PA-RISC information - since 1999

Third Party PA-RISC Systems

PA-RISC in East Asia

Not only HP sold PA-RISC computers in the golden decade of Unix RISC workstations in the 90s. Several third party vendors organized in the Precision RISC Organisation (PRO) sold rebadged HP 9000 computers in East Asia in the mid-1990s or developed custom PA-RISC platforms.

These computers were shipped with Unix operating systems, geared towards technical and scientific users. Vendors either licensed HP-UX Unix directly or slightly modified it like Hitachi with HI-UX/WE2 and HI-UX/MPP or Samsung with SS-UX (?). Documentation on these computers and software is almost nonexistent, few sources describe them at all, except some press releases.

Hitachi

Hitachi 3050RX workstation
3050RX 355, © Hitachi

Hitachi and HP had a long-term alliance since 1989 that included joint PA-RISC development even before HP opened up the PA-RISC alliance with the PRO consortium in the 1990s. Hitachi even designed their own PA-RISC processors, PA/50 and HARP.

Hitachi then built several lines of computers with PA-RISC processors as part of that consortium over the next years: custom workstations (3050RX) and servers (3500) for HI-UX/WE2, and rebadged HP 9000, sold in Japan as Hitachi 9000V with HP-UX, and the SR2 supercomputers with HI-UX/MPP.

Hitachi 3050RX workstations

Hitachi 3050RX workstation
3050RX 255, © Hitachi

Hitachi designed a range of custom PA-RISC workstations for the Japanese market in the 90s. These very rare systems were apparently marketed as Hitachi Creative Station 3050RX Group and ran HI-UX/WE2, the Hitachi HP-UX variant.

The 3050RX 200 was billed as one the industry’s cheapest Unix workstations with a harddisk at time of release in 1993.

System Processor Cache RAM Expansion
3050RX/100C Hitachi PA/50L 33MHz 8/4KB 80MB 10.4", 1024x768 TFT
3050RX/200 Hitachi PA/50M 33MHz 8/4KB 144MB $6.190
3050RX/220 PA-7100 50MHz 64/64KB 192MB none
3050RX/220 PA-7100LC 60MHz 256KB ? ?
3050RX/230 PA-7100 80MHz 256/256KB 192MB none
3050RX/235 PA-7100LC 80MHz 512KB ? ?
3050RX/255 PA-7300LC 132MHz 64/64KB L1
(1MB L2)
256MB Two slots
3050RX/310S PA-7100 33/40MHz 64/64KB L1 272MB One slot
3050RX/320 PA-7100 50MHz 64/64KB L1 416MB Three slots
3050RX/320G PA-7100 50MHz 64/64KB L1 192MB Three slots
3050RX/320S PA-7100 50MHz 64/64KB L1 272MB One slot
3050RX/330 PA-7100 80MHz 256/256KB 416MB Three slots
3050RX/330G PA-7100 80MHz 256/256KB 192MB Three slots
3050RX/330T PA-7100 80MHz 256/256KB 192MB Three slots
3050RX/330 PA-7100 100MHz 256/256KB L1 416MB Three slots
3050RX/355E PA-7300LC 132MHz 64/64KB L1
(1MB L2)
1.5GB Two slots
one audio
3050RX/365 PA-7300LC 160MHz 64/64KB L1
(1MB L2)
1.5GB Two slots
one audio
3050RX/430 PA-7100 80MHz 256/256KB L1 768MB Seven slots
3050RX/440 PA-7100 100MHz 256/256KB L1 768MB Seven slots
3050RX/535 PA-7100LC 80MHz 512KB L1 ? ?

Hitachi 3500 servers

Hitachi also sold specially branded servers, the 3500, in 1993, which were equivally rare as the 3500RX workstations and also ran HI-UX/WE2, Hitachi’s HP-UX variant.

System Processor Cache RAM Expansion
3500/310 PA-7100 50MHz 64/64KB 416MB ?
3500/410 PA-7100 50MHz 64/64KB 512MB ?
3500/510 PA-7100 50MHz 64/64KB 512MB ?
3500/520 PA-7100 50MHz 256/256KB 512MB ?
3500/530 PA-7100 80MHz 256/256KB 512MB ?
3500/540 PA-7100 100MHz 256/256KB 512MB ?
3500/630 PA-7100 80MHz 256/256KB 1024MB ?
3500/640 PA-7100 100MHz 256/256KB 1024MB ?

Hitachi 9000V OEM systems

Hitachi also sold a line of original HP systems as OEM (probably only in Japan) — rebranded as Hitachi 9000V series which included the following systems from 1995 onwards:

System Processor HP equivalent
9000V V715/100XC, V715/100, V715/80, V715/64 PA-7100LC HP 9000/715 (newer models)
9000V V715/100Tiny, V715/80Tiny PA-7100LC HP 9000/712 (probably)
9000V V735/125 PA-7150 HP 9000 735/125
9000V VE55, VE45, VE35, VE25 PA-7100LC HP 9000/E-Class
9000V VQ200, VQ210 PA-7200 HP 9000/J200, HP 9000/J210
9000V VR100, VR200, VR400 PA-7200 HP 9000/K100, HP 9000/K200, HP 9000/K400
9000V VT500 1-12 PA-7100 HP 9000/T500 (T-Class)
9000V VT600 1-12 PA-8000 HP 9000/T600 (T-Class)
9000V VT800 1-16 PA-8000 might be based on HP S-Class

Hitachi Supercomputers

Hitachi SR2201 supercomputer
SR2201, © Hitachi

Hitachi developed and produced a line of 32-bit supercomputers in the mid-1990s, based on its own PA-RISC chips utilizing a hyper (3-D) crossbar design, a distributed memory parallel system. Both ran Hitachi HI-UX/MPP, an Unix with Mach 3.0 microkernel extensions, and were apparently rented or leased to customers, from 5 million yen per month.

