Hewlett-Packard Co’s new Exemplar X-class supercomputers actually scale up to 512 64-bit PA-8000 processors, though in the real world, 64 will be the ceiling for most pockets (CI No 3,009). It is purely meant as a compute engine going against the likes of Silicon Graphics Inc’s Power Challenge servers, and can deliver a peak of 46 GFLOPS and comes with 16Gb memory, upgradable to 64Gb. The Convex crossbar switch technology delivers a 4Gbps bandwidth and the ccNUMA system bandwidth is 64Gbps. It is HP’s fourth ccNUMA offering, and the company reckons it is four years ahead of any competitor’s ccNUMA systems. The cache coherency is guaranteed by HP’s Scalable Coherent Interface derivative. The X-class systems are due next May, costing from $720,000 for a 16-processor 1Gb memory and 4Gb disk storage configuration, ranging to a cool $3m at the top end. This is the first Convex Technology Center offering since the then-ailing firm was bought last April (CI No 2,824). HP is still aiming these at the scientific and research communities, particularly in the mechanical design automation, electronic design automation and technical software development markets. HP reckons the prices have been c ut by up to 40% from what Convex would have charged, and the performance trebled. A one-year warranty has replaced the three-month one Convex offered. The Exemplar S-class technical servers scale from four to 16 PA-8000 RISC processors and deliver 11.52 GFLOPS peak. The crossbar interconnect gives 15.36Gbps performance. The S-class come with 4Gb memory, up to 16Gb and $180,000 buys a four-processor base model. Hewlett-Packard is claiming these machines easily outstrip the performance of Silicon Graphics Power Challenge XL or Sun Ultra Enterprise servers. Each node in the X-class machines is an S-class.

Not upgradable to 64-bit Merced

The server systems are not upgradable to 64-bit Merced as such, but the architecture is, according to the company. The B-, C- and J-class workstations are Merced-ready however, the company said. The three new B-class desktop workstations are PA- 7300LC-based and include 128Kb on-chip cache and with an optional level two cache on the B132L an standard on the B160L. They all have Visualize-EG graphics on board and support Visualize-8 and -24, with the B132L going up to Visualize IVX. They start at $10,840 for the B132L doing SPECint95 5.9 and SPECfp95 6.2. The one new C-class desktop offering, C160L, has a 1Mb Level 2 cache as standard and four slots instead of two on the B-class that support PCI, EISA and GSC. The 160MHz machine performs SPECint95 7.8 and SPECfp95 7.6 and costs $19,840. The B- and C-class machines are available now. In terms of two-dimensional graphics performance, HP reckons it beats Sun Microsystems Inc and Silicon Graphics. The B132L has a 26% integer performance advantage – but a 21% floating point deficit – at a price 13% lower than the Sun Ultra 1/140, and a 44% and 42% integer and floating point advantage over Silicon Graphics’s Indy 5000SC/180 machine for a 28% lower price. Sun outperf orms the Hewlett-Packard boxes on three-dimensional performance, but here, comparisons with Silicon Graphics were not given. But HP nevertheless claimed a competitive price-performance. The new deskside J-class workstation, the 180MHz P A-8000-based J280, supports up to Visualize-48XP graphics and has a 2Mb cache. HP claims a uniprocessor J280 with 64Mb memory, a 2Gb disk and Visualize-EG graphics outperforms a two-way Sun Ultra2 2200 with the same memory and Creator graphics by 50% with a SPECint95 mark of 11.8 and 31% with a SPECfp95 mark of 11.8. The box costs $1,000 more at $38,500 and will ship in November. Prices for the entry-level 712 and 715 workstations have been cut by 40% on the former and up to 52% on the latter so a 100MHz 32Mb memory, 2Gb disk and 17 color monitor 712/100 goes for $7,000. The Enterprise File System is aimed at HP’s truly global customers, where engineers have to ensure they are working on the same version of the same document, or with the right version of an application. HP plans to start pilot programs this fall, with products announced during next year. It is basically a set of enhancements to Distributed File System. It announced D-, K- and T-class PA-8000-based servers earlier this month (CI No 3,002) and the first workstations using the PA-8000 in June (CI No 2,934).