HP 9000 A400, A500 (rp2400) Servers

Quick Facts
Introduced 2000, 2002
Period Maturity (III)
Series Lettered/rp
CPU 1-2
PA-8500 64-bit
PA-8600 64-bit
PA-8700 63-bit
440-750 MHz
Cache 1.5-2.25 MB
RAM 2-8 GB
Design Astro
Drives 2 SCSI
Expansion 2-4 PCI
I/O Fast Ethernet
2 SCSI
1→3 serial
10E console

HP 9000 A400 and A500 servers are 64-bit rack servers, released in the early 2000s. They are successors of the popular HP 9000 A180 servers. A400 were single-processor, A500 were two-way multiprocessor-capable with better expandability.

HP A400
© Hewlett Packard 2000

A400 and A500 were HP 9000 servers that were later renamed rp series and also had rp24xx product names, confusingly.

System design is based on 64-bit PA-RISC CPUs with large on-chip L1 caches, HP Astro chipset and Elroy PCI bridges for expansion and I/O, a design similar to 64-bit HP Visualize C3000 workstations.

HP A400 were marketed in the early 2000s with Screaming Performance at a Killer Price with Tight Internet Design. Being Street Smart, A400 packed dotcom-era features for Internet-edge Solutions from WAP (phone browsers over GSM!) to e-commerce. Your business is more aggressive than ever, so your server should be, too.

Notably, HP A400 and A500 were much cheaper than HP 9000 A180 which shipped just two years earlier, still with 32-bit PA-RISC processors no less. The commodification of internet servers had slowly set in.

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System

Processors

HP A400 and A500 processors were designated by a [-44, -5X … -9X] suffix.

System CPU Speed L1 Cache
HP 9000 A400/rp2400 -44
-5X		 PA-8500 PA-RISC 64-bit
PA-8600 PA-RISC 64-bit		 440 MHz
550 MHz		 512/1024 KB on-chip
512/1024 KB on-chip
HP 9000 A400/rp2430 -6X PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit 650 MHz 768/1536 KB on-chip
HP 9000 rp2405 -6X PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit 650 MHz 768/1536 KB on-chip
HP 9000 A500/rp2450 -44
-5X		 1-2 PA-8500 PA-RISC 64-bit
1-2 PA-8600 PA-RISC 64-bit		 440 MHz
550 MHz		 512/1024 KB on-chip
512/1024 KB on-chip
HP 9000 A500/rp2470 -6X
-7X		 1-2 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit
1-2 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit		 650 MHz
750 MHz		 768/1536 KB on-chip
768/1536 KB on-chip
Possibly upgradeable to, unsure if shipped:
-8X
-9X		 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit
PA-8800 PA-RISC 64-bit
dual-core		 875 MHz
1.0 GHz		 768/1536 KB on-chip
1.5/1.5 MB on-chip
32 MB off-chip L2

Chipset

System buses

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Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Storage

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Ports

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Operating systems

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Performance

HP A400 and A500 servers with 64-bit PA-RISC processors were fast Unix servers in the early 2000s, slightly faster than higher-clocked MIPS, Alpha, UltraSPARC and Intel computers. They competed against the likes of Sun Netra and other, rack-mountable servers. Intel-based x86 servers were slowly catching up, but still lacked raw compute power.

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System Processor SPEC2000
int/fp		 SPEC2000
rate int/fp
A500-5X
(rp2450)		 1 PA-8600 550 MHz
2 PA-8600 550 MHz		 422 414
9.3
7.6
A500-7X
(rp2470)		 1 PA-8700 750 MHz
2 PA-8700 750 MHz		 581 6.7
12.9
Based on old SPEC2000 archives
System Processor SPEC2000
int/fp		 SPEC2000
rate int/fp
HP c8000 PA-8800 1.0 GHz 1001
HP zx6000 2 McKinley 900 MHz 669 1139 15.4 30.0
IBM POWER 275 IBM POWER4+ 1GHz 617 862
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
HP Visualize C3600 PA-8600 552MHz 432 433 5.01 5.02
DELL Power Edge 4400 Pentium III Xeon 1 GHz 437 302 5.07 3.50
Sun Netra 20 2 Sun UltraSPARC III 750MHz 417 415 9.44 8.91
HP AlphaServer ES40 4 Alpha 21264A 667MHz 413 500 18.4 19.7
IBM RS/6000 M80 4 IBM RS64 IV 750MHz 409 359 18.7 15.7
HP i2000 Merced 800MHz 4MB 365 610

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Dimensions

HP A400/A500 and rp2400 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
95mm 432mm 635mm 23kg
Rack-mounted 2U 482mm 774mm 23kg

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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

Websites

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