HP Discloses Long-term PA-RISC Roadmap

Significant Planned Enhancements to High-performance PA-8000 Family

San Jose, Calif., Oct. 13, 1998

Here at Microprocessor Forum, Hewlett-Packard Company today disclosed its roadmap for the future of its high-performance 64-bit PA-RISC(1) processors.

This roadmap supports HP's commitment to continue delivering significant performance improvements for its enterprise customers and is designed to ensure leadership for the PA-RISC family well into the next century.

Roadmap Details

HP 9000 V-Class Enterprise Servers implementing the PA-8500 (announced today) at 440MHz are scheduled for introduction before the end of the year. The PA-8500 processor at 360MHz is orderable today for C-Class workstation upgrades, which are expected to ship in January.

The PA-8600, slated for 2000, is estimated at 560MHz. In 2001, HP expects the PA-8700, followed by the PA-8800 and PA-8900.

"The PA-RISC roadmap illustrates HP's commitment to long-term processor and architecture innovation, enabling HP to provide customers with the massive resources they will need for future computing requirements," said Denny Georg, systems and technology general manager for HP's Enterprise Systems Group.

Binary Compatibility

Customers also can continue to rely on binary compatibility across the PA-RISC family, enabling seamless interoperability with legacy applications on HP systems. Binary compatibility protects customers' investments, enabling rapid growth and adoption of new technology infrastructures. In addition, customers can use existing applications and operating systems with advanced processor technology for distinct performance improvements.

HP will continue to support binary compatibility through the introduction of IA-64-based systems. As a result of HP's co-development work with Intel on EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing), the technology foundation for IA-64, today's HP-UX(2), Windows NT and MPE/iX applications will run unchanged on IA-64. For maximum performance, customers can recompile applications without source changes.

Leadership Processor Benefits

HP's PA-RISC processors provide the ideal combination of performance and product benefits for data-intensive applications for the Internet, data warehousing, transaction processing and Computer Aided Design, which require concurrent acceleration of multiple operations. All of HP's PA-RISC processors can be linked together to support multiprocessing needs and to deliver greater performance for more demanding applications.

While HP's PA-RISC processors offer competitive frequency levels, these processors have consistently exceeded their performance expectations, thanks to architectural enhancements that enable leading system performance. HP expects future processors to surpass performance estimates as greater functionality and architectural enhancements are incorporated.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 127,200 employees and had revenue of $42.9 billion in its 1997 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.
2. HP-UX Release 10.20 and later and HP-UX Release 11.00 and later (in both 32- and 64-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products.