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
Bandwidth	CPU 6.4 GB/s Mem 8.5 GB/s I/O 3.5 GB/s
I/O	GigE 10/100E 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.

The zx6000 chassis was designed for rack-mounting (2U) with appropriate rails; with a tower kit it could be converted to a standalone unit.

In contrast to the zx2000, the zx6000 has slightly higher I/O and double the memory bandwidth and supports three times the amount of memory. The zx6000 with fast CPUs is probably the fastest HP-UX workstation shipped by HP.

Both Itanium workstations and Unix workstations were dropped by HP soon after the zx2000 and zx6000.

System architecture

Processors

CPU	Speed	L1 Cache	L2 Cache	L3 Cache
1-2 Itanium 2 McKinley	900 MHz	16/16 KB on-die	256 KB on-die	1.5 MB on-die
1-2 Itanium 2 McKinley	1.0 GHz	16/16 KB on-die	256 KB on-die	3.0 MB on-die
1-2 Itanium 2 Madison	1.3 GHz	16/16 KB on-die	256 KB on-die	3.0 MB on-die
1-2 Itanium 2 Madison	1.5 GHz	16/16 KB on-die	256 KB on-die	6.0 MB on-die

Chipset

HP zx1 chipset
Pluto zx1 MIO memory and I/O controller connects to the processor bus, two memory buses and seven I/O channels. Contains memory and cache controllers.
Six zx1 IOAs (I/O adapters) connect the PCI-X slots and I/O devices to the zx1 MIO on seven I/O channels
1. AGP 4x graphics bus on two channels: 1.0 GB/s
2. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel: 0.5 GB/s
3. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel: 0.5 GB/s
4. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on one channel: 0.5 GB/s
5. Gigabit Ethernet and Ultra320 SCSI on PCI 64/66 on one channel: 0.5 GB/s
6. IDE, USB, management LAN on PCI 32/33 on one channel: 0.5 GB/s
Gigabit Ethernet, Broadcom 5701
Two-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller, LSI 1030
Ultra ATA-100 IDE controller, PCI649
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
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
AGP GPUs supported might include: ATI Fire GL4, ATI FIRE GL X1, NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL, NVIDIA Quadro 4 900 XGL, ATI Fire GL 8800, NVIDIA Quadro2 EX, ATI RADEON 7000 (depending on operating system, drivers and firmware)

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)

Benchmarks

Model	SPEC2000 int	SPEC2000 fp	SPEC2000 rate int	SPEC2000 rate fp
zx6000 900 MHz	669	1139	7.8 2-CPU: 15.4	13.2 2-CPU: 23.9
zx6000 1.0 GHz	807	1422		16.5 2-CPU: 30
zx6000 1.5 GHz	1315	2106	15.2 2-CPU: 30.4	24.4 2-CPU: 42.4

Dimensions

Model	Height	Width	Depth	Weight
Tower	494mm	295mm	675mm	25kg
Rack-mounted	2U	483mm	679mm	22kg

References

Operation and Maintenance Guide HP Integrity rx2600 server and HP workstation zx6000 (PDF) Hewlett-Packard Development Company (September 2003, second edition)
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)

Pictures

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