PA-RISC information - since 1999

HP 9000 A400, A500 (rp2400)

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 memory/CPU controller 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, with 32-bit PA-RISC no less.

Architecture

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

Expansion

Memory

I/O slots

Storage

I/O ports

Operating systems

Benchmarks

System Processor SPEC2000
int		 SPEC2000
fp		 SPEC2000
rate int		 SPEC2000
rate fp
A500-5X (rp2450) 1 PA-8600 550 MHz 422 414
A500-5X (rp2450) 2 PA-8600 550 MHz 9.3 7.6
A500-7X (rp2470) 1 PA-8700 750 MHz 581 6.7
A500-7X (rp2470) 2 PA-8700 750 MHz 12.9

HP Visualize A400 and A500 with 64-bit PA-RISC processors were fast Unix servers in the early century. They were often faster than higher-clocked MIPS, Alpha, UltraSPARC and Intel computers from the same time.

Based on old SPEC2000 archives
System Processor SPEC2000
int		 SPEC2000
fp
HP AlphaServer ES80 Alpha 21364 1GHz 689 975
IBM POWER 275 IBM POWER4+ 1GHz 617 862
Sun Fire 280R UltraSPARC III Cu 1GHz 511 688
SGI Origin 3200 MIPS R14000 600MHz 483 499
DELL Power Edge 4400 Pentium III Xeon 1 GHz 437 302
IBM RS/6000 M80 IBM RS64 IV 750MHz 409 359

Dimensions

System Height Width Depth Weight
95mm 482mm 635mm 23kg
Rack-mounted 2U 482mm 774mm 23kg

Documentation

Manuals

Websites

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