HP N4000 (rp7400)
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 1999-2001 |
| Period | Maturity (III) |
| Series | Lettered/Integrity |
| CPU | 1-8 PA-8500/ 1-8 PA-8600/ 1-8 PA-8700 360-750 MHz |
| Caches | 1.5-2.25 MB L1 |
| RAM | 32 GB |
| Design | Stretch |
| Drives | 2 SCSI |
| Expansion | 12 PCI |
| Bandwidth | System 4.2 GB/s CPU 17 GB/s Mem 8.5 GB/s I/O 6.4 GB/s XBAR 15.3 GB/s |
| I/O | SCSI 3 serial 100E 100E console |
The N4000 were mid-range PA-RISC servers with up to eight processors. They were the original HP 9000 N4000 from the turn of the century, soon renamed rp7400. This first N4000 (rp7400) is based the Stretch system architecture, also used in L1500 and L3000 (rp5430/rp5470) that mirrored design from parallel HP Itanium (IA64) platforms.
The N4000 were released in the middle of the dot-com boom between 1999 and 2000, and sold as Server for the Internet-Age
.
Marketing focused on these e-commerce and web-ready features, including QoS, control and security for the Web,
on-demand capacity management.
HP claimed the HP 9000 N-Class servers give you more of what you need to meet
for new Internet business paradigm
which is having an enormous impact on enterprise IT systems--more applications, more users, and more traffic than ever before.
(2000!)
Itanium 2/IA64 processors were planned on the N4000 but apparently never offered (board-upgradeable to IA-64
).
N4000s were shipped in two models with different system boards: A3639A and A3639B. The N4000 that was later renamed rp7400 was shipped with another different mainboard and model number A3639C.
| Model | rp | Product | Introduced | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| N4000 | A3639A A3639B |
1999 | $48,000 | |
| rp7400 | A3639C | 2001 |
Later rp7405 and rp7410 servers were also labeled N4000 and feature a similar set of I/O options and expandability in basically the same chassis, with a completely different system architecture, Cell platform, also used for Itanium rx/zx computers.
System architecture
Processors
The rp7400 N4000 supports one to eight processors, designated by the [-36, -44, …, -7X] suffix. Not all of the earlier N4000 support the later processors and the maximum number of CPUs.
| Model | Suffix | CPU | Speed | L1 Cache |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| N4000 A3639A | -36 -44 |
1-8 PA-8500 1-8 PA-8500 |
360 MHz 440 MHz |
512/1024 KB on-chip 512/1024 KB on-chip |
| N4000 A3639B | -36 -44 -5X |
1-8 PA-8500 1-8 PA-8500 1-8 PA-8600 |
360 MHz 440 MHz 550 MHz |
512/1024 KB on-chip 512/1024 KB on-chip 512/1024 KB on-chip |
| rp7400 A3639C | -36 -44 -5X -6X -7X |
1-8 PA-8500 1-8 PA-8500 1-8 PA-8600 1-8 PA-8700 1-8 PA-8700 |
360 MHz 440 MHz 550 MHz 650 MHz 750 MHz |
512/1024 KB on-chip 512/1024 KB on-chip 512/1024 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip 768/1536 KB on-chip |
Chipset
The rp7400 system is based on the Stretch chipset, used in the L1500 and L3000 (rp5430/rp5470) servers as well. Stretch has four main components:
- Prelude memory controller, is the main crossbar of the system
- Four DEW Runway converters, attach the processors to the main buses
- Two IKE I/O controllers connect the PCI bridges via I/O channels
- 14 Elroy PCI bridges (LBAs) convert the IKE I/O to PCI buses
The rest of the system is implemented with common parts:
- DEC 21142/43 Fast Ethernet controller
- Dual-channel Symbios Logic 53C875 16-bit Ultra-Wide SCSI-2 controllers
- Dual-channel Symbios Logic 53C896 Ultra2-Wide SCSI-3 controller
» View a system-level illustration (ASCII) of the N4000’s system/bus architecture.
System buses
The system bus architecture provides more bandwidth than could be used under practical circumstances. The designers probably counted on future CPU upgrades, such as Itanium.
- Two Itanium system buses, 133 MHz, each 2.1 GB/s peak, 4.3 GB/s aggregate
- Eight Runway+ CPU buses, each 2.1 GB/s peak, aggregate 17.0 GB/s
- Four Memory buses, each 2.1 GB/s peak, aggregate 8.5 GB/s
- 24 I/O channels, each 133 MHz 265 MB/s, aggregate 6.4 GB/s
- 14 PCI-64/66 I/O buses for expansion slots
- Three SCSI-3 Ultra2-Wide LVD main storage I/O buses, one for each internal drive and one for external devices
Memory
- ECC SDRAM DIMMs
- 16 slots
- 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB modules supported
- 32 GB maximum
Expansion slots
- Ten
Twin-Turbo
PCI 64-bit/66 MHz slots, each on an independent PCI bus, each connected via two I/O links/ropes (aggregate 530 MB/s), hot-plug capable - Two
Turbo
PCI 64-bit/66 MHz slots, each on an independent PCI bus, each connected via one I/O link/rope (265 MB/s), hot-plug capable (one of these two Turbo slots is reserved for Core I/O LAN/SCSI) - All slots keyed for 5.0 V (support either 5.0 V or universal PCI cards)
Storage
- Two internal Ultra SCSI LVD 3.5″ drives with SCA connector, hot-pluggable
External ports
- 68-pin VHDCI Ultra2 LVD external SCSI
- Three serial RS232C DB9 (local console, remote console, general purpose) via a
DB25
M cable
- Fibre channel
- 10/100 Mbit Ethernet TP/RJ45
- 10/100 Mbit Ethernet TP/RJ45 Web console
Operating systems
Benchmarks
| Model | SPECrate95, int | SPECrate95, fp | SPEC2000 int | SPEC2000 fp | SPEC2000 rate int |
SPEC2000 rate fp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N4000-36 | 215 4-CPU: 830 8-CPU: 1650 |
355 4-CPU: 1055 8-CPU: 1720 |
||||
| N4000-44 | 306 4-CPU: 1209 8-CPU: 2408 |
462 4-CPU: 1495 8-CPU: 2075 |
||||
| N4000-5X | 376 4-CPU: 1479 8-CPU: 2939 |
528 4-CPU: 1682 8-CPU: 2336 |
||||
| N4000-6X rp7400 |
493 | 489 | 5.7 2-CPU: 11.3 4-CPU: 22.1 8-CPU: 42.6 |
5.7 2-CPU: 10.4 4-CPU: 19.3 8-CPU: 30.5 |
||
| N4000-7X rp7400 |
551 | 524 | 6.4 2-CPU: 12.5 4-CPU: 24.6 8-CPU: 46.7 |
6.1 2-CPU: 11.0 4-CPU: 20.5 8-CPU: 32.1 |
References
- rp7400 Hardware Manual Hewlett-Packard Company (May 2002)
- hp server rp7400 system architecture and design guide, Hewlett-Packard Company (February 2002, product number 5981-0154EN) (URL gone)
- N-Class - The Server for the Internet-Age (archive.org mirror), Hewlett-Packard Company (2000: mirror accessed January 2024)