HP 9000 A180 Servers

Quick Facts
Introduced 1998
Period Maturity (III)
Series Lettered
CPU PA-7300LC 32-bit
180 MHz
Cache 128 KB L1
1 MB L2 (A180C)
RAM 2 GB
Design LASI
Drives 2 SCSI
Expansion 2 GSC/PCI
I/O Fast Ethernet
2 SCSI
serial

HP 9000 A-Class A180 and A180C were some of the last 32-bit PA-RISC HP 9000 800 servers released by HP in the late-1990s. HP A-Class are small and rack-mountable Internet servers, part of the HP 9000 800 servers.

HP 9000 A180
© Hewlett Packard 1999

Marketed by HP as Enterprise Internet Servers, HP A180 were geared towards deployment in rack-space in datacenters and thus have no video output, only serial and web console. System design was streamlined RISC with a simple 32-bit chipset similar to HP Visualize B180L workstations minus graphics and some I/O devices.

HP 9000 A180 servers were followed in 2000 by newer 64-bit A400 and A500 servers, sharing their cases and external appearance but with more modern system design. A180 played a minor role in 2000s open source development of operating systems, as they often were obsoleted in the mid-2000s and donated or provided to open source projects.

HP A-Class were HP’s first attempt at small, 2U rack-based RISC servers for internet and telecommunication duties, similar to Sun’s Netra line of SPARC servers.

up

System

Processors

System CPU Speed L1 Cache L2 Cache
HP 9000 A180 PA-7300LC 32-bit PA-RISC 180 MHz 64/64 KB on-chip
HP 9000 A180C PA-7300LC 32-bit PA-RISC 180 MHz 64/64 KB on-chip 1 MB off-chip

The additional 1 MB L2 cache is the only difference between both systems, upgradeable through two DIMM slots near the CPU.

Chipset

 _________ Mainbus______
|PA-7300LC|_..___|Memory|
|_________| ||   |______|
  __|__     ||
 |Cache|    ||
 |_____|    ||     _ _ LASI ASIC _ _
 _______    ||            ______
|Phantom|___||    |  ..__|i82596|___|_[Ethernet Console]
|_______|            ||  |______|
    |_______..    |  ||   ______    |
 ___        ||       ||__|53C710|_____[8-bit SCSI-2]
|ROM|_______||    |  ||  |______|   |
|___|       ||_______||   _____
 ________   ||    |  ||__|1655A|____|_[Serial Console]
|GSC-slot|__||       ||  |_____|
|________|  ||    |  ||   ___       |
 _________  ||       ||__|RTC|
|GSC-slot|__||    | GSC  |___|      |
|________|  ||     _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 ____       ||
|Dino|______||
|____|     GSC
   | 
   |________..
 ________   ||   _____
|PCI-slot|__||__|21143|_______________[100Mb Ethernet]
|________|  ||  |_____|
 ________   ||
|PCI-slot|__||
|________| PCI

HP 9000 A180 System Architecture

System buses

up

Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Storage

Ports

up

Operating systems

HP 9000 A180C were used extensively in the development of PA-RISC Linux.

up

Performance

HP 9000 A180 servers

Compared to other RISC and Unix platforms of the 1990s, PA-RISC was a fast architecture with PA-7300LC processors being solid mid-1990s low-cost RISC processors.

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System CPU SPEC95
int/fp
HP 9000 A180 PA-7300LC 180 MHz
HP 9000 A180C PA-7300LC 180 MHz 9.22 8.60
Based on SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC95
int/fp
HP Visualize C200 PA-8200 200 MHz 14.2 21.4
Sun Netra T1120 UltraSPARC-II 300MHz 13.0
IBM RS/6000 43P 150 PowerPC 604e 250MHz 11.1 8.78
SGI O2 MIPS R10000 196MHz 10.1 8.77
Sun Ultra 5S Sun UltraSPARC-IIi 270MHz 9.16 10.1
Intel Alder Intel Pentium Pro 200MHz 8.09 6.75
Motorola PowerStack II PowerPC 604e 200MHz 8.00 6.31
DEC Alphastation 500 DEC Alpha 21164 266MHz 7.93 11.1
Sun Ultra 2 1170 Sun UltraSPARC 167MHz 6.34 9.33
Intel 430TX Intel Pentium 200MHz 5.17 4.83
DEC Alphastation 255 Alpha 21064A 233MHz 4.27 5.09
Siemens PCE-5S Intel Pentium 100MHz 4.04 2.35
Sun SPARCstation 20 Sun SuperSPARC II 75MHz 3.11 3.10
HP 9000 712/60 PA-7100LC 60 MHz 2.08 2.66

up

Dimensions

HP A180 servers were rackable computers that could be operated standalone or integrated into a 19″ rack, taking 2U of height (with bezel and rails).

System Height Width Depth Weight
89mm 432mm 584mm 10kg
Rack-mounted 2U 482mm 584mm 10kg

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.

Manuals

up