HP Integrity rx2600 and rx2620 Servers
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 2003-2004 |
| Period | Decline (IV) |
| Series | Integrity rx |
| CPU | 1-2 64-bit Itanium 2 1.0-1.6 GHz |
| Caches | 32 KB L1 256 KB-1.25 MB L2 1.5-18 MB L3 |
| RAM | 24 GB (rx2600) 32 GB (rx2620) |
| Design | zx1 |
| Drives | 3 SCSI 1 IDE |
| Expansion | 4 PCI-X 64/133 |
| I/O | Gigabit Ethernet Fast Ethernet VGA SCSI 4 USB 2 serial MGMT |
HP Integrity rx2600 were rack-mountable HP Itanium workstations and servers based on the HP zx6000 workstation.
Released between 2003 and 2004, rx2600 were marketed as entry-lever servers for technical and commercial applications
with superior java and web benchmark as well leading integer and floating point performance.
HP rx2600 servers and zx6000 workstations were closely related, with some minor technical differences in system design – cooling, AGP slots, management ports. Both have a similar architecture and can be mounted either in 19″ racks (2U) or placed in a desktop tower-like enclosure
Integrity rx2600 supports up to two Itanium 2 processors with up to 1.5 GHz (Madison processor) and is targeted for PCI-X devices and thus does not feature the AGP port of the workstation-oriented zx6000. System design was based on HP zx1 chipset which was used for Itanium and PA-RISC computers in the early 2000s.
HP rx2600 servers were later marketed as rx2600-2 and then superseded by the rx2620, which supported newer Itanium 2 processors.
System
Processors
| CPU | Speed | L1 cache | L2 cache | L3 cache |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP rx2600 and rx2600-2 | ||||
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Deerfield? | 1.0 GHz | 16/16 KB | 256 KB | 1.5 MB |
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Madison | 1.3 GHz | 16/16 KB | 256 KB | 3.0 MB |
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Madison | 1.4 GHz | 16/16 KB | 256 KB | 1.5 MB |
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Madison | 1.5 GHz | 16/16 KB | 256 KB | 6.0 MB |
| HP rx2620 | ||||
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Madison? | 1.3 GHz | 16/16 KB | 256 KB | 3.0 MB |
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Madison? | 1.6 GHz | 16/16 KB | 256 KB | 3.0 MB |
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Montecito dual-core | 1.4 GHz | 16/16 KB | 1024/256 KB | 12.0 MB |
| 1-2 Itanium 2 Montecito dual-core | 1.6 GHz | 16/16 KB | 1024/256 KB | 18.0 MB |
Chipset
HP Integrity rx2600 and rx2620 are based on HP’s zx1 chipset, which consists of two main components — the MIO (memory and I/O controller) and the IOAs (I/O adapters):
- HP zx1 chipset, Itanium design with MIO and IOA
- HP Pluto zx1 MIO is the main chipset controller and connects processor bus, two memory buses and seven I/O channels. Contains memory and cache controllers.
- Seven HP Mercury zx1 IOAs connect PCI-X slots and I/O devices to the zx1 MIO
- Gigabit Ethernet (Broadcom 5701)
- Two-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller (LSI 53C1030), PCI-64 66 MHz
- Ultra ATA-100 IDE controller (PCI649)
- Serial controller, DUART (16550A-compatible)
- 10/100 Ethernet for management (Intel 82550)
- Management processor card (
ECI card
) — serial/remote management and VGA - Radeon VGA graphics onboard
- EHCI USB controller
- Processor Dependent Hardware (PDH) Controller
- FPGA controller for ACPI (2.0) and LPC
- Baseboard Management Controller for IPMI management interface (ARM7 RISC)
System buses
- Itanium 2/zx1 processor bus 6.4 GB/s at 200 MHz DDR
- Two independent zx1 memory buses, 266 MHz, each 4.25 GB/s — aggregate 8.5 GB/s memory bandwidth
- Eight zx1 I/O channels/buses, aggregate 4.0 GB/s
- PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on two channels — 1.0 GB/s
- PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel — 0.5 GB/s
- PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel — 0.5 GB/s
- PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel — 0.5 GB/s
- Core I/O: IDE, USB, serial, (rx2600: Fast-Ethernet) on PCI 64/133 on one channel — 0.5 GB/s
- Core I/O: Gigabit Ethernet and Ultra320 SCSI on PCI 64/133 on one channel — 0.5 GB/s
- Management: Ethernet LAN, VGA, serial on PCI 64/133 on one channel — 0.5 GB/s
- Four PCI-X 64/133 I/O buses for expansion cards
- Three PCI-X 64/133 I/O buses for Core I/O cards (SCSI, networking, etc.)
