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HP L1500 and L3000 (rp5430/rp5470)

Quick Facts
Introduced	2001
Period	Maturity (III)
Series	Lettered/rp
CPU	1-2 (L1500) 1-4 (L3000) PA-8600 64-bit PA-8700 64-bit PA-8700+ 64-bit 550-875 MHz
Caches	1.5-2.25 MB
RAM	8 GB (L1500) 16 GB (L3000)
Design	Stretch
Drives	5 SCSI
Expansion	8 PCI (L1500) 12 PCI (L3000)
I/O	2 SCSI 3 serial Fast Ethernet Ethernet console

The second version HP 9000 L-Class are multi-processor Unix servers based on the Stretch chipset, also used in rp7400 N4000 servers. Released in 2001, a year after the similar L1000 and L2000, they rack-mountable with two or four processors and a large set of I/O options and expandability.

L1500 have the same chassis and mainboards as L3000 with some I/O, memory and processors sockets deactivated in hardware, limiting the L1500 to about half of the L3000 capacity. Both could be upgraded to Itanium 2-based rx5670 servers.

The servers were released right at the time when HP switched from lettered products names to rp-designations, so L1500 and L3000 servers had both, also known as rp5430/rp5470.

• HP L1500 rp5430 were introduced in 2001
• HP L3000 rp5470 were introduced in 2001 for $39,000

Architecture

Processors

HP rp5430 L1500 support up to 2-way and rp5470 L3000 up to 4-way multi-processing (SMP) PA-RISC CPUs. There are several possible 64-bit processor configutations, shipped with the systems or upgraded, designated by the [-5X, -7X, …, -9X] suffix.

System	Suffix	CPU	Speed	L1 cache
L1500 rp5430	-5X -6X -7X	1-2 PA-8600 PA-RISC 64-bit 1-2 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit 1-2 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit	550 MHz 650 MHz 750 MHz	512/1024 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip
L3000 rp5470 A6144A	-5X	1-4 PA-8600 PA-RISC 64-bit	550 MHz	512/1024 KB on-chip
L3000 rp5470 A6144B	-5X -6X -7X	1-4 PA-8600 PA-RISC 64-bit 1-4 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit 1-4 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit	550 MHz 650 MHz 750 MHz	512/1024 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip
L3000 rp5470 A6840A	-5X -6X -7X	1-4 PA-8600 PA-RISC 64-bit 1-4 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit 1-4 PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit	550 MHz 650 MHz 750 MHz	512/1024 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip
Possible options (and/or upgradable):
	-8X	PA-8700 PA-RISC 64-bit	875 MHz	768/1536 KB on-chip

Chipset

Chipset used in L1500, L3000 servers is based on HP Stretch:

• HP Prelude memory controller, the main crossbar of the system
• HP DEW Runway converters, attach the CPUs to the system bus
• HP IKE I/O controller connects the PCI bridges to the system main bus
• rp5430 Seven HP Elroy PCI bridges, attach PCI buses to the IKE I/O controller
• rp5470 Ten HP Elroy PCI bridges, attach PCI buses to the IKE I/O controller
• DEC 21142/43 Tulip Fast Ethernet controller
• Symbios Logic 53C875 16-bit Ultra-Wide SCSI-2 controllers
• Symbios Logic 53C896 Ultra2-Wide SCSI-3 controller

System buses

• Two Itanium system buses, 133 MHz DDR, each 2.1 GB/s peak, combined 4.3 GB/s, both connect to the central Prelude memory controller.
• Runway+/Runway DDR CPU buses, each 2.1 GB/s peak. Either two or four buses depending on the number of CPUs, with a combined aggregate 4.3 or 8.6 GB/s
• Two memory bused with combined 4.3 GB/s peak. 133 MHz DDR at 64-bit with ECC
• rp5430 Eight I/O channels, each 133 MHz 256 MB/s, 2.1 GB/s aggregate
  • Five PCI-64/66 I/O buses for expansion slots
  • One PCI-64/33 I/O bus for core I/O
• rp5470 Twelve I/O channels, each 133 MHz 256 MB/s, 3.2 GB/s aggregate
  • Eight PCI-64/66 I/O buses for expansion slots
  • Two PCI-64/33 I/O buses for expansions slots and core I/O
• SCSI-2 Ultra-Narrow single-ended bus
• Two SCSI-3 Ultra2-Wide LVD main storage I/O buses

