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PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

 
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Steve Post
Trusted Contributor

PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

I am asking this question to make sure it is true.

I do not have an itanium computer. I don't want to buy one only to discover that it will NOT work. That would hurt.

I have an old K250 computer running software compiled to run on hpux11.0 64 bit OS. The K250 is a PARISC Architecture. I want to replace it with a rx2660. I cannot recompile the software.

If I setup the files and directories the same, I can just start the old programs on the new box with no compiling at all? It is that transparent?

There is a piece of third party software that was written on PARISC. They might not remake it for Itanium. If the software is precompiled for PARISC, it is ok that I use this PARISC software for normal business? Is it ok that get periodic PARISC updates for the next 10 years?

I know. I know. You want to know the details of the software. But let me be generic in my question. If third party vendors flat out refuse to ever switch from PARISC to Itanium, is that ok?





6 REPLIES 6
Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

Re: PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

Shalom,

ARES works.

But our tests showed a 70% performance hit, used up the by the emulation software.

After these tests, we decided to re-compile.

ARIES is not transparent there is some setup to do.

If third parties refuse to switch to Itanium its their loss because HP is not bringing back PA-RISC.

SEP
Steven E Protter
Owner of ISN Corporation
http://isnamerica.com
http://hpuxconsulting.com
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Steve Post
Trusted Contributor

Re: PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

Thanks. Before I can buy an Itanium I need to make sure the old software can work on it. But I can't make sure the old stuff works on it because I need an Itanium to try it out on. Catch-22.

So this ARIES allows me to break the catch-22 somewhat. I least I have a better hope.
Bill Hassell
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

Don't buy the Itanium box unless the seller agrees to accept it back if it doesn't work. There are many resellers that will provide a try-before-you-buy system. AIRES does work and the vast majority of PARISC programs will run just fine under it -- except for the CPU performance penalty, which is very real in that each instruction must be interpreted.

> If I setup the files and directories the same, I can just start the old programs on the new box with no compiling at all? It is that transparent?

Yes, that should work just fine. But keep in mind that you will be jumping two or three major OS revisions from 11.0. If the programs you are running are not supported or tested on 11.23 or 11.31, then you may have problems unrelated to the Itanium hardware.

> There is a piece of third party software that was written on PARISC. They might not remake it for Itanium. If the software is precompiled for PARISC, it is ok that I use this PARISC software for normal business? Is it ok that get periodic PARISC updates for the next 10 years?

I would be VERY concerned about using software from a vendor that ignores OS and hardware updates for years and years. Itanium is not new and the K250 + 11.00 has been obsolete for many years. So you are already at risk using the old hardware and obsolete OS.

> If third party vendors flat out refuse to ever switch from PARISC to Itanium, is that ok?

Never. Find another vendor immediately. If the vendor can provide updates for 11.23 and 11.31, then you can push for Itanium support. The AIRES emulator will not affect disk-bound applications very much but if you see heavy CPU usage on your K250, you will not see a big improvement on Itanium.


Bill Hassell, sysadmin
Ivan Krastev
Honored Contributor

Re: PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

Another option is to try your software on the Itanium server at testdrive - http://www.testdrive.hp.com/

regards,
ivan
Rajesh K Chaurasia
Valued Contributor

Re: PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

Hi,

If your application is user mode i.e. non kernel intrusive, does not use kernel modules - it will work fine in ARIES compatibility mode on Integrity HP-UX servers.

ARIES is transparent such that you don't need to change the way you were using the application on PA-RISC based servers. You don't need to invoke ARIES explicitly. Extra steps if at all required would be related to the way the application is installed. If using standard SD packaging, you need to use '-x allow_incompatible=true' option to swinstall and swconfig command while installing PA-RISC software on Integrity servers.

On the performance side, moving from K250 almost every application will see performance gain when migrated to current Integrity servers. Frequently executed parts of code get dynamically translated which helps achieve optimal performance.

You may want to ensure that the Integrity HP-UX server has latest ARIES patches installed. You can find more information about ARIES at:

http://www.hp.com/go/aries

Regards
-Rajesh
Trevor Parfitt
Occasional Advisor

Re: PARISC programs on Itanium with ARIES Emulator.

We had a problem on one of our Itanium boxes with Aries patch PHSS_36519 that caused the program to core dump. Patch PHSS_35045 was OK and updating the affected server to the latest Aries patch also fixed the problem.