Hewlett-Packard Co will today flesh out gaps in the mid-range of its HP 9000 Series 800 Precision Architecture RISC business server line with six new uni- and dual-processor models in G, H and I classes that look to be positioned against Sun Microsystems Inc’s recently announced Sparcserver 1000 line, reports today’s edition of our sister paper Unigram.X. The new G60, H60 and I60 systems use single 96MHz PA-7100s – the G70, H70 and I70 are dual-CPU symmetric multiprocessor machines. With from 32Mb to 512Mb RAM, 500MB to 100Gb disk and four input-output slots, the G60 starts at $50,000. The H60, with from 64Mb to 768Mb RAM, 1Gb to 186Gb disk and eight slots is priced from $83,000, while the I60 starts at $108,000 with from 64Mb to 768Mb RAM, 4Gb to 228Gb disk and 12 slots. Each uniprocessor is rated at around 280 TPC-A transactions per second. The dual-CPU G70 comes with from 32Mb to 512Mb RAM, 500Mb to 100Gb disk, four slots and is priced at from $76,000. The H70, with 64Mb to 768Mb RAM, 1Gb to 186Gb disk and eight slots starts at $109,000, while the $129,500 I70 comes with from 64Mb to 768Mb RAM, 4Gb to 228Gb disk and 12 slots. The H70 configured with 128Mb RAM delivers a claimed 411 TPC-A – $6,686 per transaction – besting, HP says, Sun’s 400 TPC-A, eight-way Spacrserver 1000 and NCR Corp’s eight-CPU 3550 offering. All are configured with HP-UX, are on order from July with ships due in October. Upgrades are available via board, backplane or chassis swaps. Hewlett-Packard’s top-end corporate business servers, can accommodate up to four processors, but the firm seems to to be awaiting market response before adding quad-processors at the mid-range.
