HP Reveals PA-8700 Chip Details; .18 Micron Copper Process Enables 3.2 Billion Operations Per Second, Providing Superior Price and Performance for Enterprise Applications - Product Development

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, April 17, 2000

Hewlett-Packard Company Tuesday revealed details of its 64-bit PA-8700 processor, expected to ship in servers and workstations in the first half of 2001. The new processor is designed to operate at frequencies at and above 800MHz. HP made the announcement about the newest member of its PA-RISC(1) family here at InterWorks 2000, an HP enterprise computing users group.

The PA-8700 was released to manufacturing in late March and continues to push the price/performance envelope of PA-RISC processors. Preliminary HP estimates show that the PA-8700's integer and floating point performance will be at least 64 percent and 14 percent better, respectively, than Sun's published figures for the UltraSPARC III.

HP pioneered the deployment of large on-chip cache processors. The PA-8700 employs a .18 micron, silicon-on-insulator copper CMOS process, allowing for 2.25MB of on-chip cache -- the largest of any microprocessor and a 50 percent increase over the PA-8600. The new .18 micron process reduces voltage, which significantly lowers power consumption when the chip operates at higher frequencies, and results in cooler operation. In addition, the process' smaller geometries increase operating frequencies, thereby enabling the PA-8700 to calculate up to 3.2 billion operations per second.

"While HP is investing its future in IA-64, HP will continue to deliver industry-leading solutions based on PA-RISC, at least through the PA-8900," said Scott Stallard, vice president and general manager of HP's Business Systems and Technology Organization. "HP's dual PA-RISC and IA-64 systems roadmaps will preserve customers' current IT infrastructures and environments, while offering them the choice of when to make the transition to IA-64."

HP solutions based on PA-RISC technology provide scalability, availability and flexibility for e-services, e-commerce, data warehousing, transaction processing, scientific modeling and computer-aided design. IA-64 (Intel Architecture, 64-bit) is a next-generation computer architecture developed jointly by HP and Intel.

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services for business and home -- is focused on capitalizing on the opportunities of the Internet and the proliferation of electronic services.

HP plans to spin off Agilent Technologies and distribute its shares to HP shareowners by mid-calendar year 2000. Agilent consists of HP's test and measurement, semiconductor products, chemical analysis and healthcare solutions businesses, and has leading positions in multiple market segments.

HP has 85,400 employees worldwide and had total revenue from continuing operations of $42.4 billion in its 1999 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

(1) PA-RISC stands for Precision Architecture-reduced-instruction-set computing.