HP markets 3 multiprocessors at high end of business line

Electronic News, Nov 25, 1991

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard has added a trio of multiprocessing systems to its HP 3000 business computer family, establishing a new high end for its business computer line and targeting the new systems at the mainframe-alternative segment of the market.

The company also unveiled a line of high-availability RAID-3-complaint disk arrays with capacities ranging up to 5.4GB for a full five-drive, single-array configuration. Up to five such arrays can be ganged in a single cabinet.

The new HP 3000-family systems, all based on the company's Precision Architecture RISC MPUs, include a pair with symmetric multiprocessing architecture and either three or four RISC MPUs. The new systems, designated the HP 3000 Series 980/300 and 980/400, are said to have up to 3.6 times the performance of the HP 3000 Series 980/1000, and to be capable of supporting up to 1,200 users.

The top-of-the-line 980/400, scheduled for initial shipments in the first quarter of next year, is priced at $945,000, or $1,065,000 bundled with the Allbase/SQL relational database and TurboImage network database. The 980/300, available in December, is $785,000, or $900,000 with the database software.

Standard memory is 360MB for the 980/300 and 384MB for the 980/400, both upgradable to 1GB. The Model 300 can be upgraded to the performance level of the Model 400 with the addition of a fourth processor board.

Standard features on both models include 512KB high-speed CPU instruction and data caches for each processor, five-stage instruction pipelining for each processor, and operating system software optimized for on-line transaction processing.

Along with the new 980 series, HP unveiled the Series 977, a new high-end version of its Series 9X7 computers. Existing Series 9X7 systems are field-upgradable to the 977 with a processor board swap. The new system, available in February, was said to have performance some 30 percent higher than the model 967, the previous high end for the line.

The Series 977 system is targeted against offerings such as the IBM RS/6000 Model 550H RISC workstation, high-end DEC 4000 systems, and IBM's AS/400 mid-range machine. HP also plans to market the unit as a replacement for older IBM systems such as the IBM 4381.

The Series 977, priced at $260,000, or $360,000 bundled with database software, uses a single PA RISC processor board and can support more than 800 users, HP said. Standard memory is 96MB upgradable to 384MB, with a 512KB cache and 1.3GB disk drive as standard.

Together with the new systems, HP added a family of disk arrays with from two to five 1.36GB, 5.25-inch SCSI-2 drives per array.

The arrays, designed to attach to the company's multi-user computers via fiber optic link, are available in either a stripped disk configuration for data security or in a non-redundant configuration with all capacity devoted to data storage.

The five-drive model C2254HA, priced at $53,600, uses four disks for data storage and the fifth for data protection. A four-drive model, the C2254B, priced at $45,290, omits the data protection drive. A three-drive model, the C2252HA, at $36,980, stores data on two drives with the third for data protection, while the two-drive model C2252B, at $28,675, uses both of its drives for data only. An $8,325 kit with a single 1.36GB drive can be used either as a replacement for a failed drive in an array or as an upgrade. All models will be available early in 1992.

Standard specifications for all models include 13.5ms seek time per drive, 7.5ms rotational delay, a controller overhead of less than 1.0ns, and a one-track burst transfer rate of 2.457MBps. Controller data burst transfer rate is 5.0MBps, with an array controller overhead of less than 0.5ms. Rebuild time in the case of a drive failure is 30 minutes, based on an idle system.

Up to five of the arrays can be housed in a single cabinet, with up to eight arrays connected to a host computer via a single fiber optic cable at up to 500 meters distance from the host.