HP brings powerful combination of massively parallel processing and SMP technology to the commercial arena; New suite of open enterprise parallel server products scalability in decision support, computing consolidation and transaction processing environments

Business Wire, May 15, 1996

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 15, 1996 -- Hewlett-Packard Company today introduced the next generation of its family of high-performance enterprise parallel servers.

The HP 9000 Enterprise Parallel Server Model 21 (EPS21) and HP 9000 Enterprise Parallel Server Model 30 (EPS30) -- encompassing powerful symmetric multiprocessing SMP nodes and the capacity to add high-availability software tools and parallel technology from the industry's premier relational-database providers -- eliminate data bottlenecks by delivering virtually unlimited scalable processing power to handle the most demanding decision-support, data-warehousing and transaction-processing applications. The EPS21 uses powerful four-way SMP nodes and the EPS30 uses highly scalable 14-way SMP nodes.

The core of HP's Enterprise Parallel Server architecture combines the strengths of time-proven, high-performance SMP systems with technological elements generally associated with massively parallel processing architectures. This combination allows HP's customers to exploit the simplicity and ease-of-use characteristics of SMP technology while providing them with the potential for ultra-high-end scaling and investment protection when computing needs outgrow the capabilities of a single SMP system.

To complement its ongoing commitment to the scaling of complete solutions for the high end of the commercial enterprise-computing spectrum, HP also announced a variety of information-storage systems, including HP's Advanced Digital Linear Tape (DLT) library systems and support for StorageTek's Timberline 9490 tape cartridge subsystem.

The HP 9000 Model EPS21 is the first open enterprise product from HP to feature Fibre Channel, the fastest, multipurpose, industry-standard networking technology in computing today. HP's complete Fibre Channel solution, which promotes parallelism by providing low-latency, high-bandwidth links between server nodes, is expected to be a key enabler for future information-storage products from HP and other best-in-breed mass-storage suppliers.

FASTER THAN IBM RS/6000SP

In the on-line transaction processing environment represented by the TPC-C benchmark, a four-node HP 9000 EPS30 server achieved 17,826 transactions per minute at $396/tpmC using an Oracle Parallel Server database. In a TPC-D benchmark representing a decision-support/ data-warehouse environment using a 100GB Oracle Parallel Server database, the HP 9000 EPS30 achieved a power metric of 243.2 QppD, a throughput metric of 121.5 QthD and a price/performance of $13.23K/QphD. The EPS30 attained 17 percent more power, 44 percent more throughput performance and 60 percent lower total cost of ownership than an IBM RS/6000SP on the same database.

"HP's Parallel SMP computing is a marriage between the performance and scalability benefits of massively parallel processing and the simplicity and efficiency of traditional SMP -- and we are pioneering that evolution," said Richard Sevcik, HP vice president and general manager of the Systems Technology Group. "HP offers value to our customers across the complete value chain. We intend to be the leader in the emerging commercial parallel market for customers involved in very-large-scale decision support, data warehousing and transaction processing."

HIGHLY SCALABLE

Running the HP-UX(1) enterprise-class operating system, the EPS architecture today is scalable up to 16 nodes (each of which can be either four-way or 14-way SMP, for a total of up to 224 processors). The EPS family features high-powered 120MHz PA-7200 processors and paves a simple board-upgrade path to the world-leading 64-bit PA-8000 CPU. HP plans to increase to 128 the number of nodes supported by the EPS architecture in the future.

By layering HP's MC/Service Guard high-availability solution onto EPS, customers can leverage the array of benefits provided by the combination of high performance, scalability and high availability. Additional advantages include reliability, availability and serviceability; on-line swapping; and replacement and recognition of network elements.

"With EPS, HP is helping us overcome the traditional performance-scalability issues of current information-technology systems by delivering the data-crunching benefits of parallel processing without making our current IT investments obsolete," said Pekka Kauppinen, Telecom Finland's chief information officer. "To keep pace with our rapidly growing business-transaction volumes, HP's EPS will be used extensively for our mission-critical applications."

PROCESSING AT HIGH SPEEDS

Combining the elements of high speed, long distance and versatility, HP's new portfolio of standards-based Fibre Channel interconnect products helps give the EPS21 with faster decision-support capabilities and higher-performing transaction processing.

HP's Fibre Channel products -- driven by laser technology -- today deliver 266Mbits/s per link in both directions (532Mbits/s total per link) and will evolve up to 1Gbit/s bandwidth per channel. Using the Fibre Channel adapter in each server node, the Fibre Channel interconnect initially supports up to 16 channels. Fibre Channel can support interconnect distances of up to 2 kilometers. This means that customers can link EPS nodes today, attach new mass-storage devices in the future and configure remote backup servers at disaster-recovery sites -- all at fiber-optic speeds.