HP zx6000
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 2002 |
| Period | Decline (IV) |
| Series | Itanium |
| CPU | 1-2 Itanium 2 900 MHz-1.5 GHz |
| Caches | 32 KB L1 256 KB L2 1.5-6.0 MB L3 |
| RAM | 24 GB |
| Design | zx1 |
| Drives | 3 SCSI 1 IDE |
| Expansion | 3 PCI-X 64/133 1 AGP 4x |
| I/O | Gigabit Ethernet Fast Ethernet SCSI 4 USB 2 serial MGMT |
HP zx6000 are dual-processor Itanium workstations from HP, released in 2002. The zx6000 were based on the zx2000 workstation with an HP zx1 Itanium architecture, also used in the zx2000 and PA-RISC servers. zx6000 were designed for rack-mounting (2U) with rails, with the optional tower kit it could be converted to a standalone unit. Rack-mounted rx2600 are closely related.
HP zx6000 have higher I/O and memory bandwidth and three times as much memory as earlier HP zx2000 workstations. HP zx6000 with fast CPUs were probably the fastest HP-UX workstations ever by HP. Both Itanium and Unix workstations were dropped by HP soon after releasing zx2000 and zx6000.
- HP zx6000 were introduced in 2002
- entry, 900 MHz, Linux sold for $10,520
- dual 900 MHz, Fire GL4, HP-UX TCOE sold for $14,160
- dual 1 GHz, Quadro 2 EX, Linux sold for $20,070
System architecture
Processors
| System | CPU | Speed | L1 and L2 cache | L3 cache |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP zx6000 | 1-2 Itanium 2 McKinley VLIW 64-bit | 900 MHz | 16/16 KB + 256 KB | 1.5 MB |
| HP zx6000 | 1-2 Itanium 2 McKinley VLIW 64-bit | 1.0 GHz | 16/16 KB + 256 KB | 3.0 MB |
| HP zx6000 | 1-2 Itanium 2 Madison VLIW 64-bit | 1.3 GHz | 16/16 KB + 256 KB | 3.0 MB |
| HP zx6000 | 1-2 Itanium 2 Madison VLIW 64-bit | 1.5 GHz | 16/16 KB + 256 KB | 6.0 MB |
Chipset
- HP zx1 chipset, on original HP Itanium design based on two main components — MIO, the memory and I/O controller, and IOAs, I/O adapters.
- HP Pluto zx1 MIO, main chipset controller and connects processor bus, two memory buses and seven I/O channels. Contains memory and cache controllers.
- Six Mercury zx1 IOAs connect PCI-X slots and I/O devices to the zx1 MIO on seven I/O channels (3.5 GB/s)
- Gigabit Ethernet, Broadcom 5701
- Two-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller, LSI 1030
- Ultra ATA-100 IDE controller, PCI649
- Graphics through separate AGP boards:
- Optional ATI FireGL4 (HP-UX)
- Optional ATI FireGL X1 (HP-UX)
- Optional ATI FireGL Z1 (HP-UX)
- Optional nVIDIA Quadro4 900 XGL (Linux)
- Optional nVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL (Linux)
- Optional nVIDIA Quadro2 EX (Linux)
- Optional ATI Radeon 7000 AGP (HP-UX and Linux)
- Other cards might or might not work
- PDH controller
- Serial controller, DUART 16550A-compatible
- FPGA controller for ACPI (2.0) and LPC
- Baseboard management controller, BMC — IPMI interface
- 10/100 Ethernet for management, Intel 82550
System buses
- Itanium 2/zx1 processor bus 6.4 GB/s
- Two independent zx1 memory buses, 266 MHz, each 4.25 GB/s, aggregate 8.5 GB/s
- Seven zx1 I/O channels/buses, aggregate 3.5 GB/s
- AGP 4x graphics bus 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
- Gigabit Ethernet and Ultra320 SCSI on PCI 64/66 on one channel: 0.5 GB/s
- IDE, USB, management LAN on PCI 32/33 on one channel: 0.5 GB/s
- Three PCI-X 64/133 I/O buses
- PCI-X 64/66 I/O bus, for SCSI/Gigabit Ethernet onboard