The parallel SR2201 computer apparently won a 1995 Good Design Award for product design of the mainframe. Configurations were initially for up to 1024 processors, later extended to 2048 for the SR2201, which had several entries in the Top 500 HPC list in the late-1990s.

System CPU SMP Caches RAM Performance Notes
SR2001 Hitachi HARP-1 90MHz 8-128 8/16KB L1
512/512KB L2
4GB 23 GFLOP
SR2201 Hitachi HARP-1E 150MHz 32-1024 8/16KB L1
512/512KB L2
256GB 307 GFLOP vector processing

Peak performance was given as 614 GFlops for the 1024-processor configuration.

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Mitsubishi

Mitsubishi Electric of Japan sold OEM rebranded HP 9000 workstations in the early 1990s as MELCOM ME RISC series as part of the PRO consortium for PA-RISC OEMs. Apparently three models were sold, all based on the original HP 9000 workstations 720, 730 and 750 (– some sources also mention an 705 and 710 equivalent). The computers were marketed for graphical use cases with HP GRX and other high-end graphics adapters.

System Processor HP equivalent Price
ME/R7200
ME/S7200
PA-7000 50MHz HP 9000/720 $23,453
ME/R7300
ME/S7300
PA-7000 66MHz HP 9000/730
ME/R7500
ME/S7500
PA-7000 66MHz HP 9000/750

Almost no information exists on Mitsubishi PA-RISC and MELCOM ME RISC apart from few press releases – these were probably not very widely sold.

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NEC

NEC Electronics of Japan was also a Precision RISC Organization (PRO) member and actively sold PA-RISC computers marketed as TX7 in the mid-1990s mostly in Japan. TX7 and NX7000 were often rebadged HP 9000 computers sold by NEC as OEM, with the custom P590 designed by NEC to fill the gap between D and K-Class. NEC PA-RISC computers ran licensed HP-UX Unix.

System Processor SMP HP equivalent Price
NX7000/220
NX7000/420
PA-7200 160-180MHz 1-4 HP 9000/K-Class ¥8,680,000
¥12,160,000
NX7000/27
NX7000/37
PA-8000 180MHz 1-2 HP 9000/D-Class ¥4,000,000
¥4,600,000
NX7000/250
NX7000/260
NX7000/450
NX7000/460
PA-8000 160-180MHz 1-4 HP 9000/K-Class ¥9,200,000
¥10,600,000
¥11,700,000
¥13,200,000
NX7000/500 PA-7100 90MHz 1-12 HP 9000/T500
NX7000/520 PA-7150 120MHz 1-14 HP 9000/T520 ¥27,500,000
NX7000/L1000
NX7000/L2000
NX7000/L3000
PA-8500
PA-8500
PA-8600
1-2
1-4
1-4
HP 9000 L1000
L2000
L3000
¥3,200,000
¥4,300,000
NX7000/PS200 PA-8000 160-180MHz 1-1024 Custom or S-Class? ¥36,000,000
TX7/D280 PA-8000 180MHz HP 9000 D-Class ¥4,700,000
TX7/K370 PA-8200 200MHz HP 9000 K-Class ¥10,700,000
TX7/P590 PA-8000 1-8 Custom NEC ¥17,600,000
TX7/V2200 PA-8200 200MHz 4-16 HP 9000/V2200 ¥31,500,000

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OKI

Similar to Mitsubishi in the early 1990s, Oki Electric Industry sold various PA-RISC workstations and servers from HP rebranded as OEM systems. These were integrated into the OKITAC brand of OKI and shipped from 1992 onward mostly in Japan, running stock HP-UX.

System HP equivalent
OKITAC 9000/800 Series HP 9000/800 Nova servers
OKITAC 9000 A Series HP 9000/A180C
OKITAC 9000 B Series HP Visualize B1000
OKITAC 9000 C Series HP Visualize C3000
OKITAC 9000 D Series HP 9000 D-Class
OKITAC 9000 J Series HP Visualize J5000
OKITAC 9000 K Series HP 9000 K-Class
OKITAC 9000 R Series HP 9000 R380 and R390

OKI also developed a custom PA-RISC processor in the 1990s as member of the Precision RISC Organization (PRO) consortium. This OP32 processor was not used in its own workstations, but geared towards embedded devices.

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Samsung

Samsung Electronics produced and sold HP 9000 workstations under licence from 1993 on as part of the Precision RISC Organization, PRO. Custom workstations systems were designed by the Samsung Workstation Division in San Jose, USA, running SS-UX operating system with added I/O-features to HP-UX Unix, which Samsung also licensed from HP.

System Processor HP equivalent Price
SWS715 PA-7100 50MHz HP 9000 715 $14,000
SWS715 PA-7100 33MHz HP 9000 715 $4,000

Samsung intended to sell the SWS715 through indirect channels to non-HP partners, targeting imaging and scientific visualisation, probably limited to the Korean market. Press releases mention Samsung planning to develop its own PA-RISC processor, with integrated memory technology, and separately port or ship Microsoft Windows NT to its PA-RISC computers.

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Documentation

Documentation on these computers and software is almost non-existent anymore, and few sources describe them at all, except some surviving press releases.

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