PA-RISC based hpux

[Shivkumar]

Dear Sirs,

PA-RISC based hpux servers were well known for their excellent stability and performance.

Itanium processors is based on pc architecture which is meant for lower end computing.

I speculate that if PA-RISC hpux is discontinued then HP-UX unix might lose its supremacy in the unix world.

I am working on recommending PA-RISC based hpux infrastructure but not sure if hp stops PA-RISC based unix in the future.

Can anyone shed some light on what is the future of pa-risc hp-ux ?

Is higher end computing era heading towards extinction ?

Thanks,
Shiv

[Indira Aramandla · Accepted solution]

Hi Shiv,

Here is some info.

When PA-RISC was released, HP began designing the architecture to replace it. Several years into the project, HP determined that the economics of microprocessor manufacturing favored partnership and decided to partner with Intel. This joint development combined HP's strengths in system and architecture design with Intel's strengths in processor design and manufacturing.

Traditional microprocessor architectures (CISC and RISC) have fundamental attributes that limit performance.To achieve higher performance, processors must not only execute instructions faster, but also execute more instructions per cycle, referred to as "parallel execution". For this reason Intel and HP jointly defined a new architecture technology called EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) named for the ability of the software to extract maximum parallelism (potential to do work in parallel) in the original code and "explicitly" describe it to the hardware. Intel and HP have jointly defined a new 64-bit Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), based on EPIC technology, which Intel has incorporated into Itanium, Intel's 64 bit microprocessor architecture. The new 64 bit ISA takes an innovative approach combining explicit parallelism with techniques called predication and speculation to progress well beyond the limitations of traditional architectures. The new architecture is called Itaniumâ ¢, formerly known as IA-64.

These are the different HP-UX releases. The current PA release is UX 11.11. The current IPF release is UX 11.23.

From the operating systems point of view there should be no noticable difference between HP-UX for PA and HP-UX for Itanium. Altough some applications are not bundled for the Itanium releases they might run in emulation mode through Aries. on the other hand there are some bundled applications, that are not Itanium native but do also run in emulation mode (e.g. SD-UX).

The latest HP-UX release UX 11.23PI was released in Sep. 2004.

The official name is HP-UX 11i v2 update 2 or UX 11i v2 UPD2. The HP internal names are
11.23PI or 11.23 0409. PI stands for PA-RISC & Itanium, so it is the first OS release that supports both platforms. PA-RISC customers can benefit from the new features of 11.23.

Update paths
You can update from 11.11, 11.22 or 11.23.
· For UX 11.11 you need to install the Update-UX product from the 11.23PI install media to update.
· For UX 11.22 you need to install the Aug 2004 BUNDLE11i patch bundle before installing the Update-UX product.
· For UX 11.23 you just need to install the Sep 2004 BUNDLE11i patch bundle to get to 11.23PI. Since 11.23PI is a so called "patch release" to 11.23 no update-ux


IA

[Devender Khatana]

Hi Shiv,

Have a look at this recent thread discussing this issue in details.

http://forums2.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=840150

HTH,
Devender

[Sudeesh]

latest article on PA release:

http://www.itjungle.com/tug/tug060205-story02.html

Sudeesh

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Shiv,

How many PCs can you buy with an Itanium processor?

None

Apart from the fact that its made by Intel, who aslo make x86 chips, there's nothing about the IA64 processor which is based on PC architecture.

Where did you get this piece of information from?

Yes, the PA8900 is the last PA-RISC chip, but HP are going to be offering support on PA-RISC out beyond 2010, so I wouldn't be too concerned about deploying it now.

Having worked on both PA-RISC and IA64 systems, the 3 big differences are:

1. The boot process is slightly different on IA64 - it has to be so the boxes can also accomodate running Windows Server 2003, Linux, and OpenVMS.

2. Oracle Executables on the IA64 box seem to be more memory hungry - I'd up memory requirements by about 50% on these systems - not sure about other apps.

3. Pound-for-pound the IA64 systems are CHEAPER and FASTER.

HTH

Duncan

[Cem Tugrul]

Another link from me;

http://forums2.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=210749&admit=-1335382922+1122022682037+28353475
Good luck,

[Babu A]

Hi Shiv,

I hope the link given here will give some idea for you,

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2005/050531a.html

Regards,

Babu

[Mahesh Kumar Malik]

Hi Shiv

Following link is useful information on HP's plan to move towards Integrety servers

http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/promo.html

Regards
Mahesh

[Ted Buis]

Itanium is NOT based on a PC architecture. The EPIC architecture was jointly determined by HP and Intel but evolved out of efforts that were targeted for the pa-9000. It maps almost one for one to pa-risc. Xeon with EM64T and Opteron are pc architectures. Itanium has even more reliability and performance monitoring capabilities than pa-risc. It is not a step down at all, but a step up from pa-risc to a new level. While I understand your concern, it is not founded on facts. Itanium is a worthy target for HP-UX today and in the future.