- PCI 32/33 I/O bus, for IDE/USB/management onboard devices
- Two SCSI-3 Ultra320 (LVD) storage I/O buses
- AGP 4x graphics bus
- UltraATA-100 IDE storage I/O bus
Memory
- PC2100 registered ECC DDR266 SDRAM DIMMs
- Takes up to 2 GB modules
- Twelve slots
- 512 MB minimum (2×256 MB)
- 24 GB maximum (12×2 GB)
- 8.5 GB/s memory bandwidth
Expansion slots
- Three PCI-X 64-bit/133 MHz slots, full-length
- All PCI slots are 3.3 V
- One AGP Pro 4x 32-bit slot, 1.5 V for graphics
Storage
- Three internal 3.5″ bays for Ultra160 SCSI SCA 80-pin hard drives, hot-plug
- Slimline bay for optional IDE CD or DVD drive
- Drive 1 and 2 are on one SCSI channel, drive 3 and the external connector on the second
External ports
- Gigabit Ethernet, TP/RJ45
- 10/100 Ethernet, TP/RJ45 BT management network
- Ultra320 SCSI 68-pin
- 25-pin serial for management processor card, needs break-out cable for 3 serial ports
- Four USB 2.0 ports
- Two serial RS232C DB9
- 16-bit stereo audio (optional)
Operating systems
- HP-UX 11i v1.6 and 11i v2
- Linux for Itanium
- FreeBSD/ia64
- Windows Server 2008 Itanium-based Editions
- Windows Server 2003 Itanium-based Editions
- Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003
- OpenVMS (officially unsupported on this platform)
Pictures
Dimensions
| System | Height | Width | Depth | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tower | 494mm | 295mm | 675mm | 25kg |
| Rack-mounted | 2U | 483mm | 679mm | 22kg |
Benchmarks
| System | Processor | SPEC2000 int |
SPEC2000 fp |
SPEC2000 rate int |
SPEC2000 rate fp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| zx6000 | McKinley 900 MHz | 669 | 1139 | 7.8 2-CPU: 15.4 |
13.2 2-CPU: 23.9 |
| zx6000 | McKinley 1.0 GHz | 807 | 1422 | 16.5 2-CPU: 30 |
|
| zx6000 | Madison 1.5 GHz | 1315 | 2106 | 15.2 2-CPU: 30.4 |
24.4 2-CPU: 42.4 |
Comparison to SPEC benchmark data from other contemporary Unix workstations:
| System | Processor | SPEC2000 int |
SPEC2000 fp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun Ultra 40 | AMD Opteron 256 3.0GHz | 1957 | |
| AMD | Opteron 250 2.4GHz | 1619 | 1652 |
| Intel | Pentium 4 520 2.8GHz | 1290 | |
| HP ProLiant BL40p | Intel Xeon 2.8GHz | 1249 | 1081 |
| AMD | Athlon XP 2.2GHz | 1080 | 873 |
| HP c8000 | PA-8800 1.0 GHz | 1001 (est.) | |
| HP AlphaServer ES80 | Alpha 21364 1GHz | 689 | 975 |
| HP Visualize C3750 | PA-RISC PA-8700+ 875 MHz 2.2MB | 678 | 674 |
| HP zx2000 | McKinley 900 MHz | 668 | 1086 |
| IBM POWER 275 | IBM POWER4+ 1GHz | 617 | 862 |
| Sun Fire 280R | UltraSPARC III Cu 1GHz | 511 | 688 |
| DELL Power Edge 4400 | Pentium III Xeon 1 GHz | 437 | 302 |
| IBM RS/6000 M80 | IBM RS64 IV 750MHz | 409 | 359 |
| HP i2000 | Itanium Merced 800MHz 4MB | 365 | 610 |
Compared to the competition at the time, Itanium computers were exceptionally strong in floating-point use cases, beating other CPUs in FP with more than twice the clock. Integer and general workloads were much weaker in Itanium, only barely beating PA-RISC, but a Madison 1.5 GHz much higher rater Intel and AMD processors.
Documentation
- Operation and Maintenance Guide HP Integrity rx2600 server and HP workstation zx6000 (PDF) Hewlett-Packard 2007, 5991-5988
- HP Workstation zx6000 - data sheet, 5981-7454EN, HP: June 2003 (PDF URL gone)
- HP workstation zx6000 - data sheet, 5981-1464EN, HP: July 2002 (PDF URL gone)