PA-RISC line nears final rollout

HP is expected to contact its resellers this summer about an HP-UX server powered by PA-8900 processors, chips which HP has announced will be the last PA-RISC design used in HP servers. HP has stated that it’s goal for enterprise server sales is to pump up its Itanium 2 family to comprise half of all 2005 sales, but the PA-RISC lineup still dominates sales of non-Intel-based HP systems. This year’s Montecito release of Itanium 2 is expected to be the first Itanium chip that can outrun the PA-RISC line of processors.

PA-RISC drives the remaining units in the HP 3000 line, including the latest N-Class servers. The PA-8700 was the last processor HP supported under MPE/iX. The migration from PA-RISC to Itanium architectures still looms in the future for many customers who will stick with HP’s servers when they leave their HP 3000s.

HP enabled its Support Tools Manager (STM) to work with PA-8900 systems five months ago, with HP-UX release 11.11i. From the looks of HP’s public documentation, the rp4440 HP-UX servers could be among the first to accept the newest PA-RISC chips. An HP manual which details upgrading procedures for the rp4440 and rp4410 servers rolled off HP’s electronic presses last month. You can have a look through the PDF document at <docs.hp.com/en/A9550-96003/A9950-96003_rp4410_rp4440_Upgrade.pdf>. The rp4440 can be configured with as many as eight PA-RISC CPUs.