers are based on a crossbar architecture — one central internal switching component links the various computing resources to each other by connecting the devices’ inputs to other devices’ output ports, in effect forming matrix connections. The V2200 and V2250 use HP’s own HyperPlane crossbar chipset, consisting of four central crossbar ASICs and various other chipset components to attach memory, processors and I/O.

The architecture is a direct continuation from the Convex Exemplar — the earlier Convex/HP 32-bit SPP1x00 and 64-bit SPP2000 S-Class/X-Class, use a similar crossbar-based system design. The V2200/V2250 use a very similar design to the SPP2000 S-Class, minus the SCI/TCI links for interconnecting several nodes into a larger syste The V2500/V2600 successors were delivered again with the interconnection technology.

The V2200s and V2250s are controlled via a so-called teststation, which runs its own HP-UX operating system and controls and monitors the V-Class server. This teststation is a standard HP 9000/712 workstation with special teststation hardware, such as a second ethernet and serial boards, and software. The teststation connects to the Core Utilities Board CUB, which provides booting, system monitoring and diagnostics, and console connections via one LAN and one special serial link.

System

CPU

Chipset

The V-Classes are based on the HP HyperPlane crossbar which connects the CPU and I/O to the system main memory.

  1. HyperPlane crossbar, 8x8, non-blocking, consists of four Exemplar Routing Attachment controllers ERACs and is the central part of the system, it connects the memory to the processor buses and I/O channels. There are eight ports for agents for CPUs and I/O — each agent connects to two or four CPUs and one I/O channel —, and eight ports for memory. Each crossbar port has a data path of 64-bit, giving it 960 MB/s peak bandwidth. The peak bandwidth of the HyperPlane crossbar/ERACs is 15.3 GB/s combined.
  2. Eight Exemplar Processor Agent controllers EPACs attach to the crossbar and provide access for each two processors Runway buses and one I/O controller to the memory via the crossbar over a 1.9 GB/s datapath, four 32-bit, unidirectional buses from two ports on the PAC connect to two Hyperplane crossbar ERACs; each EPAC thus communicates with only two of the system’s four ERACs. The I/O channels on the agents have a maximum bandwidth of either 120 or 240 MB/s. Each EPAC has two Runway processors buses, 64-bit, bidirectional, which have an aggregate peak bandwidth of 960 MB/s for two processors per EPAC.
  3. Eight Exemplar PCI-bus Interface controller EPICs connect the 240 MB/s I/O channels/PCI buses to the EPACs.
  4. Eight Exemplar Memory Access controllers EMACs attach each one 32-way interleaved memory board to the Hyperplane crossbar. Each EMAC has a bandwidth of 1.9 GB/s, four 32-bit, unidirectional buses from two ports on the EMAC connect to two Hyperplane crossbar ERACs.
  5. The Exemplar Core Utilities board ECUB provides interrupts and the central system logic, it connects to the Exemplar system Routing board ENRB. The Core Logic Bus from the ECUB attaches to the devices on the EPACs. Included on the ECUB are two custom FPGAs, the Exemplar Processor Utilities controller EPUC and the Exemplar Monitoring Utilities controller EMUC.

» View a system-level ASCII illustration of the crossbar architecture.

The remainder of the system I/O consist of standard HP PCI controllers, frequently:

Buses

Memory

Expansion

Drives

External

Operating systems

Benchmarks

Model SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp		 SPEC95
rate, int		 SPEC95
rate, fp
V2200 13.8 22.1 1-CPU: 125
4-CPU: 484
8-CPU: 964
12-CPU: 1442
16-CPU: 1865		 1-CPU:
4-CPU: 755
8-CPU: 1380
12-CPU: 1909
16-CPU: 2312
V2250 16.4 24.8 16-CPU: 2209 16-CPU: 2471

Dimensions

Height Width Depth Weight
1006mm 998mm 859mm 250kg

References

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