HP zx6000

Overview
System
External
Operating systems
Benchmarks
Dimensions
References
Pictures

Quick Facts
Introduced	2002
Period	Decline (IV)
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

Overview

The HP zx6000 are dual-processor Itanium workstations based on the zx2000 workstation with an architecture centered around the HP zx1 Itanium chipset, also used in the zx2000 and PA-RISC servers. The chassis was designed for rack-mounting (2U) with appropriate rails; with a tower kit it can 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.

System

Processor

No.	CPU Type	Clock	L1 (I/D)	L2 (I/D)	L3
1-2	Itanium 2 McKinley	900 MHz	16/16 KB	256 KB	1.5 MB
1-2	Itanium 2 McKinley	1.0 GHz	16/16 KB	256 KB	3.0 MB
1-2	Itanium 2 Madison	1.3 GHz	16/16 KB	256 KB	3.0 MB
1-2	Itanium 2 Madison	1.5 GHz	16/16 KB	256 KB	6.0 MB

All caches are on-die (L1, L2 and L3).

Chipset

HP zx1 chipset
- Pluto zx1 MIO (memory and I/O controller) connects to the processor bus (6.4 GB/s), two memory buses (each 4.25 GB/s) and seven I/O channels (aggregate 3.5 GB/s) and contains both memory and cache controllers
- Six zx1 IOAs (I/O adapters) connect the PCI-X slots and I/O devices to the zx1 MIO with an aggregate bandwidth of 3.5 GB/s on seven 0.5 GB/s 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 memory bandwidth
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

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 are on the second SCSI channel.

External I/O

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 three serial ports
Four USB 2.0 ports
Two Serial RS232C DB9

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 (however 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

Manuals

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

Pictures

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