- Two SCSI-3 Ultra320 (LVD) storage I/O buses
- UltraATA-100 IDE storage I/O bus
Expansion
Memory
- PC2100 ECC DDR CL2 SDRAM DIMMs
- rx2600 up to 2 GB modules
- rx2620 up to 4 GB modules
- Twelve slots
- DIMMs must be installed in quads
- 1 GB minimum (4×256 MB)
- rx2600 24 GB maximum (12×2 GB)
- rx2620 32 GB maximum (8×4 GB — the remaining four slots cannot be used)
- 8.5 GB/s memory bandwidth
Expansion cards
- Four PCI-X 64-bit/133 MHz slots, full-length
- All PCI slots are 3.3 V
Storage
- Three internal 3.5″ bays for Ultra320 SCSI SCA 80-pin hard drives, hot-plug; drives 1 and 2 are on one SCSI channel, drive 3 on the second SCSI channel
- Slimline bay for optional IDE CD or DVD drive
Ports
- rx2600 Gigabit Ethernet, TP/RJ45
- rx2620 Dual-Port Gigabit Ethernet, TP/RJ45
- 10/100 Ethernet, TP/RJ45 management network (on management processor card)
- VGA graphics
- Ultra320 SCSI 68-pin
- 25-pin serial for management processor, needs break-out cable for serial ports
- Four USB 2.0 ports
- Two serial RS232C DB9
Operating systems
- rx2600: HP-UX 11i v1.6, 11i v2 and 11i v3
- rx2620 HP-UX 11i v2 and 11i v3
- Linux for Itanium
- Windows Server 2003 64-bit Enterprise Edition
- OpenVMS, minimum V8.2
Pictures
Dimensions
| System | Height | Width | Depth | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tower | 495mm | 297mm | 673mm | 25kg |
| Rack-mounted | 2U | 482mm | 680mm | 22kg |
Performance
HP rx2600 servers were very performant small-size rack-servers for the early 2000s. With fast Itanium 2 processors, rx2600 had strong performance for computing and exceptionally strong floating point (FP) performance. Utilizing this fast architecture in real-world applications proved difficult though.
| System | Processor | SPEC2000 rate int/fp |
SPEC2000 int/fp |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rx2600 | 1 Itanium Deerfield? 1.0 GHz 2 Itanium Deerfield? 1.0 GHz |
9.4 18.7 |
810 | 1427 | |
| rx2600 | 1 Itanium Madison 1.3 GHz 2 Itanium Madison 1.3 GHz |
12.4 24.8 |
1073 | 1808 | |
| rx2600 | 1 Itanium Madison 1.5 GHz 2 Itanium Madison 1.5 GHz |
15.3 30.5 |
1408 | 2119 | |
| rx2620-2 | 1 Itanium Madison 1.3 GHz 2 Itanium Madison 1.3 GHz |
13.6 26.9 |
15.9 27.7 |
1170 | 2229 |
| rx2620-2 | 1 Itanium Madison? 1.3 GHz 2 Itanium Madison? 1.3 GHz |
16.3 32.3 |
29.6 48.5 |
1408 | 2553 |
| rx2620-2 | 1 Itanium Madison? 1.6 GHz 2 Itanium Madison? 1.6 GHz |
17.8 35.5 |
31.0 51.5 |
1535 | 2675 |
The main competition to HP Itanium rx servers were other, modern Unix servers with advanced RISC designs from Sun and IBM for business and computing use cases. Modern 64-bit x86 Xeon processors from Intel (and soon AMD) were a fierce competitor, though. Itanium 2 was a fast but expensive platform in the early 64-bit era of the early-2000s.
| System | Processor | SPEC2000 rate int/fp |
SPEC2000 int/fp |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM eServer p 655 | 4 IBM POWER4+ 1.7GHz | 52.5 | 68.5 | 1103 | 1678 |
| HP N4000-7X rp7400 | 8 PA-8700 750 MHz | 46.7 | 32.1 | 551 | 524 |
| DELL Power Edge 2650 | 2 Pentium Xeon 3.06GHz | 27.4 | 20.8 | 1263 | 1195 |
| Sun Fire V880 | 4 UltraSPARC III Cu 900MHz | 23.9 | 30.6 | 507 | 697 |
| SGI Origin 3200 | 4 MIPS R14000 600MHz | 22.2 | 19.8 | 483 | 499 |
| HP AlphaServer ES80 | 4 Alpha 21364 1GHz | 34.6 | 58.9 | 689 | 975 |
| IBM RS/6000 M80 | 4 IBM RS64 IV 750MHz | 20.3 | 16.5 | 409 | 359 |
| HP rx1600 | 2 IA64 Deerfield 1.0GHz | 19.1 | 27.6 | 837 | 1382 |
| HP AlphaServer ES40 | 4 Alpha 21264A 667MHz | 18.4 | 19.7 | 413 | 500 |
| IBM RS/6000 M80 | 4 IBM RS64 IV 750MHz | 18.7 | 15.7 | 409 | 359 |
| HP zx6000 | 2 McKinley 900 MHz | 15.4 | 23.9 | 669 | 1139 |
| Sun Fire 280R | 2 UltraSPARC III Cu 1GHz | 13.2 | 16.4 | 511 | 688 |
| IBM POWER 265 | 2 IBM POWER-II 450GHz | 7.30 | 8.19 | 318 | 401 |
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.
- Operation and Maintenance Guide HP Integrity rx2600 server and HP workstation zx6000, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise 2007, 5991-5988
- HPE Integrity rx2620 Server User Service Guide, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (2015)
- HPE Integrity rx2600 Servers - Product Information Reference, HPE Support Center
- HP Integrity rx2600 Server Quick Specs, HPE, HP DA-11716 April 2006
- HP Integrity rx2600 Server Getting Started Guide, HP June 2003, A9664-90020 archive.org
- HP Integrity rx2600 server and HP workstation zx6000 Quick Setup, HP 2003, A9664-90001 archive.org
- ATI RADEON 7500 PCI Graphics Controller Installation Guide, HP 2005, AB551-96002 archive.org
- HP Integrity and HP 9000 Integrated Lights-Out, HP 2005, 5971-4274 archive.org
- HP Integrity rx2600 server data sheet, HP 2003, 5981-7543EN archive.org
- Overview of the HP Integrity rx1600-2, rx2600-2, and rx4640-8 servers Whitepaper, HP 2004, 5982-5031EN archive.org
- The HP Integrity server family, HP 2004, 5982-4741EN archive.org