HP Visualize B2000 and B2600 Workstations

Quick Facts
Introduced 2000
Period Maturity (III)
Series Visualize
CPU PA-8500 64-bit
PA-8600 64-bit
400-500 MHz
Cache 1.5 MB L1
RAM 4 GB
Design Astro
Drives 2 SCSI
1 FD
1 IDE
Expansion 4 PCI
I/O Fast Ethernet
VGA (B2000)
2 serial
parallel
2 USB
audio

HP Visualize B2000 and B2600 PA-RISC workstations were 3D graphics workstations from 2000, equipped with the 64-bit PA-8500 or PA-8600 processors with large on-chip L1 caches.

B2000 © HP 2001

HP B2000 used PA-8500 PA-RISC processors in a small tower case, similar to previous B1000 and C-Class. B2600 used a smaller desktop with faster and more modern PA-8600 processors.

The architecture of these B-Class workstation was a major change from those of its C-Class predecessors, now based on HP Astro/Elroy chipset, new I/O devices and no LASI I/O chip and GSC bus. All device I/O is implemented by PCI buses, human I/O devices are connected to USB ports.

B2600 © HP 2001

An upgrade path to HP Itanium (EPIC VLIW) was envisaged for Visualize workstations but not offered eventually. B2000 and B2600 were some of the last PA-RISC workstations offered by HP, before the ultimate HP c8000 a few years later with the last PA-8800.

System

Processors

System CPU Speed L1 cache
HP Visualize B2000 PA-8500 PA-RISC 64-bit 300/440 MHz 512/1024 KB on-chip
HP Visualize B2600 PA-8600 PA-RISC 64-bit 500 MHz 512/1024 KB on-chip

There were some B2000 shipped with or upgraded to PA-8600 (PCXW+) processors.

Chipset

System buses

Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Storage

Ports

Operating systems

Pictures

HP Visualize B2600 HP Visualize B2600 HP Visualize B2600 HP Visualize B2600
HP Visualize B2600, Thomas Schanz 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0

Dimensions

System Height Width Depth Weight
B2000 445mm 229mm 495mm 21kg
B2600 127mm 425mm 457mm 20kg

Performance

Compared to other RISC and Unix platforms of the late-1990s, PA-RISC was a fast architecture with PA-8500/PA-8600 and PA-8700 processors being very strong early-2000s 64-bit RISC processors.

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System CPU SPEC95
int/fp		 SPEC95
rate int/fp		 SPEC2000
int/fp		 SPEC2000
rate int/fp
HP Visualize B2000 PA‑8500 440MHz 31.8 52.4 332 357 3.8 4.1
HP Visualize B2600 PA-8600 500MHz 403 440 4.7 5.1
Based on old SPEC2000 archives
System Processor SPEC2000
int/fp		 SPEC2000
rate int/fp
HP c8000 PA-8800 1.0 GHz 1001
HP AlphaServer ES80 Alpha 21364 1.0GHz 761 1288 8.83 14.9
HP zx6000 2 McKinley 900MHz 669 1139 15.4 30.0
Sun Fire 280R 2 UltraSPARC III Cu 1GHz 511 688 11.7 14.1
SGI Origin 3200 4 MIPS R14000 600MHz 483 499 22.2 19.8
DELL Power Edge 4400 Pentium III Xeon 1 GHz 437 302 5.07 3.50
HP Visualize J5600 2 PA-8600 552 MHz 431 433 9.63 8.02
HP Visualize C3600 PA-8600 552MHz 432 433 5.01 5.02
IBM RS/6000 M80 4 IBM RS64 IV 750MHz 409 359 18.7 15.7
HP A500 2 PA-8600 550MHz 406 389 9.3 7.6
AlphaStation XP1000 Alpha 21264A 667MHz 403 532 4.67 6.17
HP i2000 Merced 800MHz 4MB 365 610 7.6
HP Visualize P500 Intel Pentium III 500 231 191

Documentation

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

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