Expansion

Memory

• ECC SDRAM DIMMs, 256 MB, 512 MB and 1 GB modules
• 16 slots
• rp5430 8.0 GB maximum (system will not boot if more than 8.0 GB is installed)
• rp5470 16.0 GB maximum

I/O slots

• Two Twin-Turbo PCI 64-bit/66 MHz slots, each on an independent PCI bus, each connected via two I/O channels (aggregate 512 MB/s), hot-plug capable
• rp5430
  • Four Turbo PCI 64-bit/66 MHz slots on three PCI buses, each on one I/O channel (256 MB/s), three of four slots are hot-plug capable
• rp5470
  • Six Turbo PCI 64-bit/66 MHz slots, each on an independent PCI bus, each on one I/O channel (256 MB/s), hot-plug capable
  • Two PCI 64-bit/33 MHz slots, shared bus on one I/O channel (256 MB/s)
• Two PCI 64-bit/33 MHz slots, reserved for LAN/SCSI and GSP (management) cards, on a shared bus, on one I/O channel (256 MB/s)
• All PCI slots are 5 V keyed
• Slot layout (from bottom up):
  1. PCI-64/33, pci0, reserved (LAN/SCSI)
  2. PCI-64/33, pci0, reserved (GSP)
  3. PCI-64/33, pci1, shared [not available on rp5430]
  4. PCI-64/33, pci1, shared [not available on rp5430]
  5. PCI-64/66, pci2, Turbo, hot-pluggable [not available on rp5430]
  6. PCI-64/66, pci3, Turbo, hot-pluggable [not available on rp5430]
  7. PCI-64/66, pci4, Turbo, hot-pluggable
  8. PCI-64/66, pci5, Turbo, hot-pluggable
  9. PCI-64/66, pci6, Turbo, hot-pluggable
  10. PCI-64/66, pci7, Turbo, hot-pluggable
  11. PCI-64/66, pci8, Twin-Turbo, hot-pluggable
  12. PCI-64/66, pci9, Twin-Turbo, hot-pluggable

Storage

• Four trays for 3.5″ Ultra2-Wide LVD SCSI hard drives with 80-pin SCA, hot-plug
• One tray for half-heigth 5.25″ 50-pin Ultra-Narrow SE SCSI drive, external

I/O ports

• SCSI-2 50-pin Ultra-Narrow single-ended
• 68-pin VHDI SCSI-3 Ultra2-Wide LVD
• Three serial RS232C DB9 (local console, remote console, general purpose)
• Fast Ethernet RJ45
• Fast Ethernet RJ45 Web Console

Operating systems

• HP-UX, the original HP Unix shipped with it
  • HP-UX 11i v2 in 64-bit mode
  • HP-UX 11i v1 in 64-bit mode, in EOE, FOE, MCOE versions (June 2001- December 2006)
  • HP-UX 11.00 in 64-bit mode
• PA-RISC Linux, main Linux port to PA-RISC

Benchmarks

System	SPEC2000 int	SPEC2000 fp	SPEC2000 rate int	SPEC2000 rate fp
L3000-5X rp2470	388	376	4.5 2-CPU: 8.9 4-CPU: 17.4	4.4 2-CPU: 8.3 4-CPU: 14.5
L3000-7X rp2470	581		6.7 2-CPU: 12.9

Dimensions

System	Height	Width	Depth	Weight
	368mm	482mm	775mm	68kg
Rack-mounted	7U	482mm	775mm	68kg

Documentation

Manuals

• rp5400 User Guide A5191-96018, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002) archive.org
• System Firmware for HP-UX 11.00/11.11 archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2004: mirror accessed 2025)

Articles

• hp server rp5400 series entry-level UNIX servers technical whitepaper Hewlett-Packard Company (2001) archive.org
• hp 5430 and 5470 product brief Hewlett-Packard Company (2003) archive.org

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OpenPA is an independent resource on PA-RISC computers, technology and operating systems, edited since 1999 by Paul Weissmann. He also publishes OpenKRITIS on critical infrastructures and Insel Westberlin, a Berlin archive. OpenPA is a registered serial publication, ISSN 1866-2757.

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