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 technically on the zx2000 workstation with an HP zx1 Itanium system design, also used in a few PA-RISC servers and workstations. HP zx6000 have higher I/O and memory bandwidth and three times as much memory as HP zx2000 workstations and are SMP-capable for up to two processors.
The zx6000 were designed for rack-mounting (2U) but with the optional tower kit could be converted to a sleek, loud standalone unit. Rack-mounted rx2600 servers are closely related.
HP zx6000 Itanium workstations with fast processor options were probably the fastest HP-UX workstations ever released by HP, even faster than the two years younger final HP c8000 PA-RISC workstation. Itanium workstations were discontinued in September 2004 by HP after releasing zx2000 and zx6000 and technical Unix workstations were discontinued altogether two years later.
HP zx6000 workstations were sold with HP-UX and Linux (more affordable) in a variety of configurations and graphics options, mainly for 3D and visualization.
- 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
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 zx2000 Itanium workstations are based on an HP zx1 chipset with two main components — MIO memory and I/O controller (HP Pluto) and IOA I/O adapters (HP Mercury), as used in PA-RISC c8000 and Itanium workstations like zx2000 as well.
- HP zx1 chipset, on original HP Itanium design based on two main components: central memory and I/O controller (MIO), and I/O adapters (IOAs).
- HP Pluto, zx1 MIO, the chipset controller connects the processor bus, two memory buses and seven I/O channels. Contains memory and cache controllers.
- Six HP 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
Expansion
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
I/O 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
I/O 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 (old versions from the 2000s, now unsupported)
- 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)